Hold on.
Before you go and repurchase that scent your nose is growing tired of, what about creating your own custom signature fragrance? You’ve heard of custom candle workshops coming to Boston, but now, you can also create a custom fragrance on Newbury Street—and the best part is you can do it all in 30 minutes or less!
The simple three-step process immerses you in a world of fragrance under the direction of scentologists, with foundations established by award-winning perfumers behind the top-selling fragrances from Tom Ford, YSL, Vera Wang, and more!
The only experience of its kind in Boston, here’s a whiff of what it’s like to visit Olfactory NYC on Newbury to create a custom fragrance.
About Olfactory NYC
Established in the Manhattan neighborhood of Nolita in 2017, Olfactory NYC disrupted the fragrance industry in 2017, by making fragrance personal. The concept since expanded to include brick-and-mortar locations in Brooklyn, D.C., Miami, Dallas, Atlanta, and Boston. One of the nine Olfactory NYC scent studios, the underground shop on Newbury Street makes an awesome solo, date, or group activity.
Once you create your custom scent, your unique blend lives in the Olfactory NYC library for eternity, so you can come back to your original scent and reorder as needed. Here’s how it works.
Creating a custom scent in 3 steps
A fragrance includes two main components, a base and accords. In step one, you explore 9 core bases for your custom fragrance and 2 seasonal bases, all developed by award-winning perfumers using extracts sourced from around the globe—including Grasse, France—the “perfume capital of the world.”
The core bases offer something for everyone, woody, musky, fruity, sweet, spicy, and seasonal surprises. Once you’ve selected your favorite base, it’s time to work one-on-one with an Olfactory scentologist to personalize the base by mixing-and-matching with the accord library.
With 11 bases total and 27 accords, there are nearly 300 possible scent combinations—leaving no scent the same.
This second step includes two rounds. In round one, you’ll explore different accords with your base. You’ll learn about the key note in the accords and create “yes, maybe, and no” piles. The key is to follow your gut instinct, and once a scent stick goes to the “no” pile, you can’t revisit it!
The second round is a blind scent test, testing your top four favorite blends on your forearms, with no knowledge of the key notes in the fragrance. It’s up to your nose, and not your mind, to pick the top scent that agrees with your pH.
The process can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes depending on how decisive you are. The final step is to select the packaging and title of your custom scent, which are pressed onto the label of the glass bottle. Olfactory reserves your fragrance in its library so you can repurchase it at any time!
Give the gift of scent
For gifting, Olfactory offers a blank slate luxury glass and wood cap bottle that comes in a gift bag. The giftee then receives a scent and an experiential gift in one gifted whiff!
If the Boston studio is out of reach, Olfactory offers an online custom scent creation process as well.
Find Olfactory NYC in Back Bay at 133 Newbury Street.
Monday-Saturday: 11 AM-7 PM
Sunday: 11 AM-6 PM