The Founders

Where science meets
the art of the brand.

Maison L'Alchimiste was founded by a physician-scientist and a brand strategist, united by one conviction: that true luxury begins with evidence and is completed by elegance.

Alex Albuquerque · New York City

Co-Founder & Master of Creations

Alex Albuquerque

Some creators enter beauty through aesthetics. Alex Albuquerque arrived through a rarer path: a life spent studying transformation itself—how matter changes, how living systems respond, how scent awakens memory, and how the invisible can become unforgettable on the skin.

The Co-Founder and Master of Creations of Maison L’Alchimiste, Alex brings to beauty a pedigree almost without parallel. Before creating his first formula for the Maison, he had led global scientific organizations within three of the world’s most significant pharmaceutical companies; lived and worked across the Americas, Europe and Asia; and designed clinical research involving thousands of people around the world. He has helped guide innovation through some of the most demanding scientific and regulatory environments in existence.

But this is not borrowed authority, nor science used as decoration.

Alex is the author of more than 500 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has received international recognition from leading scientific societies, including the Centennial Medal of Honor of the American Heart Association. His life has been shaped by a discipline in which approximation is not acceptable: where an observation must withstand scrutiny, where a result must be true, and where every detail has consequence.

At Maison L’Alchimiste, that exactitude becomes seduction.

Biologie Plurielle™

His philosophy, Biologie Plurielle™, begins with a refusal: beauty cannot be reduced to one fashionable active ingredient, one extravagant botanical, one loud promise. A truly exceptional formula is a constellation. It is the intelligence of many elements acting together—lipids, botanicals, antioxidants, humectants, texture, color, scent and the delicate biological pathways that allow them to become more than the sum of their parts.

Every creation is therefore composed as one would compose a work of art or a fragrance: with tension, contrast, depth and restraint. Nothing is included merely to be named. Nothing exists in isolation. Every material must earn its place in the whole.

Alex’s world extends far beyond the laboratory. Formally trained in aromatics, perfumery, wine and terroir, and shaped by a lifelong devotion to art, he understands that luxury is not only seen. It is inhaled, felt, remembered. It is the quiet pleasure of a texture that seems almost impossible; the private intimacy of a scent that appears, caresses and disappears; the sensation that something has been made with more intelligence, more culture and more care than one had expected.

This is the promise of Maison L’Alchimiste: not merely products, but objects of cultivated pleasure.

Scientific rigor gives them their integrity. Art gives them their soul. And desire gives them their reason to exist.

Nothing is hidden. Everything is considered.

Bruno Schermerhorn · New York City

Co-Founder & Brand Visionary

Bruno Schermerhorn

The most enduring Maisons are not built around what they offer, but around what they stand for.

For Bruno Schermerhorn, this distinction is fundamental. A Maison is not merely a collection of creations. It is a point of view, expressed with such consistency and conviction that its identity becomes recognizable even in silence. Nothing is isolated. Each expression must belong to something greater than itself.

Born in Brazil and based in New York City, the Co-Founder of Maison L’Alchimiste brings an unusual breadth of experience to the world of luxury. His path crosses journalism, software engineering, business strategy and brand development — disciplines united by a lifelong fascination with how people perceive, connect with and remember what they encounter.

His understanding of perception began with language.

Working in Brazilian media, Bruno developed an instinct for narrative and the eloquence of restraint. He learned that the strength of a story lies not in how much it reveals, but in the precision of what it chooses to express. This ability to distinguish the essential from the superfluous would become central to his understanding of luxury.

Technology gave that instinct a different dimension.

Through software engineering and the development of large-scale digital commerce experiences, he came to understand the intricate relationship between human behavior and the systems that shape it. His interest was never confined to what technology could accomplish, but to what it could make possible: interactions so intuitive, so carefully resolved, that the complexity behind them disappears.

Postgraduate studies in Business Administration and in Branding and Brand Management gave that perspective its structure.

For Bruno, building a brand is not an exercise in visibility. It is an exercise in coherence.

That conviction extends beyond professional experience. Through extensive international travel and a sustained interest in craftsmanship, design, hospitality and the cultural expressions of luxury, he has cultivated a perspective attentive to both tradition and change. He is particularly drawn to the qualities that allow certain creations, places and institutions to retain their relevance long after novelty has faded.

Within Maison L’Alchimiste, Bruno shapes the identity and expression of the House, guiding its strategic direction, narrative and digital presence. His responsibility is to ensure that what the Maison creates and how the world encounters it are inseparable — that the intelligence of a formulation is reflected in the intelligence of its presentation, and that every expression carries the same depth of intention.

For Bruno, luxury is not excess. It is discernment — the ability to recognize what is essential, to give it its rightful place and to leave nothing that diminishes the whole.

Nothing is accidental. Everything belongs.

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