The Nose Behind ‘You’

Can you believe it? Glossier’s eau de parfum, You, made its first appearance nearly seven years ago. The perfumers behind the fragrance, Dora Baghriche and Frank Voekl (Frank is also the nose behind Santal 33, among many others), were tasked with creating a scent that was warm-yet-soft, and that ultimately made a person wearing it feel good. Tough! But they managed, and they created a cult-status scent as a result. Ahead of Glossier’s next fragrance launch (soon, so soon), ITG caught up with Frank to talk about what it was like creating You with Dora those many years ago, and the legacy he hopes it upholds.

“I’ll be very honest with you, the first time I heard about Glossier—my colleague mentioned it—I said, [pauses] ‘OK…’ I mean, I wasn’t really the target, so I didn’t feel that bad about it. But of course, my daughter told me all about it. And so I was very quickly up to speed on what Glossier was, and how it was a cool brand.

My perfumer colleague in Paris, Dora Baghriche, and I worked on You for maybe a year or two. In the beginning we met with Emily Weiss and she expressed some of the notes, and then she came to our labs and would smell the ingredients. Emily’s very passionate, very much into fragrance. She really put her heart and soul into it, and that really mattered. Dora had about 50 to 100 different iterations of You at the start—you have to think about how when you work on a fragrance, that every time you change one thing, you have to sort of recompound the entire fragrance. And then when I came into the picture I did my own 50 to 100 trials. We then presented to Glossier maybe 37, 38 versions.

There’s something very authentic and genuine about Glossier You. Dora initially came up with this idea to bring in this comfort of Ambrox, which is a molecule, and Ambrette and musk, and I think those make the fragrance feel a bit more ‘deep.’ And that’s what Emily Weiss fell in love with. We built on that and sort of dressed it up on that initial idea. I feel like the consumer has picked up on You’s authenticity overtime. Sometimes you will have fragrances that can initially have a big success, and then people don’t necessarily go back to them. Because at the end of the day, what matters is really the fragrance experience you have. When people do keep going back, we like to use the word ‘addictiveness’ in fragrance. Addictiveness or addiction sounds a little bit weird, but when you think about it it makes a lot of sense because that’s really what we are looking for in a scent. There’s something very addictive about Glossier You—it’s the ultimate feel-good fragrance. Also, over the past few years, there’s more of an awareness that scents can affect your own well-being in a way that can almost have a healing effect, and You definitely represents that.

I’d say the main feeling associated with You is comfort, and that’s ultimately what we’re all looking for throughout our lives. For so many years—or even generations—we used to think of fragrance as something for others more than it was for ourselves. But Glossier You is for you. It’s for your own comfort, for your own well-being, for being comfortable who you are. That’s ultimately what I want people to feel when they wear You. And hopefully Dora would agree with me on that. Be yourself and feel good about who you are.”

—as told to ITG

Photo via ITG

This article was originally published on intothegloss.com.