Save Fragrance, a new venture from Sean O'Mara of Royal Apothic, has launched a series of fragrances under the name Scent Lab:
Save fragrance. A name with a mission and a mission with a name. Save Fragrance believes the fragrance industry is out of control. Conglomerates, ego-centric celebrities and million dollar ad campaigns have taken attention from the primary goal: the pleasure of perfect scent. It's not the package or the model that should sell a fragrance. It's the memory it conjures up from the depths of the mind when one catches the scent in a passing breeze - the smile on your face when you find a scent you really truly love. Save Fragrance's Scentlab collection was created in dedication to this pursuit.
The initial line up includes Tattoo Parlor, Cupcake, Blood Orange, Flower Market, Absinthe and Poppy.
Save Fragrance Scent Lab fragrances are available in 60 ml, concentration unknown, $24 each. They can be found now at the Save Fragrance website or at Urban Outfitters. (via savefragrance)
I really like the periodic table design, but these kinda look and sound more like “smells” than true fragrance. Since I’m not familiar with the line, maybe I should keep my mouth shut– just saying.
… love the mission too–just sounds too good to be true, and at that price!!
The line sounds very Demeter-ish. But haven’t smelled any, so couldn’t say.
I found it a little annoying that there are NO notes listed. Srsly, what does a tattoo parlor smell like?
A tattoo parlor should smell like ink, metal, cigarettes, and antiseptic
I’d buy that!
You left out the vinyl chairs.
Other than that, sounds about right. Yeah, I’d buy it, too. Wonder what it does actually smell like. I’m not interested enough to find out, to be honest. I’m with everyone else in liking their mission, but I, too, already have my Demeter cupcake smells and my Pacifica blood orange–and I never wear those.
Left out a whole sentence, and now I can’t remember what it was. Anyhoo, I meant I’d try the tattoo parlor one, but have no interest in seeking out the others.
I need to start getting more sleep.
I’m thinking I might have to make a tattoo fragrance that actually has something to do with getting tattooed. All the things Dee and Kitty said but with green soap, too.
Right now, the only description on the website is for Cupcake, and even that is very minimal: “Fresh from the oven: cake, icing, sugar and sweets.”
So what they’re doing is basically a Demeter/CB I Hate Perfume.
Sounds like it.
True, however: I have great appreciation for their philosophy!
hit the button too soon…..Demeters make nice room sprays but every single one smells funky on my skin.
It’s basically the philosophy of almost any niche line, right? They all think they’re the ones saving fragrance.
exactly….they r doing exactly what they say they aren’t!!
Not to be a negative nancy, but their philosophy strikes me as nothing but an opportunistic gimmick, which really bugs me because that’s the sort of thing the brand claims to decry. It’s like Avril Lavigne opposing pop music with her “punk rock.” In writing the age-old rule is to show your point, not say it outright, but if they toned it down then I guess they’d have very little to distinguish themselves from Demeter/CB I Hate Perfume. Apart from those pretty bottles, which I imagine will sell a lot of fragrance – especially at Urban Outfitters. Anyway I could sure go for some Cupcake if it’s done well.
Yep. I had the same thought. There’s several perfumes that try to sell themselves on being different or rebellious and against the mainstream, so this just feels like another attempt to say how unique and true to perfume they are. I’ve heard it all before, but wish them luck and wouldn’t mind a good cupcake or blood orange frag. The Demeters I’ve tried smelled a bit strange on my skin as well, but I haven’t quite given up yet and still appreciate fragrances that evoke storms, dirt and other atypical skin scents.
To me, it sounds like up front they are saying: we aren’t going to waste our time on advertising campaigns or market research as its a waste of time anyway. It sounds good on paper, but at the price point it seems like they won’t be sourcing amazing materials that will save the industry. But more power to them if they actually smell OK and don’t need stupid overly sexy ads to sell their product. I suppose with names like tatoo parlor and cupcake they already know what the mass market wants – more of the same that is supposed to feel different.
And I’d like to try the Absinthe. Really hard to tell if they’re doing a Demeter sort of thing or not.
Ah, the ol’ Reverse Psychology trick, eh? Those of us who haven’t gotten into the highly-resistant territory of Stage 5 cynicism might swallow the bait, but not I.
LOL!
This is one “gimmick” I don’t necessarily mind, but as someone mentioned, is definitely very similar to CBIHP and Demeter … perhaps more along the price range of Demeter than the former. Smell Bent is similar, but more whimsical.
I’ll have to pop in my local UO to see if they have these. Why not?
Finally, I’d rather have 20 companies mimicking Demeter rather than mimicking Parlux and other celebrity lines, but that’s just me.
Oh no, agree entirely.
I have to say, I don’t really find their philosophy, as worded, to reflect the type of scents they put out, and therefore I have to jump on board with those who think it’s just a gimmick. Maybe these are high quality, maybe not…but they are far too simplistic to fit with “a scent you truly love”. Who truly loves the smell of cupcakes as perfume? Sigh. Also have to say, though… I can’t put Demeter in the same category as CBIHP. It’s like comparing a pencil sketch to an oil painting.
I agree, but you know that Brosius founded Demeter and left in 2004, right? His IHP definitely surpassed Demeter in quality, but the prices definitely reflect that.
Yep. I don’t think it’s even just a quality issue, though, although admittedly I haven’t tried any of his “accords”, just the perfumes. And there, it’s an issue of complexity as well. I look at the Demeters as a novelty item, but the CBIHPs, I would actually wear as perfume.
Hard to say without having tried them. To some degree, everything is a gimmick — you have to push your way into the crowded market somehow. I don’t mind if they’re good fragrances.
I would also like to point out that there is nothing new about this: even Demeter and Christopher Brosius weren’t the first, because there was a line called Smell THIS! in the 1980s; little 10-mL roll-on interpretations of such objects as Wet Laundry, Clean Towels, Buttered Popcorn, Cake Batter, Campfire, Tinned Peaches, Leather Jacket, and (I think) Cappuccino (something with coffee, anyway).
This new line seems completely bandwagony to me. It may be good, but it’s been done.
Replying to my own comment: after doing some more research, I see that Smell THIS! actually showed up in the nineties, not the eighties, at just about the same time as Demeter did.
And I think the Cappuccino was actually Mocha.
Everything else I said stands.
And they did Soda Pop Fizz, which I loved dearly.
I had that! Oh I loved it dearly.
There are a zillion little brands still making all those sorts of things in oils. Some of them are fun, some aren’t.
There are more ways to help save the fragrance. For example by buying a perfume of Andy Tauer you also help cause you help a very amazing perfumer!! Correct me if i am wrong!
As Ed McMahon used to say to Johnny Carson, “You are correct sir!”.
Yeah!
More Andy Tauer!
More Sonoma Scent Studio!
More Dawn Spencer Hurwitz!!!
So true!
And to add a rather sad commentary here based on the industry being out of whack: I recently saw in a cheap gossip magazine that Kim Kardashian was refered to as a “fragrance mogul”.
Uh, huh. Cough.
LOL! That’s pretty darned funny.
(Insert horrified gasp here.)
Maybe it’s just the bizarre day I’m having, but the world is becoming a very confusing place. I’ll be honest: I still don’t even understand why we know who Kim Kardashian is, much less why she suddenly passes for an actress, a model, a perfume mogul… etc.
It’s such things that make me believe the world is coming to an end. And that it should.
LOL!
Everyone knows that KK is an amateur compared to a REAL fragrance mogul like… Paris Hilton!
ACK!! Rustic is right—the world IS coming to an end!
noooooo, what ???? i haven’t tried enough perfume yet?#^%@^%
I tried these the other day at Urban Outfitters. I love cheap thrills, and I love buying the (not so) cheap room sprays at UO and Anthropologie and wearing them with abandon. These smelled even more room-spray-ey than usual. I didn’t realize they were meant to be worn.
I tried Blood Orange because I love citrus but I was generally underwhelmed. No my nose it was bitter orange, a juicy sweetish candied tangerine, a lot of citronella and maybe something metallic that was supposed to be neroli? There was something sharp and pointy in there. Not my thing.
The sprayer on Tattoo parlor was broken so I squished it on to the shelf to sniff it. (I’m sorry!) I was very curious what a tattoo parlor would smell like. Ink? Cigarettes? Bourbon? To my nose it was just a soft powdery vaguely vanilla-ish musk. It reminded me a little bit of Body shop white musk and marshmallows, so I guess it is supposed to represent “skin”. Please clue me in if you got something else.
I just assumed these were a product cooked up by Urban Outfitters to capitalize on the perfumista trend (and perhaps not so subtly CB I Hate Perfume which is available here UO’s home town at Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.) I could be completely wrong. This could be an independent company that happens to ONLY be distributed at UO and I could just be cynical.
But.
A friend of mine recently submitted her designs to a “pop up shop” in LA, and the shop replied asking to carry her designs. She found out that the “pop up shop” was actually UO and declined their invitation for various reasons. 2 months later, she saw duplicates of her designs fabricated by UO for sale at the pop up shop and their stores. So they ended up selling her product without paying her a dime. If one were cynical, one could imagine this to be part of their business model.
Oh, thanks so much for the detailed feedback! What a disappointment about Tattoo Parlor. Vanilla + white musk is not what I would have guessed.
On the one hand I agree with the ad copy, in that perfume should be about the pleasure we get from the stuff in the bottle, not all of that marketing gumph. The thought of all that money spent on ads instead of developing the fragrance itself is really annoying.
On the other hand, I like some perfume ads and there is no doubt that they contribute to my enjoyment of the scent. The stand out example for me are the ads Ines de la Fressange did for Chanel’s Coco in the 1980s. To me the image they create is a perfect fit with the product: warm, intelligent, a bit whimsical, a bit mysterious. I appreciate the creativity that went into those ads and am not unhappy about the cost being added to the price per bottle of perfume (I think … ).
It’s the many, many ads that insult our intelligence that are hard to take.
Those were truly wonderful ads, I agree. But do think that as the # of releases has grown exponentially, so has the portion of the budget that goes to advertising — it’s the only way to get attention. So it isn’t about the cost being added to the bottle so much as that what’s left to spend on the juice itself is less than what it used to be.
I see yes, point taken (providing the cost of perfume has stayed the same over the last 10-15 years … ).
I don’t know if the cost has stayed the same, in fact, I’m sure not. But it’s been widely reported that perfumers are given tighter & tighter budgets all the time.
2 books that cover the subject, BTW: How Luxury Lost Its Luster & Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent.
omg!
CUPCAKE!
i need to try that
Get thee to Urban Outfitters!