My way into home fragrance happened partly by chance and partly by calling, a calling that perhaps was waiting to be uncovered and heeded.
In the summer of 2007, while I was in the middle of an interview process for a design director job at a big apparel company, I was working on a short-term consulting project for an interior designer on textiles and furniture. She was very talented and quirky, and about a month into it, I paid attention to a tray of candles on the “inspiration table” of ongoing projects. She had been collecting candles for quite some time, and they were neatly arranged by color, an elegant degrade of neutrals. "I want to create a line of candles one day. Maybe you want to draw something? The packaging is important.” She told me.
I started to jot down some notes one evening in our garden. Back then, we lived on West 12th Street in the Village in Manhattan and had the entire ground floor of a townhouse with its shaded 78-foot garden. It was a secluded paradise apt for musings.
In my notes, I had included memories of smells from childhood, and upon re-reading them, I noticed they were about moments and places that each held a meaning or cherished memory and were tied to a particular smell. I was struck by how these scent memories had elicited details and feelings I would not have thought I could remember.
I also noticed my entries were too personal to share with the designer I worked for. Smells were an integral part of my childhood memories, and these notes had little to do with designing boxes. They were far more profound than that.
My consulting project ended with her a month later. I created some packaging for her, and to this day, I have no idea if she ever materialized them into something. We parted ways, and a renewed interest in fragrance remained, this time for the home. I’ve always loved perfume and candles, but focusing on them from a product development perspective made me look at the product type differently.
Not so long after, one evening, I walked back home by a window in the West Village wreathed with blooming jasmine vines. In the diaphanous hours of twilight, and despite not getting direct sun, the vine was covered in white stars diffusing their perfume through the street–a bit incongruent in the heart of New York City. I was immediately transported to the past, to my paternal grandmother’s garden, and marveled at how the scent took me on such a trip. One thing is to notice the memories, and another is to notice the feelings and then realize the sense of smell had much to do with that particular moment.
As soon as I was home, I opened my notebook again to write, feeling there was something else underneath this process. I realized I wanted to be in my grandmother’s garden again–to hear the sounds and smell the scents–as if I could somehow be instantly transported seven thousand miles away and decades into my past to the moment I smelled jasmine for the first time.
While writing, I felt like I wanted to somehow create the fragrances to recreate the smells I associated with jasmine. That could be the catalyst for transporting myself back in time and place to these formative memories. Something hit home. I imagined how it all could make sense if I focused on creating a product that could transmit emotions and share a little of me in the process. But of course, the first question that came up was, "How in the world am I going to learn perfumery?"
I got the job I was interviewing for, but I spent many evenings drawing packaging and writing down concepts for a capsule of scented candles. Even if it was all going to be on hold for God knows how long, I knew by then that the best thing to do when one has a surge of inspiration is to pay attention to it and get it all out.
I consequently created a capsule of six scents, each with a scent pyramid, all inspired by what I now call a scent moment: the moment in time and space when I smelled something for the first time, knowing I would remember it forever.
We all remember smells this way.
Time went by, and I continued working in fashion until 2015. What was a purely decadent hobby collecting niche perfumes and scented candles slowly but surely got influenced by a sense of purpose: I was buying what I liked and what could inspire me over time.
As my ideas evolved and I continued buying candles, room sprays, and perfumes, I realized there was a common thread linking my memories and influencing the appeal certain scents hold for me. I noticed that I wanted to explore this concept deeper and understand why certain smells were more attractive to me.
I understood my nose and brain formed a massive library of odors. And I also realized that the use of perfume is intimately related to our culture. Perfumes for the home, I thought, would have a lot to do with how we make our homes feel safe, calming, inspiring, and evocative.
This mental library of odors, this archive that can tap into my memories and emotions, sifts through everything and seems to be always on. It sparked the thought process that led me to look at where I came from, where my ancestors came from, who they really were, and the cultural traditions they brought when migrating to the Americas.
This blending of familial customs and origins helped create a new identity. Each side of my family had its own identity, and what they liked in terms of flavors and smells had much to do with their origins. Exploring the customs and likes that my ancestors brought from the Old World and those they discovered in the New fascinated me, and I realized they fueled the tastes in smell I had begun to acquire from a very young age.
In 2015, I retired from the fashion industry and decided to focus full-time on this project. I first decided to go the private label route; after all, isn't that what one does when one doesn't know perfumery? But what I had in mind was too precious to hand in to someone else. That is the easy way out. My husband had much to do with it: "If you want this project to be personal, you must learn to do it yourself" were his words.
So, I did. It took a few years, but I finally launched for retail in early 2024.
While studying high-perfumery methodology, chemistry, and botany, I researched migratory currents, trade winds, the history of trade sailing the Atlantic Ocean, and crucial perfumery materials in all continents, including those endemic to and imported into the Americas.
So, those original six scents became scent families that today account for many more formulas, over one hundred and growing. I launched with the original six, but I have started to add a new fragrance per month. I have over 12 different scent families that have comprehensively organized them.
The combination of research, countless hours mixing raw materials, and exploring scent memories has resulted in an expansive body of work I never imagined possible. I continue to study high perfumery and blend all my fragrances myself. I love what I do.
This body of work is the medium through which RHR Luxury attempts to explain with smells how we all come from somewhere and have more in common than what appears on the surface.
RHR