They sniffed the future and took it online

Indie Director: Scout Dixon West

It feels like a movie to scout Dixon West’s Instagram feed. She makes sense to discover that she is a screenwriter and a former model.

Growing up in Northern California, Dixon West, 28, started out as a “girls perfume” enthusiast. “I learned that it could be a really useful tool for self-expression and transportation. You can fall into fantasy very easily through smells. Your mood can be emphasized by them. You can use them as armor shapes.” Working part-time at the scent bar in a store in Los Angeles accelerated her obsession. In 2023, she founded the brand.

In Tiktok, where she has 144,300 followers, you can find Dixon West chatting with her knowledge of new and old scents. Her own brand focuses on vintage-inspired scents, with three being released so far: Coney Island Baby, El Dorado and Incarnate. “Now it’s popular that perfumes become very unisex in the way they say they’re bloodless and barren. She came up with a concept and commissioned a European fragrance house to blend them together, resulting in extraordinary results. Coney Island babies square up to sugary gourmet fragrances that are popular with young female consumers. “Like asphalt on a hot day, it has an oily smell like this motor, but underneath it is a very comfortable vanilla soft serve waffle cone,” says Dixon West. “I was thinking about a lot of films. Outsiders, the last photo show, standing by me. Even.”

Tiktok Smemaxxer: Jatin Arora

Last year, Jatin Arora turned 18 and reached an audience of 2 million followers on Tiktok. He also graduated from a high school where he had no plans to go to college. “Even if I learned five or ten years and got a job after studying, I didn’t make as much money as I did,” he says with a laugh. And although he doesn’t spill on his salary, his opinion on perfume acquired a home in his hometown of Winnipeg, Canada, prompting a search for Dubai property, allowing his mother to retire. This comes after posting my first perfume video in June 2023.

Arora began playing magic tricks to an audience of 800,000 people on Tiktok. As he began tracking his adventures in perfume as Tekolog Neboy, his first video showed him liberating Versace Eros, Versace Dylan Bleu and Dior Saubagege, which he purchased from Costco – his followers were pleased to migrate. His charm coincided with the rise of “Flag Head” and “Smememaxxers” by Gen Z, a new audience of young perfume fanatics who love to listen to juice and bottle reviews.

80% of Alora’s audience are male, ranging from 16 to 26 years old, a demographic that is often overlooked. “My age has never bought (scent) (scent) before. Now they have got it, so they go to the store and smells like perfume,” says Alora. “And they like the compliments they receive when they wear it.”

Old fashioned soccer: Lucatrino

“Everyone can make the scent for the first five minutes, but the next three hours? It’s tricky,” says the legendary half-a-Italian, half-alamentonian, Beirut-born 71-year-old biophysicist and writer, research professor at Buckingham University and perfume lover. Respected for his theory of human smell mechanisms and catastrophic criticism, he began writing about perfumes in 1992, and later wrote six books, including two bestselling guides with his wife, Tania Sanchez.

Last year, after a disruption sparked by his low opinion of the modern mainstream perfume market, he returned to reviews and published his newsletter, “Perfumes like Luca Turin” on Substack. “I was born at the wrong time because I saw the end of the Old World,” says Torino. “People who have never smelled Guerlain’s scent because their perfumes are as bad as they are now.” Nevertheless, “the niche and artisan perfumes have risen significantly, and these people felt they needed to air. They sometimes go back to texture, quality materials. Audio files are like a way to listen to music.

What about his perfume lairing? “You don’t play two music at once.”

Turin doesn’t think it’s all mainstream scented – he rated Les Parfum xi l’heure perdue by Cartier’s Mathilde Laurent (pictured on the left, £245 for 75ml) as “one of the greatest masterpieces” of the past 20 years. He sniffs at rising prices, especially for artisan perfumes: “£200 per bottle is a tall order.” Nevertheless, he admits, there is a “risquéable and wonderful” niche perfume. Rude (2023) by Mark Antwein Corchiquiat of Parfum Dan Empire says, “When I first put it on, I think, ‘I can’t wear this, it smells like a barn.” However, after 10 minutes it transforms into this heavenly light. ”

Listening to and reading Turin with perfume is to inhale a refreshing opinion. His view of the layers? “I won’t play two music at once.” Whether you agree, Turin is a classic and his reissue (original formula, new distributor) is greatly appreciated.

YouTube Fragehed: Olivia Vandermillen

A fruity summer scent? How can it smell like old money? Olivia Vandermillen’s knowledge of what is in the perfume market offers answers to scent questions you didn’t know you had to ask. “I want to be the Rorodex of fragrance information,” she says. “I’m trying to help people find what feels like their home, regardless of the education surrounding fragrances, regardless of price.”

Covering her distinctive tattoos, punchy hairstyles and quick fire, Vander Mirren’s social camera persona is backed by her thoughtful off-screen nature. She once worked as a hairdresser at a salon in Los Angeles before moving to Austin where she worked full-time on social media. She appears to be surprised by the popularity online. She “mistakefully” entered the influencer space in 2021 and began “yiping” on YouTube about perfumes “just to feel something” during the pandemic. Things started when she began making short form videos on Instagram and Tiktok, comparing high-end, affordable fragrances.

Her goal is to end Snovarley, splitting affordable indie and gorgeous perfumes

Growing up in a working class town in Iowa, Vandermillen often felt that perfume was out of reach. “Luxury perfumes are not accessible to many people not only in terms of price, but also as a scary world of art. Her goal is to end Snovarley, which divides affordable indie and gorgeous perfumes. “Why is there a gap?” she asks. “Why can’t we enjoy it all?”

Vandermillen’s ability to communicate about scents has helped her reach viewers she had never dreamed of, but she has even more olfactory goals. “My smell is good, but I meet these master perfumes. I see how amazing their noses are. I hope to reach that level at some point.”

Artisan Perfume: Maya Nee

Open Maya Njie’s Discovery set introduces her small range of perfumes handmade in a batch of Perfumer’s London Studio, as well as a fall snapshot of an old family album showing Sweden and the Gambia in the 1970s. For the 44-year-old NJIE, born in Sweden and moved to London in her late teens, reconstructing these “memories” of these families into the center of scent is at the heart of her brand. “I’ve always associated people and places with smells. When I smell something, I think of colours, shapes and musical notes.”

After studying surface design as a mature student, Njie fused her perfume and began to smell the reception in the front collaborative space. “When I asked if anyone could buy my perfume, I had to start to know about scents in a commercial sense – bottles, beauty legislation, packaging.”

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Njie blends her scents and leads a bespoke perfume making workshop in Shoreditch’s studio. The seven perfumes from the brand, inspired by the photos, include forest Nordic cedar, bright, white, gentle woody Lesflurus and leathery Voir Verde. Six of these are freely stocked, and although their largest customer base is in Japan, they are available in the US. Njie says the growth comes from perfume lovers who enjoy the sense of discovery offered by artisan brands. “The wearer hasn’t been caught up in any larger label,” she says. “They find artisans who make things that they really love and are faithful to it.”