The prince and the perfume – Sahara adventurer Antal Esterházy inspires new luxury brand, ESTORAS

“It has been such a long journey,” begins Paul-Anton Esterházy, “that I have to think back where the first spark was”. For this Oxbridge graduate, City financier and charming raconteur, the past is a distant country, Hungary a land his father and grandmother fled after the war.

Paul-Anton Esterházy, “Call me Paul”, is the direct descendant of Paul I, 1st Prince Esterházy of Galántha, whose troops helped raise the Siege of Vienna in 1683. He divides his time between Vienna and Bavaria, makes frequent trips for work in London (“the last true metropolis in Europe”) and still has emotional ties to Hungary. German is his mother tongue, English a language as comfortable as his elegant black overcoat.

Surrounded by the savvy chatter of upmarket dining in the Kollázs brasserie at the Gresham Palace, Paul is not alone. Before him stands a small box, embossed with an archive travel photo of 1920s’ Egypt and a stylish modern logo for the brand ESTORAS. Within, a bottle proclaims in further block capitals, ‘ANTAL – Chasing the Horizon’.

“I had the wish,” says Paul, “to tell the story of my grandfather in some form or other a good decade ago”.

The chit-chat fades into the background as Paul unpacks the saga. Elsewhere in Central Europe, “stored deep in the family vault”, as Paul later jokes, another glass vial contains remnants of a perfume taken by its owner across the Sahara in 1926.

“Our lives didn’t intersect. He died in 1944, I was born in 1986. There’s 42 years between us, nearly half a century. As I never met my grandparents, it was very important for me to find out more about them, to feel that I knew them in some way.”

“He was a passionate racecar driver, he drove those Bugattis with the huge steering wheels across crazy mountain ranges. At the same time, he was a complex character, very aware of the responsibilities that the Esterházy name brought with it. He was a devout family man but quite an earnest character, someone who still lived life to the fullest.”

“One story that stuck with me was that in his younger days, in his twenties, he was also quite the adventurer. He had a close friendship with László Almásy, whom we all know as the English Patient.”

The story goes that at some point, the pair were sitting somewhere in the Swiss Alps, cold and snowy outside. Antal Esterházy turned to his friend and said, “This is rather unpleasant, isn’t it? Where do you think it’s a little warmer?”


László Almásy, North Africa expert and cartographer, said, somewhat cheekily, “Well, the Sahara, I’ve heard it’s quite warm there at the moment…”

Raising the stakes on his friend’s remark, Antal Esterházy then said: “Then how about we just… go there!” He duly had a phone brought to their table, called Steyr in Graz, the car manufacturer, and said, “I would like a Steyr MK7 delivered to Alexandria in two weeks’ time”.

“And that was it!” exclaims Paul, nearly a century later. “It was basically a gentlemen’s wager that escalated. And two young gentlemen taking a leap of faith, with no proper preparation other than their lust for adventure.”

For Almásy, the trek was a turning point. He would soon explore the desert by car and plane, including an expedition to the mythical oases of Zerzura, proving that there was once water in the Sahara. After becoming embroiled in war and espionage, he died not long after Anton Esterházy, in 1951. 

His saga was recreated for the silver screen by UK director Anthony Minghella. The English Patient, starring Ralph Fiennes as Almásy, went on win two Oscars. None of this would have happened without a crazy wager in the Alps in 1926.

“I thought that story was just so wonderful, it was so reminiscent of that special time of the 1920s when nothing seemed impossible, when everyone wanted to enjoy life to the fullest. It seemed such a beautiful world to engage with. I thought these stories were worth telling but I needed some kind of platform to tell it. The idea was to start a brand around this Lebensgefühle, this zest for life.”

“I didn’t make the connection from the outset but one of the few things I have from my grandfather that made it out of Hungary when my father and my grandmother fled was a 1920s’ travel perfume bottle.”

“When I was studying at Cambridge, I met a now dear friend of mine, a fellow student who comes from an African perfumer family, as luck would have it. We were sitting in a pub after lectures, and he started talking about his business, as he is a perfumer with his own brand. I told him the story of my grandfather and about the little perfume bottle. I remember vividly how his kind, large eyes got bigger and bigger as I related the tale. At some point, he said, ‘Paul, if you don’t do this, I will!’”.

“After the holidays, I brought the bottle back to show him because he was so fascinated by it. It was he who then introduced me to this quite magical world of the perfume industry, basically a door into Narnia, if you don’t know much about it as an outsider. We started going to a perfume laboratory he knew in the Cotswolds and, from what we could, from the dried-out remains left in that bottle, created a direction of where this might go.”

“When I really decided to go for it, about two years ago, I was lucky enough to partner up with a French expert, Marie Urban Le Febvre. She’s an absolutely gifted perfumer, but the lucky connection was that she has a perfume laboratory together with her husband, who’s Austrian.”

Alexander Urban and his French wife, a graduate of the prestigious ISIPCA perfumery school in Versailles, run Urban Scents, exploring the field of fragrance creation.

“Right away he understood the heritage and where this was all coming from,” Paul explains, “so both of them knew what I wanted to do with the project. As well as their brand, they’re also focused on scent therapy. So it’s quite scientific, and this is reflected in the complexity of the perfume that we managed to create”.

There’s also the name. “Estoras is the Latin form of Esterházy, but from the very beginning, it was very important to me that this project was not automatically associated to Esterházy and what Esterházy stands for. It’s supposed to stand for itself in its own right.”

Yet Paul is an Esterházy – although one currently unable to occupy the familial palace at Eisenstadt. His childless great-aunt, the former Melinda Ottubray, inherited the Schloss Esterházy as part of the family's Austrian estates from her husband, by way of a disputed testament. 

To conform with her husband's will, the estates were transferred into a Trust controlled by Paul and his parents until – in a shock takeover – Melinda's nephew Stefan Ottrubay assumed control over the Trust and expelled the Esterházy family from their ancestral home. 

In the Esterházy family since 1622, this Baroque pile, where Joseph Haydn worked and composed for nearly 40 years, has been out of bounds to Paul due to court rulings in Austria. As the only son of his father, Anton, the 13th Prince Esterházy of Galántha, Paul succinctly describes the situation as “difficult”.

“This is a different way to tell a positive story, completely unrelated and unsoiled, let’s put it that way.”

Away from lawyers and interlopers, in the wider geopolitical context, Schloss Esterházy found itself on the Austrian side of the border when independent nations were created from the break-up of the Habsburg Empire after World War I.

Even the vast Esterházy archives were separated into two collections, the most valuable elements moved in two guarded train carriages over the newly created border to Hungary. They are now housed in the National Archives in Budapest.

Further developments in 1938 meant that Paul's great-uncle Prince Paul received control of the family fortune and Esterházy properties. Arrested at Christmas 1948 by the Communists during the state takeover of Hungary, he was imprisoned and only released during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. He and his wife Melinda escaped to Austria in a car disguised as a Red Cross vehicle. They then settled in Switzerland.

Paul’s father and grandmother had already fled.

“My family were incredibly hurt that they had to leave the country they loved and they never spoke Hungarian at home,” Paul says today.

“In Hungary, Esterházy is part of the national identity. The name is so intertwined with Hungary’s history, a pillar of what Hungary is today. The actual family, unfortunately not, because 50 years of Communism have done their bit to erode that, but it’s definitely there, it can never be fully erased. If it were given more weight, if it were to be revitalised, it could develop something very positive.”

“Since this is an Austrian-Hungarian heritage brand, this is where we want to start focus on,” says Paul.  

Paul had one of the most eminent design teams in Vienna, Studio Riebenbauer, transform this rich history into a fashionable perfume box.

Across the bottle runs the name of the inaugural creation, several years in the making, ‘ANTAL – Chasing the Horizon’.

“It’s very visual, because it’s connected with The English Patient, with pictures from the journey taken by my grandfather and László. It’s also contemporary and minimalist, a strong and courageous design which bridges the past and the present.”

Already launched in Austria, just arrived at Madison on Budapest’s showcase boulevard of Andrássy út, this luxury scent should be available in the UK in 2022.

“ESTORAS for me is a very personal project, there is so much of me in it. I fully dived into the creation process for about one and a half years, together with Marie Urban Le Febvre. I was meticulous about every part of the design. So a lot of what you see reflects my convictions, my tastes and my sense of aesthetics.”

“If it’s well received, then I would hope we might explore the story of their journey further, with more scents to reflect other aspects of their exploits. This is a lifestyle brand, which revolves around the spirit of adventure, of freedom to travel, of, as the catch phrase says, chasing the horizon.”

“And I think that’s especially relevant today, when we’ve had nearly two years of unprecedented feelings of confinement and barriers on free movement. There’s a lust in us, to be spontaneous and explore. Those two gentlemen in the 1920s, they didn’t know borders at that time. They didn’t know limits. They went at it, into this dangerous adventure with a beautiful naivety. I think that’s a very inspiring thought."


"During this whole pandemic, for me it was a beautiful thing to dive into this world and become part of it. I hope that that’s there’s something in it that can inspire others as well.”