In a well-lit storefront along the main drag of Washington D.C.’s upscale Georgetown neighborhood, Olfactory NYC CEO JJ Vittoria stands in front of a wall of perfume bottles.
The store is bustling with people on a mission to design their own fragrances. I’m here on perhaps the weirdest, and definitely most pungent, assignment I’ve ever gotten at NPR: to make a signature scent for Morning Edition and Up First . The process at Olfactory NYC requires a lot of sniffing, and with the help of a personal scent-ologist, customers leave the store with a personalized bottle of perfume for $85.
To capture the essence of a daily morning news radio show and podcast in the form of a scent, Vittoria suggests a base with hints of lemon, white tea and bergamot — “fresh out of the shower notes,” as he describes them. Perfume sales have risen since 2018. But how are fragrance brands drawing in customers in an era of digital shopping? A new generation of beauty product lovers are discovering fragrances on social media, and perfumers are experimenting with creative ways to move their products.
Vittoria’s new Washington D.C. store joins three locations in New York and one in Boston.
Vittoria knows his way around the scents in his store, but he isn’t a perfumer by trade. He has a finance background and saw an opening in the world of fragrance for an experiential format that can educate new “frag heads,” as he calls them. “Fragrance can be a very sterile experience,” Vittoria.
