Aside from our shared love of Jane Austen, Visconti movies and all kinds of plants, I can’t really remember how Carlos and I met. Of course, I knew his globally successful cult perfume line, Arquiste, but I’m not exactly sure how our paths crossed. Regardless, they were clearly supposed to, because we had an instant meeting of minds. Carlos is someone who has the same overarching sense of romance about the world, and similarly notices every minute detail with a critical eye. In truth, we’d been looking for a head of membership to work alongside my fellow Brisbane boy and beloved-by-all Nick Chandler, but we never found the person who was quite the right fit to help build and lead our community. I remember at one point during the long (and global!) search, writing down the attributes that I know PRIOR people would look for, and saying to another team member, “Well, that’s Carlos—his goddamn fragrances!” It was our luck, then, that a couple of months later, Carlos, polymath that he is, called me out of the blue and said, “About that role….” The decision was instant and I’m proud to introduce him as our new Director of Membership.
Some people are well-rounded, few people are richly rounded, and Carlos is one of the rare people who is exactly that. He constantly inspires me by always renewing himself, and in a permanent state of curiosity and joyfulness. He’s also forever adding to his interests and expanding his knowledge, which reminds me to do the same. His discoveries might be some extraordinary maker found in, say, Tunisia; an exquisite off-the-market house here, a beautiful landscape there; a building in need of restoration funds, or a wonderful restaurant down a lane somewhere.
He studied architecture in his hometown of Mexico City and Paris and historic preservation in New York after launching his career in Spain—then threw himself into the study of fragrance creation with some of the most internationally recognized noses. His brand, Arquiste, captures the olfactive notes of historical moments, like a merchant spice galleon in the 17th century, a London cocktail bar in the 1930s, or a disco in 1970s Acapulco. As we move into a new year and a new world after these last few months of being more or less grounded, we’re so glad to have him working with us to create extraordinary experiences and to help us celebrate the rare, real and wonderful.
David Prior: You travel the world constantly, but there are a few places that I've noticed you continue to return to. What are those places and why?
Carlos Huber: Spain, number one. Spain is my emotional home, because it's where I kind of grew up. Not in the sense of being raised, but where I became an adult and came into myself as a person. It started in Paris, actually—which is another place I go back to. I left home during college to study architecture in Paris for a year, which turned out to be one of the most formative years of my life, because of learning the language and everything about the historic architecture there—and becoming financially independent for the first time.
That year I also met the person who would become my first partner, who was Spanish. I would travel to see him in Spain—he was living in Ibiza doing his residency as a doctor—and so I spent three months on Ibiza, taking a job with an architecture firm. It was idyllic, not at all a wild Ibiza experience. And his family really embraced me and became my adoptive family. Then he would come to Paris all the time and we navigated the city together as expats. Although I went home to finish my degree, I ended up leaving again for Bilbao, where I lived for a year. Since then, Spain has just been sort of like home. Some of my best friends are the friends I met at that point in my life.
DP: The formative places. It’s the same story for me, except I left Australia for Italy.
CH: Mexico is also a case study in looking outwards. Maybe you feel similarly, David, and it’s awful to say, but we grew up feeling like Mexico wasn’t well perceived internationally, and that gave us the feeling that everything had to be better somewhere else. Thankfully that’s changed in Mexico, and that is really exciting. But growing up, it was almost corny when you went to a nice Mexican restaurant in Mexico. They seemed thematic, with Pancho Villa posters and the like. You did have wonderful Mexican food at home, but you went out for Spanish food, French food, sushi. This made us very observant of the outside world. We were dressing like they did in Paris and London, we were listening to the best British music that my American cousins had no clue about. And so I think Mexicans have always been very good at absorbing different influences and at adapting.
