Elevated Classics is an independent publication about perfume, style, beauty, and culture, with a particular interest in how taste develops over time.
I’m Hulya Aksu, the founder and editor of Elevated Classics. I began my career in the 1990s and spent more than two decades working across beauty, media, marketing, writing, and magazine publishing. My background in film and storytelling has always shaped the way I approach the things I love. I am interested in the story behind an object, the people who made it, the ideas that influenced it, and the difference between what we are told to value and what actually deserves our attention.
Elevated Classics began as a broader exploration of style and life after 50, but fragrance gradually became central to the publication. Perfume brings together so many of the things that interest me most: art, history, chemistry, fashion, memory, commerce, and culture. I write about perfumers, fragrance houses, laboratories, ingredients, production, creative direction, ownership, pricing, and the constant evolution of the industry. I also speak with perfumers, founders, and other people working behind the scenes because I believe the people who create fragrance deserve to be part of the conversation around it.
Credit the perfumer. Credit the lab. Respect the craft.
My approach to fragrance is curious rather than dogmatic. I collect designer, niche, heritage, and independent perfume and do not believe one category is inherently more sophisticated than another. I can be just as excited by an inexpensive bottle that is beautifully made as I am by a rare or costly perfume. Price can tell us something about positioning, materials, production, or distribution, but it does not automatically tell us whether a fragrance is good.
My own taste is broad, although I return often to florals, powder, musk, amber, incense, iris, violet, jasmine, tuberose, sandalwood, tea, green notes, and chypres. I love perfumes that feel feminine and beautifully composed, whether they are soft and intimate or darker and more unusual. Sometimes I want something delicate enough to wear to bed; at other times I want smoke, leather, bitter greenery, incense, or a flower taken somewhere unexpected.
I care far more about how a perfume makes me feel than whether it lasts for twelve hours or announces itself across a room. I often reapply because I enjoy experiencing the opening again, and I wear perfume primarily for myself. What interests me most is the composition: how it develops, how the materials interact, what the perfumer may have been trying to express, and where the fragrance sits within a larger history of scent.
That curiosity also makes me skeptical of some of the language surrounding modern fragrance. I am interested in what happens when marketing becomes more compelling than the perfume, when pricing becomes part of the performance, or when consumers are encouraged to equate exclusivity with quality. I love perfume too much to treat it only as a luxury object. It is also craft, memory, experimentation, pleasure, and sometimes simply something wonderful you find for very little money.
Although fragrance has become the heart of Elevated Classics, it is not the only thing I write about. Fashion, beauty, books, travel, bags, design, and the rituals of everyday life all belong here because they are connected by the same idea: learning what you genuinely like rather than simply accepting what you are told to want.
Getting older has made that more interesting to me, not less. My taste has changed, my standards have changed, and I question things more than I did when I was younger. I created Elevated Classics for readers who feel the same way, people who still love beauty and discovery but want substance behind them.
For me, living beautifully has very little to do with performing wealth or following a prescribed aesthetic. It is about curiosity, discernment, pleasure, and knowing yourself well enough to choose accordingly.
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