Living in New York has its special perks and my favorite has to be that you're surrounded by wonderful people doing fascinating things. Last year, my friend Julia Zangrilli up and decided she would become a perfumer which at the time felt spectacularly random.
Her company, NOVA, is based in Brooklyn, New York, and the bulk of her business is comprised of custom fragrances. Here's the deal: you make an appointment to visit her studio in Williamsburg and she walks you through an evaluation of what scents you find yourself responding to and she makes you a one-of-a-kind eau de parfum. Its exact formulation is yours and yours only and the composition (basically the recipe card) is tucked away in a secret location until you need to re-up.
Now I know it sounds rather straightforward but unless you're born as a bajillionth generation perfumer to a family of known noses, gaining a foothold into the industry poses an enormous challenge. Julia first enlisted in an introductory class and then matriculated in an intensive course at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery in Grasse, France, a.k.a. the perfume capital of the world. After months of gaining confidence from friends and mentors, she finally launched her own line. NOVA's first retail scent, Chakra, is available for preorder and in a highly scientific poll conducted among three other friends over a bottle of rosé, it smells "bonkers," "expensive as hell," and "WANT."
I visited Julia at her studio to talk about the riskiness of changing your career, the tremendous rewards of heeding your instincts, and what it's like to geek out on something you didn't even know was out there.
Was becoming a perfumer the next obvious move for you?
Not at all. I was a studio manager and then got into event planning. I started searching for something to feel passionate about so I was doing all of this stuff like yoga, pilates, cleanses, alkaline water, you know, trying to "feel the universe" [laughs].
And those are, like, the layers of a perfume?
Top, middle and base refer to the size of the molecule and how long they'll last on your skin. Top is the smallest, they're the most diffusive so they go onto your skin, fly up and hit your nose first and then evaporate the quickest. Top notes are that first burst of freshness so it can be citrusy or else certain spice notes work well too. Middle, or heart notes, are traditionally the centerpiece of the fragrance, it's a lot of florals. Base notes are the largest and they hold the fragrance down and give it longevity. It's a lot of woods, resins, animalics but it's never black and white. Most oils fluctuate and can move between categories. A lot of notes smell crazy on their own.
Like what?
Like, certain animal-derived notes. Civet is an important ingredient that comes from the anal gland of the civet, this possum/cat-like creature. It smells musky and almost like the worst bad breath you've ever smelled (ed note: I have verified this to be true, it's gnarly) but it adds depth to floral bouquets and acts as a fixative to make it last longer.
What's another super-weird ingredient?
Ambergris. So any time someone describes a perfume as "amber" it references ambergris, which comes from sperm whales swallowing sharp objects and producing this waxy substance in their digestive tract.
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