Saying yes is easy. Saying no takes nerve. Because no is dark and abrasive, unruly, irritable, provocative. It bites, it scratches, it cuts. No is round and resonant — like a shout, like a gut reaction, like the initials of a man who has made a habit of refusing: Oscar Quagliarini.
Born in Rome, but never anchored there. “My father moved often for work,” he recalls. “So my siblings — Fabio and Gemma — and I lived first in Naples, then in Trieste, and finally in Cassano d’Adda. He wanted us to grow up somewhere quieter.” It was near Milan that Quagliarini began with progressive music, forming a small band called De Generazione. “I soon broke away to focus on synthesizers. To pay for them, I started working behind the bar. I was fast, and I loved it.”
Oscar Quagliarini and the Art of Saying No
No to the band, to play solo. No to the metropolis, to move with more freedom. No to the fog, yes to the sea — after the birth of his son Léon, whose autism, golden hair and single white lock have shaped a different rhythm of life. “Everyone in Senigallia knows him — even the police. If he wanders off, someone will find him. That’s why I prefer micro-cities,” Oscar explains. Known in his twenties as “O Scar”, he’s the kind of man drawn to boxing and photography, who reads compulsively, travels constantly, and distills ideas as if they were spirits. He resists boundaries — mental, stylistic, or otherwise — and refuses to belong to any category.
Oscar Quagliarini’s Lifelong Passion for Reading
“My mentor, Frog (Enrico Contro, the eccentric mind behind Pravda) admired that: my curiosity, my cross-disciplinary instincts. Having many passions broadens your sightlines. I got the idea for a numerology-inspired drink list after reading ‘Call Me Pi’ by Maurizio Codogno. I read a lot, but not the obvious things. I prefer novels like ‘Il bambino irraggiungibile’ by Manuel Sirianni, or ‘Bozze non corrette’ by Stefano Bartezzaghi — a brilliant mystery solved through linguistic and grammatical mistakes. That’s what I tell young bartenders: don’t trap yourselves behind the counter. Most of my ideas came from studying something else.”
Perfumes, Spirits, and Experimentation
Quagliarini is, in essence, something else entirely. A nose, an herbalist, a botanist, a perfumer, a mixologist. “My next gin will be called Pharmako – Materia Alchemica. It will be glittering blue, bright as Neptune, which inspired the eleven botanicals, all found on Earth. The concept grew out of an alchemical herbalism manual crossed with archetypal astrology.” Oscar mixes to blur borders — from cum fundere: to pour together, even realms that seem worlds apart. He says no to shortcuts, to the easy path, to compromise, to linear thinking, to unmarked skin (he prefers it tattooed).
He opened Gocce in Senigallia — then closed it to launch Magazzino Olfattivo. “It’s the evolution of Le Garagiste: a workshop where I can create without cliché, prototypes of spirits and perfumes. I’m fascinated by the Latin subvenire, to recall, to come to mind — the root of souvenir. The medication I’m on makes me fear losing memory, so I want to craft fragrances that hold on to people and places. A scent that smells like a pencil. Or one that reminds someone of their grandmother — starting from notes of Marseille soap, camphor, talc. It’s about preservation, making something immortal.”
Oscar Quagliarini on Avoiding Excess
A kind of defiance against death itself. For years, Quagliarini said no even to sleep, barely four hours a week, afraid of wasting time. Now he is saying no to the excesses of a rock’n’roll life. “I used to drink a liter of gin every night because lucidity frightened me. I blurred my thoughts on purpose. Now I have one Spritz before dinner, one mezcal with ginger beer after, and I feel fine.”
He has also said no to smoking and drugs. “I’m creating ‘Teen Tears’, a fragrance line for adolescents. There’s nothing like it. I draw on my youth, my mistakes, to send a positive message through tears — the trace of a lack that drugs pretend to fill, only to deepen it. It’s also a way to overturn convention: the scents come in marker pens, not bottles. You draw them onto your skin — neck, wrists, arms.”
Journeys, Collaborations, and New Perspectives
Mad, magnetic Oscar. Who says no to fashion houses and multinationals, crafting only what mirrors his own vision. “I’ll collaborate only when I believe in a product, when it reflects who I am,” he says. Oscar is proud to consult for La Bottega, a luxury brand from the Marche region. “Traveling keeps me alive — Turkey, Dubai, France, Moscow, Switzerland. I look for local botanicals, breathe in the air, watch what people eat and drink, distill their culture. My signature is at the Aliée Hotel in Istanbul.”
Restless as ever, he also shaped the cocktail program at Herbarium, inside Paris’s Hôtel National des Arts et Métiers, “inspired by the world of edible perfumery.” Meanwhile, he has written a new book: a fractured, hallucinatory autobiography made of flashes, memories, and cathartic scenes. And he is now working on “Gli emisferi di Oscar Q“, complete with drinks, aphorisms, collages, and watercolor illustrations by Sergio Gerasi. “This time,” he confides, “I said no to olfactory pyramids — to leave space for molecules and hand-drawn scent maps.” And yet, he admits with a grin, there’s one thing he’s never quite managed to refuse: women.
The article first appeared on Coqtail – for fine drinkers. Order your copy here
Photo by Alberto Blasetti x Coqtail, all rights reserved
