NYC Fragrance Scene Report
The Fragrance Swap of the Summer and Some Upcoming Events
I recently heard a (paraphrased) quote that went something like, “when you don’t feel like working, it’s because the part of you that wants to work is on strike.” Apparently it comes from some anarchist text. I don’t know which one or who said it, but it feels very true. I want to write but the part of me that is a writer has been on strike for the last month or so. I’ve started a couple larger, more complex pieces, including one that was a bit similar to this Timeline of Teen Beauty Trends that was recently published in the New York Times and includes wonderful photos by photographer and fragrance enthusiast, Elizabeth Renstrom (who coincidentally co-hosted the main event described in this post). The piece I’m working is more about the construction of teen/preteen girls as a category of consumers via the archetype of the Young-Girl á la Tiqqun rather than a timeline, and it will also include a fun analysis of 90s Bath and Body Works fragrances and what your preferred scent said about you as a teen á la classic Cosmo quiz results.
Anyway, since my intellectual writer is on strike I hired a dumb bitch scab to churn this out so I don’t end up going two whole months without publishing anything! Enjoy!
Swaps Are Having A Moment
Ahead of the latest installment of Emma Vernon of Perfume Room Pod’s summer fragrance swap on Thursday night, HighSnobiety published an article hailing the rise of fragrance swapping. I also previously published an article describing the joy of connection and discovery that fragrance swaps facilitate. In the time since publishing my previous article, I’ve attended several in-person fragrance swaps and they’ve all been a delight.
Swaps are having a moment because fragrance is surging in the market and will likely continue to. We need to keep producing more and more stuff and everyone needs to buy more and more of it or else the whole thing collapses; fragrance is just one of the latest categories to be captured by this dynamic. This is sad, yes, but it also means that there is a wide world of gems to be found on secondary markets after the shine wears off and one must move on to the next new thing. We’re living in a fabulous garbage dump. The swap is a non- (or at least semi-) consumerist outlet for what is essentially a consumerist hobby and that fact cheers me.
As abundant fragrance consumption continues, swaps will likely proliferate and evolve. The last couple swaps I participated in, including the one hosted by Emma et al. on Thursday, already had a bit of a different character than the first one I went to: they had multiple co-hosts, a wine company sponsored free drinks, and the participants, once solely relegated to fragrance enthusiasts, also included industry people and independent perfumers. It was a capital E Event rather than just an event.
The swap was co-hosted by Vernon, the aforementioned photographer Liz Renstrom, and beauty editors Jen G. Sullivan and Alexandra Pauly. It was already in full swing when I arrived wearing my Britney Spears Midnight Fantasy tee shirt, which was a huge hit.
The swap was held at the LES Susan Alexandra boutique, a cute space that is unfortunately pretty narrow. Participants crowded around the table housing all the swappable fragrances, eager to sniff everything available. As I mentioned in my previous article, a swap is an opportunity to show off your impeccable taste and that certainly held true at Thursday’s event. There were some absolutely astounding frags up for grabs: an original bottle of D.S. & Durga’s Cowboy Grass (a future collector’s item for sure!), a full bottle of Initio’s just-released Oud for Greatness Neo (someone definitely got this at the press event last month lol), niche houses Masque Milano, LilaNur, Ffern, Borntostandout, Boy Smells, Obvious Parfums, Andrea Maack, Parfums de Marly, and Juliet Has A Gun were all represented, along with designer frags from Miu Miu, Dior, Ferragamo, YSL, Calvin Klein, and more. Someone brought a comically-large bottle of Tom Ford’s Beau de Jour. At least two perfume professionals added their brands to the mix: Brianna Lipovsky from the equestrian-inspired niche darling Maison D’Etto distributed full bottles of her current lineup to select guests, samples of Noisette to everyone, and spritzes of an upcoming release that hasn’t been announced yet. Noah Virgile also offered up two releases from his up-and-coming indie label Amphora Parfum: Primal Yell and Sublimate.
If I was better at my job as an intrepid fragrance reporter I would have taken pictures of all of these, but I’m not so you will have to use your imagination. The swarm around the table was a bit chaotic but somehow it all worked out.
I offered up a bottle of Chris Collins’s African Rooibos. I actually picked it up at a previous swap hosted by my friend Rachel Ann Reading, a fragrance tour guide and collector with incredibly encyclopedic perfume knowledge, who is quoted in the HighSnobiety article. The aforementioned Noah Virgile was the bottle’s previous owner. When he saw the bottle, he remarked that he brought African Rooibos to a previous swap and I had to sheepishly tell him that it was, in fact, his bottle of African Rooibos and made a joke about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. African Rooibos is a fragrance that I like, but after wearing it a couple times I realized that I don’t want a full bottle of it. I already had a sample of it from Luckyscent that is about two years old and was still half full, so I filled the sample up and decided to pass the bottle on to someone else. We shall see if the new owner decides to keep it or if it will make an appearance at the next swap event.
I picked up a bottle of Bond No. 9’s Chinatown, which was on my full-bottle-worthy list for a while. Bond No. 9 is a brand that I generally kind of ignore because they have, like, 200 fragrances and I have no idea where to even start with them. Also their bottles are ugly. But! Luca Turin gave Chinatown five stars in The Guide, it’s a tuberose frag, and the perfumer is Aurelien Guichard, so it made it onto my list of fragrances to seek out.
Chinatown is a gorgeous floral perfume that has a spiciness to it that is both warm and fresh. I’ve heard it described as smelling like a “lacquered medicine cabinet” and that description sort of fits, but the florals in it add a delicacy (peony and orange blossom) and a carnality (tuberose and gardenia) that transform it into something wholly different from other fragrances of the spicy-medicinal genre such as the original Comme des Garçons fragrance or Diptyque’s L’Eau. The floral notes bring something both botanical and human to the composition and the dry-down has a skin-like peachy muskiness to it that gives it a lived-in feel. It’s the kind of thing you should wear to have sex in the middle of a humid summer afternoon, lazing about afterward by an open window as a light breeze wafts the saltiness of your sweaty skin into the spices of the perfume.
At the swap, I was talking to Emma about the fragrance I had picked up and she remarked, “you always go for the discontinued fragrances.” To which I exclaimed, “Chinatown is discontinued!?!?” It’s not (thankfully) and she meant that I tend to gravitate towards older releases at these events, which is true. As I wrote previously, at her first swap I picked up the EDP version of Chanel No. 5, which has become one of my default fragrances when I’m going to a party—it’s assertive enough to cut through throngs of people and unusual enough in a sea of cool niche-wearing 20 and 30-somethings that it feels distinct even though in another context it might be boring or expected. It also mixes well with cigarette smoke.
At a previous swap hosted by Emma and Liz this winter I did pick up two fragrances that are actually discontinued: Shalimar Eau de Cologne and Tubereuse Organique.
Shalimar Eau de Cologne is discontinued but it is available from some fragrance discounters online. It’s Shalimar for summer—the leather and powdery incense notes are toned down a bit but still present and the lower concentration gives it room to breathe so it works well in heat. Apparently the eau de cologne was made specifically for the American market and wasn’t available in other countries. Note that Shalimar EDC is NOT the same as Shalimar Cologne, which is also discontinued and has a significantly different scent profile compared to Shalimar in any concentration.
Christophe Laudumiel’s Tubereuse Organique, from his brilliant line The Zoo unfortunately ceased production last year. Tubereuse Organique is a fresh green-white floral that captures the light, snappy, slightly vegetal scent of tuberose in the air as though you are walking past a field of it in full bloom. The name is a cheeky little joke, as the twist of the fragrance is that it is meant to evoke the real smell of tuberose but does not contain any tuberose absolute—the scent profile for the flower is entirely deconstructed and then reconstructed to produce a fantasy of the reality of experiencing the flower in nature. This is often the case in perfumery (the majority of notes that are called out in fragrance descriptions are reconstructions to varying degree), but Laudumiel explicitly highlights that it is a simulacrum. He is a genius and I will greedily snatch up anything from The Zoo whenever I can get my hands on it (I have several eBay alerts set up).
As the swap on Thursday wound down and everyone had drunk their fill of complementary natural wine and had chosen a fragrance from the table, the hosts declared the rest of the fragrances fair game—anything left was up for grabs. Almost everything found a home and the table cleared quickly. I grabbed the bottle of Primal Yell by Amphora Parfum when I realized it was still on the table, thereby proving that I am also interested in collecting new shit too. I want to write a full post about Primal Yell because I have a lot of ideas about it, but for now I will say it is a metallic woody cherry labdanum delight over a purring animalic base and it exemplifies how electrifying and exciting indie perfumery can and should be.
The swap was a huge success. As Susan Alexandra closed up shop, guests lingered on the sidewalk out front, exclaiming over each other’s finds, exchanging contact info, already palpably excited for the next meet-up.
Incidentally, fragrance isn’t the only thing up on the swapping block this summer. Tonight I’m going to a book swap (it’s a private event so it will be somewhat different than most of the fragrance swaps I’ve attended). The swap is a category ripe for exploitation: scent swaps, book swaps, clothing swaps, swapping spit: let’s all do the swap. I’m here for all of it. Summer of swaps!
Upcoming Events for NYC Fragheads
The Summer Swap marked the opening of a robust month of events in the NYC fragrance community:
Everyone’s new favorite store, Stéle in Williamsburg, is hosting an evening with the co-founders of Icelandic perfume brand Fischersund. The last time the Icelanders visited the US they incorporated poetry readings and performances alongside their fragrances, and I suspect there will be more of that at this event. Also free schnapps! Wednesday, August 7th from 6-8PM. Sign up for Stéle’s mailing list to RSVP.
Pioneering fragrance enthusiast group Sniffapalooza is hosting a virtual “master class” introducing NYC’s Fragrance Alliance Network on Tuesday, August 13th at 7PM. The event is free but signups are limited. The Fragrance Alliance is a new organization dedicated to fragrance education (sort of like the East Coast version of the Institute for Art and Olfaction).
Speaking of: The Fragrance Alliance Network has multiple upcoming classes in August, including fragrance creation workshops, digital strategy and content creation for fragrance brands and creators, candlemaking, and a series of aromatherapy classes. Check their calendar for details.
Leonora Zoninsein returns to Olfactory Art Keller on August 18th for her advanced scent composition workshop. The workshop is an extension of Zoninsein’s scent composition foundation workshop, so prior experience may be required to participate.
Marissa Zappas will host an evening of sensorial readings at the Salmagundi Club on August 21st. Featured writers and performers include: Ruby McCollister, Deborah Eisenberg, Ariana Reines, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, and Mackenzie Thomas. Drinks at 5:30, readings begin at 6:30. Get there early.
Arabelle Sicardi will host a virtual book club for Tom Robbin’s wild 1984 novel Jitterbug Perfume on August 24th. The event is open to paying subscribers of their Substack You’ve Got Lipstick On Your Chin and participants in their Perfume Pages writing group.
I will be at most of these events awkwardly handing out business cards with my Substack URL printed on them. Say hi if you see me!
i wanted to go to this but was out of town! (cowboy grass is my favorite ds and durga. I may have brought other bottles of theirs to this swap..)