March 2025
Fragrance lately
In conversation: Carla Seipp from BeautyMatter
Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences:
I am an editor at BeautyMatter and a freelance beauty/fragrance journalist, although I started out writing about fashion. I also co-edited the book The Essence: Discovering the World of Scent, Perfume & Fragrance with gestalten. In addition to fragrance, I have a soft spot for writing about the cultural, social, and political roots of beauty culture and its intersections with feminism.
Tell us more about your work in the fragrance industry?
I got my start in the industry innocently enough: for my BA Final Project in fashion journalism, I created a fragrance magazine called Aldehyde. Through that I met some wonderful industry mentors like Grant Osborne (founder of online fragrance directory and editorial platform, Basenotes), Lizzie Ostrom (founder of olfactive events company, Scratch + Sniff Events), Nick Gilbert (co-founder of perfume consultancy Olfiction), and Persolaise (an award-winning fragrance writer), who have helped guide my way through this industry. I had initially written a fragrance interview with James Heeley for A Shaded View on Fashion while interning at Societé d’Alexandra Senes in Paris, but once I moved to New York City to do my Fashion Studies MA at The New School, that’s when my fragrance writing really took off. I was also lucky enough to have Callum Langston-Bolt (fragrance expert and PR/digital marketer) tell me about a retail assistant opening at fragrance boutique Twisted Lily just as I was graduating and started working there. Being on the sales floor is honestly one of the best educations in perfumery. I got to learn more about how and why people shop for fragrance the way that they do, not to mention meet perfume brand owners and learn about ingredients. I really owe a lot to Twisted Lily’s founders Eric Weiser and Stamatis Birsimijoglou for taking a chance on me. Equally Karen Orton, who I worked under as an editorial intern at Dazed & Confused, was the person who put me forward to co-edit the book with gestalten. I didn’t realise it at the time, but as someone coming from the fashion world originally, having my “niche” of fragrance writing proved to be a very valuable asset to distinguishing my writing in a competitive industry. I was lucky enough to be asked to present at the Perfumery Gender Salon at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2019, a subject I am very intrigued by as someone who wrote their MA thesis on gender and identity formation through scent. Nowadays I write about fragrance and the beauty industry at large for BeautyMatter and also contribute a seasonal fragrance column for Konfekt magazine.
Which fragrance company do you find particularly interesting, and why?
Tough question! I love them all for different reasons. Parfums Quartana does some incredibly original fragrances and Joseph Quartana is also a good friend of mine. I think his creative mind is really special. The work that Osmo is doing around AI-led fragrance creation is so innovative and really set to change the future of perfume-making. I can always count on DS & Durga to have some unexpected sources of fragrance inspiration and as someone who saw them grow through the independent boutique channel to what they are today, I think it’s an inspiring success story to witness. I also find inspiration in the cross-industry scent projects of Joya Studio.
What’s your first fragrance memory?
Certainly I remember the bottle of Chanel No. 5 or 4711 Cologne that my grandparents had in their bathroom, or the Mugler Alien fragrance my mom would wear in the winter. But in terms of a memory that holds a lot of emotional weight for me, maybe the Axe deodorant spray I used in my tomboy/rebellious youth. I moreso remember the red can than the actual scent, if research serves me correctly it was the Boost fragrance.
The first personal fragrance I ever remember buying was Subtil by Salvatore Ferragamo at Parfümerie Kobberger in Frankfurt (where I’m originally from), which wouldn’t speak to my fragrance taste today. I like how perfumes can underline different chapters of our lives like that. I actually have had a scent-led autobiography sitting on my laptop since 2020 to tell that story, but haven’t found the time to finish it.
What’s your favourite perfume, and why?
Carnal Flower by Dominique Ropion for Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. It took me years to buy the fragrance as it was my first proper splurge, but I remember smelling it and being entranced by how the fragrance unfolded on the skin from green top notes to musky drydown like a flower in bloom. It’s the fragrance that made me fall in love with perfume and the art of its creation.
What scent would you like to capture as a perfume if you could?
The moon! A cold, metallic, space oddity. Lunar Dust by Mabelle O'Rama does an excellent job of capturing this so maybe it’s time to look to a new fragrance unicorn. I once was gifted a fragrance making workshop at Experimental Perfume Club for my birthday and decided to create the scent of a dying flower, the beauty of decay. I used a lot of indole and musks but don’t think it quite hit the spot, so maybe that concept. Or the smell of falling in love, whatever that might look like.
When did you expand to writing about beauty and why?
I have to credit BeautyMatter with being my gateway into the beauty industry and today I am lucky enough to write about both subjects. I definitely wrote about beauty on occasion as Online Editor at feminist fashion and art biannual Twin Magazine (which also recently published an essay I wrote about finding my own sense of femininity and identity through scent). But at BeautyMatter I got a 360 degree crash course in the beauty industry: brands, suppliers, ingredients, regulations, etc.
With all of the publications I have written for, I had the huge privilege of great editorial freedom in the subject matter that I covered. I am very passionate about both fragrance and beauty, just in different ways. To me the joy of scent is something childlike and very primal. The way my eyes light up when I smell a beautiful fragrance is an unparalleled experience.
Meanwhile beauty is an industry with so many different genres and players that also ties into bigger societal undercurrents. I love to be able to take a deep dive on a subject which some deem superficial — beauty isn’t solely surface-level, you just have to do a bit of digging to get there.
I have been writing at BeautyMatter for the past 4.5 years and am still learning something new every day, which keeps it incredibly fresh. Equally, every time I write about a new scent, it comes with the creative challenge of capturing its essence through descriptors like texture, temperature, cohesion, or crafting a story around the creation. I’m glad that spark is still there over a decade later.
What are the intersections of beauty and fragrance? How do they relate to each other?
Fragrance is a category in the greater beauty ecosystem but its own universe. Writing about and creating fragrance is very different than say, creating a skincare product: there is a stronger emotional component but also subjectivity to fragrance. What one person might love in a fragrance another could loathe. While yes, a cleanser might be more suitable for one skin type over another, there are more stable parameters like a non-stripping cleanse or a nice gel-like texture which work across the board. For fragrances, while there are arguably also universal factors like a well-rounded composition or long lasting wear, the scent itself is more a matter of taste rather than a pure science.
Both fragrance and beauty also have strong ties to fashion. Designer brands often make more from their fragrance or cosmetic lines than they do selling clothing, so they are an important financial backbone.
Trends used to be less important in the fragrance cycle as it was more about discovering creations on your own timeline, but social media and FragranceTok have definitely changed the course on that. That being said, I think there will always be those who desire wearing an undiscovered gem that is not TikTok viral.
Both beauty and fragrance dupes exist. With gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, creating them in fragrance is obviously very easy, but within both categories there is little copyright protection for formulas and, unless you are working with captives or creating your own ingredients, there is little monopoly on what goes inside them too. That being said I think original creative thinking will prevail and continue to stand strong.
Is there any other adjacent industry that you find particularly interesting and if so, why?
I would love to go into colour cosmetic product development. I have always had a particular love for hues, textures, and finishes, plus how you can combine them in a contrasting or complimentary manner to create something new. Plus through my work at BeautyMatter, I have had the opportunity to speak to a lot of brand founders and am always curious about the magic happening behind the scenes. How does a product go from concept to fully fleshed creation, incorporating everything from the finishes to the packaging, and what ingredient innovation can be used to give something an exciting new touch? I’m a firm believer in the mood-shifting possibilities of the things we surround ourselves with and colour (alongside scent of course) is no exception.
I find the work of ISAMAYA, Pat McGrath Labs, and Danessa Myricks particularly exciting in this regard, especially their eyeshadow palettes and lip products. The artistry led brands creating unique colour stories, dazzling multichrome, and innovative textures, these are the creatives that inspire me.
What trends do you anticipate seeing in scent and beauty/cosmetics?
I think we are going to see a resurgence of more fresh and skin musk scents following the gourmand craze — less dense and sweet, more soft and subtle.
I don’t see the clean girl/minimal makeup movement dying down anytime soon because it is incredibly practical for everyday wear. But within that I think fun textures like jelly sticks or putty highlighter can provide some novel excitement. Overall I believe people enjoy less complex and complicated makeup routines because we are busier than ever. So even if someone wants to do a holographic eye look, if they can do that with a one swipe product as opposed to multiple steps, they will take that convenience.
When it comes to predicting trends, working at strategic foresight agency The Future Laboratory really provided me with the ultimate framework. First off, three make a trend so if you can find three examples to your theory that’s a good start. But finding the wider social and cultural foundations that make a trend, plus the trends that preceded it, make for even more solid grounding. I would say that aside from those facts, there is also a little bit of intuition that goes into it, a gut feeling when you can tell the buzz around something is substantial and not just a short-term occurrence.
If you could create any product, what would it be (no limits to creativity)?
Good question. For scent, I think the concept started by Lucy McRae, Swallowable Perfume, a pill you ingest that then gives off a unique scent through your pores, is very sci-fi fabulous. If it were colour, I would have said shades that can reflect all colours of the rainbow and shade-shift, but The Unseen Beauty has done an incredible job with that already. If I had to decide on a completely new concept, I think mood-shifting scent and shades that can somehow pick up on your state of feelings through the skin and then change according to that? It would however make it difficult to keep a poker face (or should I say poker perfume?) during intense discussions.
Any upcoming article/project/launch you want to share?
In terms of my writing for BeautyMatter, I just finished two pieces, one on animalic fragrances and also what the post-gourmand fragrance trend would be. I will be presenting a panel at our FUTURE50 event on April 3 on brands building themselves through branded boutiques featuring Amouage, Madison Reed, and Malin+Goetz.
I am continuing my quarterly scent column for Konfekt. The next theme is still being decided on, but my last one was grass scents for the spring season. Before that I did one on snow scents for winter, a task that turned out to be a bit more challenging than first anticipated (after all, frozen water doesn’t really have a distinctive aromatic profile, does it?). Nonetheless it’s a gift to get to go down the perfumery rabbit hole every three months. It would be wonderful to finish the scent autobiography but it’s not easy finding time to write in my free time on top of writing for work so that project is still TBD.
Two pieces I am currently working on which I am excited to release are one on the politics of female body hair and another on women’s health brands stepping in where legislation and the medical system are falling short on issues like hormonal health and fertility. I’ve always wanted to write an article on the recent rise in labiaplasty but it’s a controversial subject so not sure how to best tackle it.
Any question you’d like to answer that we haven’t asked?
Maybe what I have learned about the industry since working in it versus when I was outside of it, consumer myths? For fragrance I would say the obvious ones like notes aren’t ingredients (which Christophe Laudamiel and Sarah McCartney have both previously mentioned) plus that just because a fragrance is more expensive doesn’t always mean it’s better quality (Persolaise was one of the first to mention this to me when I was starting out). I also think there is an unnecessary fear of or judgement on the use of synthetics, they are incredibly versatile ingredients that can boost longevity and complexity. But of course naturals are incredibly beautiful and complex as well. I think it’s the mix of both that makes the magic.
As for the beauty industry overall, I think some people would be surprised to learn that there isn’t a completely united front on subjects like sustainability and ingredient safety. Whether it’s greenwashing or unregulated use of the term ‘clean’, I hope we can come to an international and universal standard as there is currently a lot of misinformation and also confusion among professionals and consumers alike.
Tune of the day: Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan
Fragrance of the day: Parisian Musc by Matiere Premiere
Beauty product of the day: ISAMAYA Industrial II eyeshadow palette
My fragrance of the day: Lunar Dust by Mabelle O’Rama: metallic, fresh white paper, enveloping warmth
Fin de soirée, petit matin ou encore les deux, 2024
- Flo