As a Beauty Buyer, I spend all day telling others what makeup and fragrances they should make. So I decided to take my expertise to the (Lip) Lab to design my own custom color! A few weeks later, I got the amazing opportunity to take a Fragrance 101 Scent Training class that led to many signature scent ideas.
Let's start with Lip Lab! Aside from the lipstick itself, you also select a fun case color in matte or metallic. I had to stay true to my roots and pick a shiny hot pink! Going through the cases was honestly a highlight! At Lip Lab in Soho, NY you get to choose from a gloss, butter balm, satin lipstick or matte lipstick. As an avid ChapStick wearer, I wanted to pick a long-lasting lipstick that won’t budge when I layer ChapStick on top of it. So matte it was!
Designing My Own Lipstick: It was the perfect time to go to Lip Lab because I was in the market for a new signature evening lip color! If I am going to spend the time putting on lipstick, I want it to look like I’m wearing lipstick, ya know? So, I told the lab technician I was looking for something in the plum family. I am not into the dark reds - too grandma-like for my tastes but more of a wine-stained dark pink with purple undertones is in fact, Whitney. We started with plum and then kept mixing to make the color deeper. I applied samples of my signature shade, before it was put into the lipstick tube by using a soft tip brush and spreading on a few layers to get that richness of the cranberry color in full effect.
Lipstick Tips: Some of my friends were in between two similar shades. If this is you, I recommend putting one shade on the top lip and the other lipstick on your bottom lip for comparison sake. I also recommend wearing a black top so you aren’t influenced by your outfit and can pick your lipstick with more of an open mind. Designing your own lipstick does require many decision points so, I recommend having an idea of what shade you want and whether you’re looking for a day or night lip before you enter the lab.
Other Lip Choices: After your lipstick is mixed, a lab technician poured it into the lipstick tube mold where it has to dry before popping it into the pretty pink lipstick case. You get to name your lipstick! Since I was going for a signature shade, I got “Whitney Wisdom” engraved on the top of mine. You also get to pick a signature scent to inject into the lipstick. I went with peppermint of course! In my 20 or so years of experimenting with makeup, I don’t think I have ever had a scented matte lipstick! Very exciting!
The Structure of Fragrance Design: Flashforward to just a few days ago and a scent lab right in New Jersey traveled into my Philadelphia office to teach myself, the candle buyer, and the personal care buyer, how to blend the 9 olfactive fragrance families to create unique scent blends for perfume and candles! If you’re going to a Wax + Wine candle making event, I learned scents with strong top notes burn the best such as citrus, fruits, herbs, and ozones, which smell like beachy waves. For body lotion or perfume or cologne, selecting a scent with base notes such as musks, powders, woodsy smells, and sweet scents are the longest lasters. Only 60% of the population can actually smell musk scents on their own. Most men cannot smell musk. Musk is more of an effect mixed within complex perfumes such as Chanel No. 5 that has 100s of notes. Natural oils also don’t last as long as synthetics and can change scent overtime. This was most evident in the citrus family.
Mixing Fragrance: In the Fragrance 101 training course we smelled 27 different fragrance raw materials on test strips. We started combining test strips under our noses to try different fragrance combinations to put into our next bath/body collection. A crowd favorite was bergamot, which smells like earl gray tea on its own. It mixed well with mandarin for a sparkling bright scent! Rose was the most expensive fragrance of the course. To make it more youthful, we are pairing it with raspberry. From the spice family, cardamom and nutmeg are trending spices that are made sweet when paired with rich vanilla.
Fragrance + Memories: Coconut+lime was an obvious combination that reminded me of sunscreen and beach trips! Much of fragrance is linked to memory as well as, what we think things are supposed to smell like. For instance an “apple” scented fragrance smells sweet and fresh and crisp but in real life, an apple doesn’t smell like much of anything. This is because the sense of smell is heavily linked with our brain’s memory sources, the amygdala and the hippocampus. I’m looking forward to learning about more fragrance families in the 102 course!
It's great you are learning the science of colors and scents. I believe you will have your own line of lipsticks,candles, and wick fragrances one day if you so desire. You always add fun to your work, and that is wonderful. You make others happy in so many ways!
Sounds like both events were so much fun! I love your ring in the last pic!