MixByMe ™ inventor and company founder Melanie Werner loves to find the best in the alluring world of fragrance and cosmetics. Every week we’ll share highlights from her coveted travel notebook of what she saw, smelled, and loved while on the road– while she was In the Mix.
Melanie’s travels often take her to New York– a city burgeoning with possibilities. In typical New York fashion, there’s some unique perfumeries that are truly pushing the envelope with interesting scent creations.
Unique perfume #1: Le Labo
“We believe fine perfumery must create a shock – the shock of the new, combined with the shock of the intimately familiar.” -Le Labo manifesto
Le Labo tops Melanie’s list for their off-beat approach to perfumery, which is thoroughly and proudly detailed in their manifesto. And the scents work surprisingly well together. A Le Labo fragrance is named for its one main base ingredient (such as rose or sandalwood), followed by a number, which counts out the total ingredients in the mix (i.e., Vetiver 46). The most complicated of all being the exquisite Laurier 62 candle and home scent (Le Labo describes this one as “a mess”). Trying to identify and explain exactly what’s in one of their perfumes is an exercise in futility– yet also a near necessity as the fragrances are so complex, interesting, and noteworthy.
Last summer when Melanie visited Le Labo’s company headquarters in SOHO, she said, “Divine fragrances waifed through the hallways; I merely had to smell my way to their front door.”
Unique perfume #2: Bond No. 9
“Bond No. 9 collection has a dual mission: restore artistry to perfumery, and mark every New York neighborhood with a scent of its own.” -Bond No. 9 philosophy
Bond No. 9 pays loving homage to New York through both its name (the headquarters boutique is at 9 Bond Street, in NoHo) and its full-blown fragrance collection. Each scent is formulated around a neighborhood in one of the five boroughs, with a focus on Manhattan, and is produced in the metro area. With each blend featuring an 18-22% concentration of pure perfume oil, Bond No. 9 perfumes are also known as some of the strongest on the market. The company also collaborated with the Andy Warhol Foundation to create unique scents packaged in bottles featuring Warhol’s artwork (and Warhol is a Pittsburgh native just like Melanie!).
Unique perfume #3: Frédéric Malle
“Eliminate all that is superfluous or merely decorative.” -Frédéric Malle’s credo
For Frédéric Malle, the nose is everything. Malle created the Editions de Parfums, which is bringing perfumery back to its basics by having the world’s greatest perfumers, or “noses,” compose exclusive, creative fragrances to be sold directly under their own names. Each blend is a highly original scent perfected to the unique olfactory preferences of each highly skilled nose. Malle asks that the noses not just make “pretty scents” but craft fragrances that enrapture and embrace the body of each wearer, while still remaining true to the noses’ original visions.
