Perfume Playlists, Pop-ups, & AI is getting Nosey AF

+ WHY PERFUME COMMERCIALS NEED TO GO & MULTI-SENSORY DRIIINKS

Hello friends! This is Nadia 🙂 NYC smells funky right until you get to Elizabeth Street. Lots of video in this one.

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q of the day: do you have big whale energy? 🐋

SOTD: No perfume. I got TOO many requests to send a decant of Bourbon St. last week and I’m going to fulfill all of them because I am that person :’) hehe. But, I have the green apple-scented candle I made myself at Wick & Pour lit—it has a GREAT throw.

‘FUME NEWS & FREE POPUPS!!!

• The 2024 Fragrance Foundation Awards were last week at Lincoln Center. Winners included VALENTINO BORN IN ROMA DONNA EAU DE PARFUM INTENSE for Fragrance of the Year Women’s Luxury, BILLIE EILISH EILISH NO. 3 for Consumer’s Choice, ARQUISTE PARFUMEUR L’OR DE LOUIS EAU DE PARFUM as Indie Fragrance of the Year; Hall of Fame Award to Givaudan CEO, Gilles Andrier, and the Lifetime Achievement Perfumer to Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, Bvlgari and Louis Vuitton Master Perfumer. I just wanna know if guests really felt transported to Grasse with the scent of “Rose Fields.”

• Stéle New York is going to be the next perfume boutique to hit up ASAP. Amphora Parfum (handmade in NYC) is debuting their fragrances starting June 11 at the store to sniff and online by June 12.

• Jinx Perfumes is cooking up some new things, coming June 15th. We’re spotting terpene-laden Malaysian Ouds, vintage orris, lipstick red musk, & jasmine tea in their social copy.

• Brooklyn Museum is having a multi-sensory tour of Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami) led by Jessica Murphy, a fragrance historian. Can someone PLEASE go and let me know! <3

• SPEAKING of Japanese scent history—I just won my very first online giveaway EVER of perfume samples straight from Japan & Korea from @thescentmentalist. Hehe :)

• further SPEAKING, Korean perfumery Elorea is adding NEW drinks on their menu at their Flagship-Cafe (41 Spring St); flavors include negroni-inspired espresso tonics, strawberry matcha latte, creamy cloud latte, and Yuja Matcha & Chocolate Raspberry rice cupcakes through July(!!!)

• We really need to create a Brooklyn Perfume Guide. Let me finish the Manhattan ones first.

• Perfume-making classes/workshops galore! The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is having a natural perfume blending class one Saturday in June, and one in July. Bios Apothecary (gorgeous store!) also has fun perfume workshops throughout the summer. Plus, learn how to blend from local East Village Perfumer Sal Barone.

• FREE West Elm DUMBO x Lustoic Home Fragrances Pop-up this Sunday, June 16, 11AM-6PM.

• Panasonic is having a House of (RED) “immersive, shoppable pop-up” all weekend June 14-16, 11AM-4PM on Mercer St. Activities include freshly baked cookies, photo ops, blowouts, shaves/beard trims, and freebies from London-based fragrance brand Molton Brown (bougie body washes and perfumes; even the late Queen Elizabeth II approved).

• L’OCCITANE is celebrating 20 years of their cult favorite Almond Shower Oil with a pop-up in Meatpacking on June 15-16, 12PM-6PM. Delicious.

• D.S. & Durga’s new scent, LET’S DIVE is here—in collab with @projectceti, a nonprofit organization applying machine learning and robotics to listen to and translate the communication of whales in Dominica. Leave it to D.S. & Durga to create *the first* perfume that’s named by whales. Didn’t know we needed it. Love it either way. While we couldn’t attend the event, we stopped by this weekend to smell it—it’s aquatic and marine-y, has a barely there musk; this is not your skin but better, it’s basically whale but better. A customer in the store told me that corset boning used to come from whalebones (I didn’t know). She also said she could hardly smell the perfume. Maybe she just didn’t have big whale energy. I’m also sad they don’t have a perfume playlist with this juice, I’m guessing it would just be whale sounds.

• I’m soooooooo sick of perfume ads, between Chanel, Dior, now hearing Charlotte Tillbury whisper “MORE SEX!” between Hulu ads. When will they stop this? How about making a commercial that’s actually going to tell me how it might smell. On another note, I don’t want to get rid of allll of them. Because, how would we get these hilarious TikToks then?

• Emma Vernon
  of Perfume Room Podcast is on Substack!!! I’m really enjoying how many creators/founders are joining Substack—it’s super fun connecting with them through their writing, chats, and staying nosey. I think the written word for fragrance is so very important, and I’m not talking about perfume notes or unhinged fragrantica reviews. I had fun reading Emma’s recent Thin Wild Mercury’s interview when they visited NYC a couple weeks ago. Plugging this much-needed Index of Perfume Substacks one more time for good luck.
  

• AI IS GETTING NOSEY WITH US. This isn’t breaking news, but AI is trying to boost human emotion through technology (allegedly). Master perfumers have always been the heart and soul of the industry, but now AI tools like Givaudan's Carto, dubbed the "ChatGPT of fragrance," is getting nosey. With access to 5,000 ingredients and the knowledge of new formulation standards, Carto helps perfumers whip up new scents, saving them a looooot of time. On the fun side, YSL Beauty is using EEG-measuring headsets to match you with scents based on your brainwaves, making buying fragrance super personalized. Companies like IFF are crafting “mood-boosting scents,” like Paco Rabanne’s Phantom, using AI magic. Author Pia Velasco says it best: “All fragrance aficionados understand its power: how happy you feel when you smell a loved one's signature scent, the way certain smells allow you to transcend time, and the way fragrance can impact your emotions. Do we need a robot to be our sixth sense? Only time will tell.” — There’s only one thing I want from technology: the ability to smell fragrances through my phone.

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credit: The Scent Room spotlight on musical scents

MUSIC TO YOUR NOSE: The connection of scent and sound is indeed a beautiful love affair. It's easy to see why scent and sound are connected, and why many people who are truly mesmerized by music also have a similar effect with fragrance, and vice versa. There's a shared language of between bases and bass, mid and top notes, harmonies and accords. The connection goes further: music has the power to evoke emotions, as does scent through the olfactory nerve. Did I mention we’re multi-sensorial creatures here?

The fragrance world has always been aware of this, but I’m enjoying the brands playing into it, emerging projects spotlighting it, and the discourse around it. D.S. & Durga have been connoisseurs of this concept for quite some time. Almost every scent they release (including candles) come with beautifully written, sometimes hilarious copy, and a perfume playlist. Even Cartier’s Perfumer created a scent poem based on Scriabin’s synesthetic score for “Prometheus.”

The Institute for Art and Olfaction curated Nose Music earlier this year to help figure out the age old question: what does music smell like?! Some scents included were inspired by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, and Purple Rain by Prince. We even have brands like Jusbox creating Olfactive Melodies, who through perfume are paying homage to musical icons that have left a mark in the history of music/genres. DJ & Scentrepreneur Zernell Gillie created a fragrance line Influenced by the genres of music he loves and plays as an international DJ. His line includes “Disco,” “Techno,” “Hip Hop,” and “House.” Perfume Pod interviewed Zernell last year and it’s really cool hearing him talk about it.

Like music, I truly believe fragrance is art. My hot take is that fragrance doesn’t belong in the Beauty or Luxury category; it needs it own. Fragrance evokes emotions—whether nostalgia, peace, or melancholy. You don’t have to be a certain size, or color to enjoy a nice smell. Sometimes it’s luxury, sometimes it’s not, but its almost always a form of self-expression. Sure, according to some VC duuude, music and fragrance doesn’t necessarily solve a problem for the consumer, but last time I checked—music has stood the test of time, captured entire historical periods, has the power to impact our mood instantly, and sometimes people can’t explain why they’re willing to spend so much money on vintage records and concert tickets. Hmm, I can think of one more thing just like that.

What do you think?

xx
N

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Thanks for reading Perfumeverse NYC :) Stay tuned for our next edition and keep smelling out of this world! 👽

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