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Perfume Room

27. Is Niche Still Quiche? (w/ Perfumer Marissa Zappas)

Perfume Room

Emma Vernon

Arts, Fashion & Beauty

4.9619 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Perfumer Marissa Zappas is in the Perfume Room today. She brings such a unique perspective as she operates as an independent perfumer, but has classical training from having been an apprentice to Givaudan's Senior Perfumer, Olivier Gillotin. We discuss her path to perfumery, what ‘niche’ means (or doesn’t) today, the scent of our parents' divorces, Marissa gives me a smell test, I smell civet for the first time(!), and we discuss her inspiration, process and collaboration  behind two of her most popular scents, Flaming Creature and Annabel’s Birthday Cake (if you're still reading this, go order samples, or honestly FBs now, you won't regret, xo). My SOTD is Annabel's Birthday Cake and my perfume juice is on PdM Oriana.


FRAGS MENTIONED:

Alghabra Bospohorous Pearl, Kierin NY Pier NY, Milano Fragranze Naviglio, Plume Impression Que Tal, Amouage Epic Woman, Parfum de Marly Oriana, By Kilian Love Don’t Be Shy,  Marissa Zappas Annabel’s Birthday Cake, Bois 1920 Oro Rosso,  Parfum de Marly Meliora, Marissa Zappas Whore of New York, Marissa Zappas The Sun Card, Guerlain Shalimar, YSL Baby Doll, Dior Poison Girl, Dior Poison, Queen Nzinga, Schiaparelli, Lucien Lelong, Robert Piguet, Annick Goutal, Guerlain, Britney Spears Curious


FOLLOW MARISSA: @marissazappas

SHOP: www.marissazappas.com


LET'S CHAT ON IG: @perfumeroompod

CHECK OUT MY HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE: www.shorturl.at/hyEH5

LET'S FIND YOUR NEXT SCENT! https://shoplist.us/emmavernon/consults

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to the perfume room. My scent of the day is actually probably 15 different scents,

0:15.5

and that is because it is Saturday. I have spent the whole day at a Metaverse Fragrance Convention called Scent Explorer.

0:23.3

Truly a whole digital experience. It feels like you're like in the Javitt Center if the Javitt Center

0:29.1

is online. Like you walk in and you're in this big convention center and by walk in I mean like

0:33.9

click your mouse and you can go to different booths. You can see different presentations.

0:38.3

There's different chat rooms.

0:39.9

It's been very cool, but I think the best part of all of it is that you get a goody bag

0:45.1

with samples of everything that is going to be presented.

0:48.6

So as the different brand reps and the different perfumers are talking about their creations,

0:53.1

you can smell along. With that said, they sent about 30 fragrances, so I will just highlight some of my favorites. And I got this package a few weeks ago, so I did talk about some of these fragrances already. I've talked about Al-Gabra Bosphorus Pearl, which I think is a great alternative to something like Delina, Pierre, New York from Kirine, NYC, but you guys

1:12.1

already know I'm obsessed with Kering and I have an entire episode dedicated to it. And then a few

1:16.6

other standouts to me would be Milano Fragrance Naviglio, which I am not familiar with that

1:22.5

line. It was the first time I had smelled it. What I really loved about this scent was if you

1:26.9

are a narrowly lover,

1:28.3

this was an aquatic narrowly. It's salty. It's fresh. It really feels like you are on the beach,

1:34.8

but not in a sunscreen way. Just in like a, I don't know, it just kind of felt like old money to me.

1:40.8

And maybe that's just like the smell of narrowly because I've just known old rich

1:44.3

people wearing like narrowly fragrances, but something about it just makes me think like Palm Beach

1:50.3

in the best way possible. Another one I really enjoyed was from a house I'm also not familiar

1:55.8

with called Plume Impression. And if it's French, then I guess it would be Plume Impression, but I am not

2:00.7

sure. And the fragrance is called Coutal. And I love this fragrance. It is an ambery gourmand with

2:08.3

this really ripe apricot note. And I know this is a very weird analogy, but just come with me

...

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