As part of our New York City anniversary trip, my girlfriend, Brena, heard about a place where you can create a custom perfume scent. At Olfactory NYC customers are invited to refine their own perfume by first choosing one of nine base scents and then selecting from a variety of accords that enhance or complement that core scent.

Brena and I were not quite sure what to expect, but as we have pretty similar perfume tastes, preferring sweeter, lighter scents (her fragrance is “You” by Glossier and mine is “Xtra Milk” by Dedcool), we were confident that we could easily collaborate on a perfume that we both love.

We went to the Olfactory location on the Lower East Side, so we explored the area beforehand. Brunch at Sunday to Sunday followed by a visit to Sweet Pickle Books (NYC’s only pickle bookstore!) and a bunch of other stores we found along the way was the perfect way to start our Sunday.

We arrived at Olfactory for our reservation a bit early, but they were able to accommodate us, luckily. We began by smelling the nine base scents along the wall one by one, discarding the ones that were definite nos and narrowing it down from there. The favorite scent we were left with was Riley, a vanilla-based fragrance that was right up my alley.

After choosing your base scent, your “scentologist” adds a variety of accords to the base scent that bring out different elements of it and invites you to sniff each one, again discarding the definite nos and gradually narrowing it down further and further. In the end we were left with a top four, which our scentologist spritzed on the fronts and backs of both of our wrists so we could smell each one on our skin. She encouraged us to go outside so we would get to truly experience each scent without the overpowering plethora of smells in the shop.

Standing on the sidewalk as the late-February wind buffeted us, we tried to decide as quickly as possible, and luckily we agreed on our top scent! Once that was decided, we got to select a color for our fragrance bottle and a name for our scent. As we were limited to eight characters, Brena and I went with a classic: the name of our cat. Our scentologist bottled up “Maisy” for us and packaged everything up in the peach color we selected.

With that, our experience at Olfactory NYC was finished. The company keeps your scent on file, so you can also order replacement bottles, body wash, diffusers and lotion in the same scent from their website, which is really nice. I’d definitely recommend checking out Olfactory NYC as a fun experience that ends with a nice custom fragrance!

— Hannah Gruen, advertising & events coordinator