Perfume Room

At long last, today's ep is the recording from Perfume Room LIVE (the one-year anniversary live show)!! Enjoy a snippet on trends of the past, present, and future from panelists Travaulya Wallace, Liz Renstrom (Basenote Bitch), and Dulma Altan, plus a full length interview with the Founder/Perfumer behind Kismet Olfactive, Shabnam Tavakol! Shaby and I discuss the path that led her to perfumery, wh...

In today’s installment of all the best people are fragheads, I am joined by the ultimate fraghead: the one, the only MARGARET CHO!!! A 5-time Grammy-nominated comedian, Emmy-nominated actor, activist, entrepreneur, musician and artist, Margaret Cho not only does it all, she does it all…smelling GOOD. Margaret has an extensive collection, immaculate taste, and lays her head on her pillow each night...

If you’ve ever been curious about the perfume-lover to perfumer pipeline, that's exactly what today's ep is about. I am joined by Ashley Santiago, AKA Ashley in Paris, who is — you guessed it — a perfume-lover turned [classically-trained] perfumer. Currently, she’s an Apprentice Perfumer at Givaudan. And if you’re wondering how an Apprentice Perfumer differs from a regular perfumer (or a even a Ma...

Boy Smells Founder Matthew Herman is in the Perfume Room today! A personal fave candle and fragrance line of mine, Boy Smells is an accessible, inclusive, cheeky, post-binary personal care brand that elevates your intimate world. What began as a messy kitchen experiment has become is an award-winning, global brand with beautifully complex scents developed by master perfumers. Matthew is a delight...

Beyonce and Jay-Z, Barack and Michelle, David and Victoria… LEV & ALINA. Today, I sit down with the ultimate power couple—The Maker Hotel & Fragrance Co-Founders, Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg. Business and life partners whose titles (past and present) span from Founders to Presidents to Hoteliers to Noses to Designers to Restauranteurs, are also the same duo behind Fresh Beauty. We discu...

Maison Crivelli Founder Thibaud Crivelli is in the Perfume Room this week! Thibaud shares the ethos behind ‘slow perfume,’ the thru-line of *shock* in all of his fragrances, tales of his travels around the world the scents that came from them, the multi-sensorial discovery kit and what's actually on those re-usable blotters (spoiler alert: it’s not just pretty patterns), the biggest compliment-get...

Today I am joined by BROWN GIRL Jane Co-Founders Malaika Jones and Tai Beauchamp. BROWN GIRL Jane is Black women-owned, plant-based wellness line with everything from CBD gelees and serums to you guessed it… fragrance! What all of their products have in common is the they were specifically designed with the needs and wants of BIPOC women in mind. In this episode we discuss the inspiration behind t...

Veteran beauty exec turned fragrance founder Michelle Feeney is in the Perfume Room today. Michelle's illustrious background in the industry spans everything from launching Creme de la Mer, spearheading the MAC AIDS initiative as the VP Communications, and later becoming the CEO of St Tropez. Today, she is the Founder and CEO of Floral Street, a fragrance brand known for its sustainable packaging...

Today’s episode is the best, and that’s my 100% objective take. We are joined by two of three co-founders behind Akro— multi-award-winning Master Perfumer Oliver Cresp, and his daughter/Co-Founder, Anaïs Cresp (the third founder who unfortunately could not join is Anaïs’ partner, Jack Miskelly). Akro is an incredible (and very new) niche brand that creates daring, polarizing, addicting fragrances...

Today, world-renowned, award-winning Master Perfumer Alberto Morillas is in the Perfume Room! Alberto is the visionary (and nose) behind blockbuster fragrances you know and love like Estee Lauder Pleasures, Gucci Bloom, CK One, Versace Bright Crystal, Kenzo Flower, Lancome Miracle, Thierry Mugler Cologne, Marc Jacobs Daisy and Armani Acqua Di Gio… and there are hundreds more where that came from!...

Wrestling Champion, Hall of Famer, and Producer Gail Kim is in the Perfume Room today. This episode is a little less perfume-centric than others, but there are so many parallels in both industries and if you've ever wondered anything about the behind the scenes of wrestling, today's ep is for you. We chat about everything from cultivating a wrestling persona, developing a signature move, the smell...

My quest for high quality, great-smelling fragrance that costs less than a SweetGreen salad is never-ending, and today I chat with Greta Pagel — the Fragrance Director of the brand I think does it best: Good Chemistry. Greta leads all fragrance development and strategy at Good Chemistry and ILLUME (including perfume, personal care, and home fragrance). We discuss what happened to some of our favor...

NY’s most creative, cult-fave sister-duo Susan Alexandra and Janie Korn are in the Perfume Room today! Susan is the creator of the ever-whimsical, kitschy Susan Alexandra brand — beloved for her colorful beaded bags, jewelry, and homeware (and celeb following), and Janie is known for her often-customizable, highly-destructible sculptures [read: candles] which are the perfect mix of nostalgic, chee...

Kimberly Waters, Founder and Creative Director of MUSE Experiences, is in the Perfume Room today! Recently featured in the NYTimes, MUSE Experiences is Harlem’s only niche fragrance retailer, as well as the only fragrance retailer in the city to operate out of an actual home (on the parlor floor of Kim’s townhouse), and thus, the only perfume shop (that we know of) where, as Kim mentions, you can...

Your Fave Fragrance Auntie, Funmi Monet, is in the Perfume Room! By day, Funmi is a licensed therapist and by night— a fragrance star. She's not just a fragrance content creator, she is a fragrance creator AND a content creator. In one short year on TikTok, Funmi has amassed well over 100K followers as well as launched her own fragrance, Exalté. UM, let that sink in for a sec. Funmi shares the fra...

Fabrice Croisé, Founder of Scents of Wood (TFF Fragrance Extraordinaire 2021 winner) is in the Perfume Room today! This revolutionary fragrance brand not only pays homage to trees and nature in every scent, it also flips the script on fragrance formulation. Rather than making the alcohol an invisible ingredient (as is par for the course), in Scents of Wood fragrances, it’s the star of the sho...

If you think your perfume collection is unrivaled, meet your rival, Josie Plumey. Not only is Josie an expert in fragrance retail, buying, and distribution, but with over 570 fragrances (inclusive of many rare vintage frags and formulations), she just may have the best personal collection in all of New York! We discuss what it means to be in the perfume distribution biz—Josie is currently the Sale...

Getting an inside look at what really goes down at a Fragrance house is rare, but this week, we’ve done it. I am so honored to be joined by Firmenich Perfumer Alexis Grugeon (creator of hit scents like Ariana Grande R.E.M. and Polo Sport Fresh) and Fragrance Development Manager Segolene Dewey (TFF Notables Class of 2022). You will learn about what they each do, how they work together (and apa...

Sommelier and Creator of Legally Wined Michelle Chen is in the Perfume Room today. Not only is Michelle a Certified Somm under the Court of Master Sommeliers, she is also a lawyer in New York — a combo I trust with my life.  We discuss the ‘guilty pleasures’ of wine, sexism in the industry, how to figure out which wines you like and the descriptors you need to know to discover more, best...

Today we are joined by The 7 Virtues Founder-Extraordinaire, Barb Stegemann. Barb is also a best-selling author, motivational speaker, one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women, and has been a recipient of Ernst &Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. Her background prior to founding The 7 Virtues is a unique one, as it had nothing to do with fragrance. She discusses the inspiration behind...

Perfumer, Sommelier, Activist and Clairvoyant Yosh Han is in the Perfume Room today. Yosh has been at the forefront of decolonizing scent and her activism has led to major change in the industry; across the world, major stakeholders are officially re-classifying the o-word to amber (or ambré). We discuss why this change is necessary, the progress thus far, as well as how you (yes YOU!) can get inv...

Annabel Gat — Senior Astrologer at VICE, author of The Astrology of Love & Sex and The Moon Sign Guide, and co-collaborator of the fragrance Annabel’s Birthday Cake — is in the Perfume Room today! We get the lowdown on Annabel's personal inspo behind this stunning scent, discuss the birth charts of your favorite fragrances, and, wait ok this one's wild: if you’ve been doing weird things with y...

@thenichesampl er Valerie March, one of my favorite fragrance content creators, is in the Perfume Room today. By day, she explores bio-hazardous samples (she's currently getting her PhD in Tuberculosis research in Switzerland) and by evening, niche. Valerie shares the houses you NEED to know, her fragrance wardrobe theory and the five scents in her own collection that would make the cut, the molec...

CEO & Co-Founder of Otherland Abigail Cook Stone is in the Perfume Room today talking about the ethos behind all things Otherland: verve. Don’t know what that means? You’ll find out in this episode! She also shares the personal stories behind some of your favorite candles, the magical process of how each scent gets created, the time she showed up to her kick-off investor meeting with 3 pounds...

The President of The Fragrance Foundation, Linda Levy, is in the Perfume Room today! A beauty industry veteran and champion of change, Linda makes my list of top 10 fave people ever — and I’m in good company to feel this way; Frederic Malle has described Linda as the Lady…as in Portrait of a Lady. Yes, that one. We discuss all things Fragrance Foundation — who gets to be a member, its mission, wha...