Boy Smells Is Finally Launching Fragrance, and My Vanity Is Ready

Jihan Forbes
·5 min read

There are a few things that are getting me through the pandemic right now. Being around my family, Skims loungewear (the cozy pants are truly a gift), and my extensive scented candle collection. Each has become ever-more important as I've been spending more time at home, trying to maintain some degree of sanity in a certifiably insane world.

As someone with a discriminating olfactory, home scents really do help improve my mood, and full disclosure, Boy Smells make some of my favorites around. I've gone through at least five jars of its Purple Kush candle, and that's just one of a few I've repeated.

Another thing that has been giving me comfort during the pandemic is good old-fashioned personal fragrance. I used to spray on perfume almost every day before heading out beyond the threshold of my Harlem apartment. It's one of the daily rituals I've kept up in this time, and it makes me feel a little more put together as I'm working from home.

The latest announcement from the Boy Smells camp has me thinking that the brand is attempting a takeover of my self-care regimen. On March 3, Boy Smells will launch its first collection of personal fine fragrances. Just call it a natural progression of the vision put in place by owners David Kien and Matthew Herman.

"We're huge personal fragrance [fans]," Herman exclusively tells Allure. "That's what really got us into creating scents in the first place. This is our first foray into actually creating fragrance for the brand, and it's the first time we've ever really done it ourselves." This range has been in the works for two years, with Herman adding that the brand's customers "have been asking for fine fragrance consistently."

<cite class="credit">Courtesy of brand</cite>
Courtesy of brand

The range includes five cologne de parfums (with more to come in the future), which Herman says were formulated (and clearly, named) with the brand's overarching principle of gender neutrality when it comes to scent. Just call them "genderful," as the bottles read.

"When we were considering starting Boy Smells, I was starting to wear a lot of fragrances that had more floral or feminine notes to them," Herman explains, noting that fragrance helped him to deeply tap into both his masculine and feminine sides. "Being able to wear personal fragrance that combines the masculine and feminine notes, that was such an a-ha moment for me in my life."

True to form, each of the five fragrances have floral notes, but not all of them scream floral. Finding that balance between the sweetness of florals and something a little spicier or muskier was in front of mind when the pair created these scents. "Everything has something that is traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine in there, and blended together to try to just give more of that broad-spectrum idea."

Though I would say at least one of the fragrances skews traditionally "feminine," likely due to its fig leaf notes, the remaining four definitely live up to the vision. On tap is Tantrum, a fresh but spicy scent that combines green and black peppercorn with vetiver and bergamot. This one might be the most crowd-pleasingly gender-neutral of the scents, which I imagine would quickly run out if you're living in a shared space.

Violet Ends has a strong violet aroma, but incense, black tea, and tobacco leaf give it a richness that tempers its floweriness. Since you can't smell it through your computer screen, imagine a fragrance a person who has a very nice library full of leather-bound books might wear — it's very that. Suede Pony has an earthiness to it with its combination of saffron, pineapple, cardamom, suede, and patchouli fraction.

Rose Load has the sweetness of Turkish rose absolute and raspberry blossom tied together with sultry oud and sandalwood. "It's rose, which is very feminine, but we have these beautiful dark woods in there," Herman says. "We have the pink peppercorn. We have the raspberry blossom. I see that as the complexities of someone's identity today. Sometimes, we have to dig in and be a little bit more aggressive and hard, like the woods are, but we all have these very supple and sensitive sides, and times that we need to go more introspective."

The sweetest fragrance, by far, is Flor de Virgen, which combines pomelo, fig leaf, jasmine petal, and gardenia to create a scent that admittedly reads more feminine, for those who prefer something in that category. But even if you're not a fan of those kinds of notes, you should probably give it a try.

"We really want to make sure that we pull together a real spectrum of identity within one fragrance, and I think that each of the scents really does that in a really exciting and great way," says Herman. "Each of them is unique in that way. I hope that people are able to explore their identities through these fragrances, because it's a real landscape to be able to go and explore in."

As a fan of feminine, flowery scents, Flor de Virgen is easily my favorite. Its sweetness isn't overpowering, and as an added bonus it's built to last. Spray it on at the beginning of the day, and you can still smell it when you change into your PJs in the evening. I'm also partial to Rose Load for the simple fact that I love rose fragrances and save for one or two, I've never met one I didn't like.

Each of the new Boy Smells parfum de colognes retail for $98 at 2.2 ounces, making the line fairly affordable in the world of fine fragrances. If you want to try before you buy, you can purchase the discovery set for $20 at boysmells.com, which will be applied to the cost of your full-size fragrance if you choose to get purchase it down the line.

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Originally Appeared on Allure