This Month in Fragrance: May 2019

Here is a selection of recent fragrance news published on CosmeticsDesign.com:

Remarkable ​
For 5 years, Ginkgo Bioworks has been reverse engineering the fragrance of flowers that have gone extinct. And as of this month, the Boston-based biotech firm’s efforts—scent molecules of long-gone plants—are part of a multisensorial exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. Resurrecting the Sublime is meant to foreground the fact that “we can look to the past, but we cannot bring it back….[the installation] asks us to contemplate our actions, and potentially change them for the future,” ​according to a media release from Ginkgo. Learn more about the biotech behind the fragrance, the artists involved, and more here on Cosmetics Design​.

The annual CEW Beauty Awards event took place this month in New York City and included 5 fragrance categories: Niche Fragrance, Men’s Scent Mass, Women’s Scent Mass, Men’s Scent Prestige, and Women’s Scent Prestige. Find the winners here​ on the CEW site. And read more about the trends Cosmetics Design spotted at this year’s awards celebration here​.

Retail ​
Zodica Perfumery is an indie fragrance brand that got its start like so many new beauty brands do today, online. Founder Kristi Moe has since taken her astrology-based collection of perfumes to video commerce with QVC and to conventional retail, with numerous partners around the US and a Zodica Perfumery flagship boutique in Monroe, Wisconsin. This month she spent 2 weeks selling product and connecting with consumers at a pop-up shop in New York City’s Chelsea Market. Learn about Moe’s experience at the market and her wider fragrance retail strategy in this Cosmetics Design video interview. ​ 

A furniture shop may not be the first place consumers go to discover new and novel fragrances but Prevalent Projects co-owner and buyer Julia Albee knows why a shop like hers is the perfect place to sell select personal care and fragrance products. “I love fragrance and the way it evokes memories in unexpected ways,” ​Albee told Cosmetics Design earlier this month. “Fragrance,” ​she believes, “is emotional and incredibly personal. I love the way a candle can transform a mood in a room.  We don’t carry too too much personal care; I try to think, what would I love to find in the ultimate guest bathroom. So, we have candles, fragrance, hand and body soaps and lotions. Anything else is too technical.” ​Read more about her beauty buying strategy here on Cosmetics Design.​

Packaging ​
Clean and green beauty here to stay and suppliers around the world are adapting their businesses to meet their customers’ and end consumers’ eco-expectations. Silgan Dispensing is no exception. At this month’s Luxe Pack New York event, Cosmetics Design editor Deanna Utroske sat down to chat with Anne Echard, the company’s global product manager of fragrance, to find out how Silgan’s fragrance packaging business is changing with the times. In this interview, Echard describes the new XpresService by Silgan as well as a dispensing option that allows for fragrance bottles to be recycled or refilled. Watch the full interview here on Cosmetics Design.​

Blending ​
Of course not all fragrance is fine fragrance. The scents used in product formulations can be crucial to a personal care brand’s success as well. Lisa Wilson works as the in-house scent expert at Cremo Products, a brand that all about men’s grooming. In a video interview, filmed on the sidelines of this month’s NYSCC Suppliers’ Day event, Wilson discusses how valuable the right scent strategy can be for a brand like Cremo and shares her insights on the sort of notes and accords she uses to set this brand apart from the competition. To learn more, watch the full video interview here on Cosmetics Design.​

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Deanna Utroske, CosmeticsDesign.com Editor, covers beauty business news in the Americas region and publishes the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column, showcasing the inspiring work of entrepreneurs and innovative brands.