Contrapposto is the latest brainchild of a beauty industry hitmaker
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You know when someone smells so good it stops you in your tracks? I ran into a friend recently and spent our entire conversation trying not to make it obvious how distracted her scent made me. Part of the intrigue was that I couldn’t quite place what I was smelling. It was unmistakably floral, but its elusiveness made it all the more magnetic. She was wearing Melting Flowers by Contrapposto .
In sculpture, contrapposto describes the shift in a figure’s weight that gives the body a sense of natural movement. Italian for “counterpoise,” it’s also the name of Nécessaire, Homecourt, and Into the Gloss co-founder and former Elle and WWD editor Nick Axelrod-Welk’s latest venture.
Founded with his husband, Casey Welk, in 2023, Contrapposto began as an aesthetic dermatology practice in West Hollywood and has since expanded into fine fragrance, with its first collection launching this fall. On the surface, the aesthetics and scent might seem worlds apart. But as Nick explains in our conversation ahead, the move reflects a deliberate vision for what he wants Contrapposto to become.
What really connected the clinic and the product for me was this idea of enhancing rather than transforming: enhancing your skin, the way you smell, and the way you feel, rather than turning you into someone else. That became kind of the battle cry for the brand.
I also loved the challenge of fragrance. It's such a subjective category. There's no before and after, no claims. Either you like it, or you don't. And I saw a white space in luxury fragrance, where the more you spend, the more you're expected to project and have people notice your scent. I wanted to do something different.
I wanted to introduce scents that melt into your skin and enhance the way you smell and feel. Because I think the only reason to put something into the world in 2026 is to truly add pleasure to someone’s life.
They’re really meant to be experienced on skin. All of the fragrances are quite heavy in musks and lactones, which are molecules that are very dynamic on skin, so the fragrances come alive when you wear them. They can smell different from what you might expect on paper, too. Someone might think they’d never wear a floral fragrance, for example, but then try Melting Flowers and discover this creamy, addictive, woody, sandalwood base that makes them reconsider.
I wouldn’t call them subtle skin scents, though. These are big fragrances that project. They just have this ability to impart a coziness that I love in all my fragrances.
I approach everything by asking, “Who are the best people in this field?” When I started thinking about creating fragrance, I took a step back and thought about the launches that had made a real impact on me when I was an editor. The one I still think about is Tom Ford Private Blend. I remember seeing it at Barneys or Bergdorf Goodman in New York. The amber bottles and the olfactive profiles. These dark woods, ouds, and leathers were new to a Western audience at the time, and yet there was something inherently addictive and commercial about the scents. They were likable.
That was the balance I wanted to strike with Contrapposto: something new and unique that doesn’t smell like anything else, but also has this inherent commerciality to it—something so appeal…