TIME OUT WITH…

Sue Phillips: Her Nose Knows

By Bailey Beckett

You’ll forgive Sue Phillips if her “office” is too discreet. Nestled on the lower level of a nondescript building in TriBeCa, the legendary perfumer’s lair is among the best kept secrets of New York. Warm, cozy and elegant, the Scentarium, as she calls it, is where the world’s elite come to create their own fragrances. And now discerning New Yorkers can get one, too. Just stand in line.

“I love what I do,” she coos, in an impeccable South African accent on a cold rainy night in February. “I want people to have a beautiful experience and enjoy the magic of fragrance. I also want them to reflect who they are by having their own fragrance.”

MAKING SCENSE OF SCENTS She would know. A 40-year veteran of the fragrance business, Phillips created the Tiffany perfume for, well, Tiffany, as well as its men’s cologne. She also dreamed up Society for Burberry as well as other aromas for Trish McEvoy, Avon, Diane Von Furstenberg and Lancaster, among a few others. Along the way she has held top level positions with the biggest brands in beauty before starting her company, Scenterprises, and opening her Scentarium. It’s there she is doing some of her most intimate and inspired work (and for stars like Jamie Fox, Katie Holmes, and Zendaya, to name a few.)

One need only look around her laboratory, which could double for a designer atelier, to see Phillips takes this seriously. After greeting each visitor warmly, she has them do a personality quiz that asks favorite colors, foods, dream house, celebrities (among other offbeat questions), which Phillips says is 99 percent accurate in reading her clients.

A SCENT OF YOUR OWN
Armed with this insight, she then takes clients on a fragrance journey. The aroma artisan has narrowed the eight fragrance families into four categories: fresh, floral, woodsy and spicy. From that, she has created 18 proprietary blends, which include ingredients like amber, herbal and heady floral, in jars spread across the table. Each scent gets its own strip, and Phillips lets each client choose their favorite four. “The possibilities are endless,” she says. “We have done statistics where their formula is one in 280,487,209 possibilities, so the likelihood of ever having someone with the same formula is remote.”

Phillips then decants the formula into crystal bottles or atomizers and provides a Registration Certificate.

The entire experience lasts just 90 minutes and that, says Phillips, is real luxury. “Today, the definition of luxury is not just the state of great comfort and extravagant living but creating your own personal brand by reflecting who you are with confidence, individuality and creating your own sense of style,” she says.

A SENSE OF SMELL
Phillips traces her love of fragrance back to her childhood. Her mother, Grace, was a musician and made sure to surround the family with art and culture. Though she’d listen to her mother sing and perform, and savor her drawings, Phillips didn’t think she had it in her. “But it was inoculated in me and I never knew.” Until one day, when an expected curiosity struck. “I started to think about colors and what they would smell like,” she says. “In South Africa there’s beautiful bright sunshine and gorgeous light and I would correlate fragrance and color and see what it would smell like.”

She was on to something. Scent, scientists have long known, is the most powerful of the five senses—and the only one that connects memory, emotion and taste. “Our sense of smell is our most powerful sense after sight,” Phillips explains, “but it is the most forgotten and ignored. Our olfactory hub in our limbic system triggers memories and emotions. People also tell me that when they are cleaning out an attic, and they come across a memento from a loved one, such as a scarf or a book, that they are immediately reminded of that person or situation. It is so powerful!”

For more information on Sue Phillips and Scentarium, visit scentarium.com.