There are no fancy bottles, no elegant or funky labels. There’s not a celebrity face to be seen or multimillion dollar marketing campaign. There’s just the juice. “Juice” is perfume industry speak for perfume, the juice inside the bottle. What happens when you strip away the packaging of a perfume, and invite people to judge the fragrance on its own merits? You get the Fragrance Republ!c, a place where all perfumers, from scent superstars who make blockbuster commercial fragrances, to newbie perfumers just starting out, all on an equal footing to present juice of their own creation. This is an artisan perfumery with no limits, no budgets and no focus panels. You are free to like the scent or not. It’s a fragrance republic after all. Frangrance Republ!c (FR!) is the brainchild of co-founder François Duquesne, who, from 2002 to 2008 ran the niche scent company L’Artisan Parfumeur. He says…
Fragrant Debuts: Eau de Sniffapalooza
With Sherri Sebastian of Perusa Naturals How does a perfume fanatic find out about the latest upcoming niche perfumers? At Sniffapalooza, a twice yearly event that brings fragrance lovers from around the world to New York for a weekend of spritzing, sniffing and shopping. Day one is jam-packed with up to 100 perfumes to try, a dizzying experience but loads of fun. On day two the pace isn’t nearly as frenetic, and there’s more time to enjoy all the new scents coming your way. The most interesting part of the day is lunch, when the “Eau de Sniffapalooza” forum takes place, where emerging indie brands launch and present their concepts and scents for the first time to this group of passionate perfumistas. Startups in the niche perfume industry are invited to debut their lines to the group, each giving about a 10 minute presentation to tell us who they are, what they…