What Makes us Boujee?
We are not like other fragrance brands - we are BOUJEE. Our perfumes aren't just Eau de Parfum, they are Eau de Boujee. What makes us so ritzy, luxurious, flamboyant and fabulous? Well, the answer is simple: In our world, fragrance is King (and sometimes also a Queen) and the resulting product is a vessel for telling an intriguing olfactory tale. To be Boujee is to appreciate the finest of things and to be unafraid to show off a bit – here are five reasons to be Boujee with us:
1: Unique, Artistic Fragrances
Fragrance is a priority to us. We believe in originality, not clones, creativity, not copying, and experience and skill over smoke and mirrors. Our fragrances are deliberately and unapologetically themselves. We invest in the time, care, quality and craftsmanship that underpins our creativity (we didn't start our own brand until we'd already worked in the trade for decades). To make a Boujee perfume, we create a complex and evolving story (with you as the Main Character, obvs).
2: Top Notch Quality
Each of our perfumes and candles are packed with unique fragrances made with the very best of materials. Our perfumes have a high budget and high artistry; we'd rather set trends than follow them. All of our fragrances are created by our in-house perfumer in collaboration with our creative director. We have full creative control and can give ourselves the permission to be extravagant. And because we're extra, they’re all compounded at the legendary Roudnitska estate in Grasse by our partner Accords & Parfums.
3: Our Candles Are Made With 100% Natural Wax
We could wax lyrical about how good our wax is and in fact, we are going to, so get ready to be hit with some wax facts. Our wax is 100% natural and it’s a unique blend of rapeseed, soy and beeswax, which leads to a perfectly clean and wonderfully even burn. You’d expect us to have fancy wax, right? Exactly, we don’t disappoint.
4: Boujee Packaging
Scents that smell great need to look good, even if we have put most of our budget into the fragrance itself. Our Eaux de Boujee look sleek and elegant in a classic-shape bottle housed in textured white card with an embossed logo, covered in a colour-coded outer on each theme. Our candles are poured into chunky internal coated cold-cut glass vessels with a bold and Boujee logo print.
5: Teamwork
At Eau de Boujee, we believe that teamwork makes the dream work, and we’ve pooled together the minds, experience and creative talent of our team members to create a unique and beautiful brand that is unlike any other. As the famous saying goes, many boujee brains are better than one. Creative director Nick Gilbert, Perfumer Pia Long, and Commercial director Clorinda Di Tommaso have all put so much passion into making this imaginative and fantastical Boujee world a reality. With our trusted partner Accords & Parfums, we can create new scents in our lab and know the precision and quality of manufacturing the finished oil will be above and beyond.
Pia Long
Pia Long is our perfumer, and a writer, too. She has been writing all her life, first in Finnish, and these days "in perfume" (to Pia, creating a story using fragrant molecules feels a lot like writing). She graduated from London College of Fashion in 1996 and went on to become a training manager for Fragrance Factory, then a junior perfumer at Lush cosmetics. She then worked consecutively at two small independent fragrance businesses (in quality control, regulatory, training and perfumery). She is the co-author of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists Perfumery module on Diploma in Cosmetics Science course, a member of the Société Internationale des Parfumeurs-Créateurs (International Society of Perfumer-Creators), and sits on the IFRA-ISPC subcommittee. She was a British Society of Perfumers council member for 10 years and has recently been presented with the Institute for Art and Olfaction discretionary Septimus Piesse Award for Exceptional Vision. Pia has created hundreds of fragrances in multiple categories over her 15+ year perfumery career to date and Boujee Bougies/Eau de Boujee is the first brand in which she has co-ownership.
Nick Gilbert
Nick Gilbert is our brand manager, creative director and writer. He graduated in psychology and psychopharmacology, then went on to make his real passion his profession and progressed from a Boots fragrance sales assistant to a regional fragrance trainer, then headed off to London and Les Senteurs where he became a store manager and retail buyer. Penhaligon's and L'Artisan Parfumeur snapped him up and he became a marketer, part of the fragrance development team and a global training manager. Working directly with the perfumery team, he picked up skills that would later serve him well when setting up a fragrance lab with Pia. He was also the co-host of the Jasmine Award-winning fragrance podcast Fume Chat, and is an Associate Member of the British Society of Perfumers. Nick is a visiting lecturer on marketing at Notthingham Trent University.
“Fed up of candles which smell divine the first time they're lit, only to lose their scent within their first burning? Boujee Bougies is your answer. Their deliciously-scented candles retain the strength of their calming smell from the first light to the last flicker of their wicks.”
This is an Olfiction Project
Olfiction are a privately owned fragrance house and consultancy, founded by perfumer Pia Long and creative director, Nick Gilbert in 2016, after spending decades working for well-known brands and suppliers. Olfiction’s multi-award winning team members form a fragrance trade powerhouse whose skills supply the vital secret ingredient for many large and small businesses alike. Telling stories through fragrance and about fragrance is what we do.
What is Postmodern Perfumery?
A Postmodern Perfume can be created by anyone, anywhere, using any creative direction and pragmatic methodologies. Providing the product itself is safe to use, providing the end result fulfils its aims, nothing else should be prescriptive.
A Postmodern Perfume may also come from people who think about the broader trade we operate in a little differently from the norm. From farming, green chemistry, supply chains, creation, education, transparency, authenticity, marketing, new distribution channels, new retailing… the era of Postmodern Perfumery is already here.
There are already dozens of individuals and brands which could be said to be postmodern in their perfumery approach – they exist outside of the overly marketing-led and artificially gatekept perfumery paradigm.
A postmodern perfume does not assume that perfume is only worn by a certain kind of person, in a certain kind of way. A postmodern perfume is not marketed based on a borrowed quote based on a 20th century idea of a woman.
When perfumery is talked about in marketing, sales, and cultural history, the concept of what perfumery even is seems to come down to a Eurocentric view. There is unquestionable knowhow and heritage in Europe, obviously, but the idea of perfumery as anything other than a narrowly defined concept does not factor in.
Think about the perfume history you might know:
- Ancient Egypt
- Classic European civilisations (especially Rome)
- Middle Ages (focusing on continental Europe)
- Early Modern (focusing on Europe, especially France and Britain)
- Modern (at this point, France is the pinnacle of what perfumery is).
The concept of “Modern Perfumery” emerged in France, at the dawn of the 20th century, when chemists and perfumers found one another. New kinds of fragrance creations became possible - ones that were abstract and not only figurative. While this blended mixed media concept that allowed perfumers to be more creative (like inventing the smell of a fantasy fern by using the hay-like newly identified coumarin) was practiced elsewhere, too, the idea of a perfumer in the public consciousness was typically male and French, or at the very least a person who had trained or operated in France. The know-how of French leather tanning and royal perfumery trades was clear, but current conversations and marketing are still stuck in the idea of only France being the home of perfumery, and of a particular kind of perfumer being the acceptable gold standard.
We still talk about "Modern Perfumery" as though it were modern in the real sense, rather than the step that came after the industrial revolution and chemistry changed everything.
The evolution of Modern Perfumery has slowly taken us to a slightly broader view from what perfumery can be, and who can be perfumers. But not by much. We still talk about Modern Perfumery as the pinnacle and conclusion of the entirety of perfume history and assign more value to certain attributes that have been passed down the generations. We still see and hear quotes about perfumery that were uttered somewhere in the early 20th century. Steeped in patriarchy, colonial exoticism - why are these things still used today as though they were relevant?
We are now in an era of Postmodern Perfumery, where the concept of what perfumery can be and who can be perfumers has broadened in multiple dimensions. Some of this new way of thinking simply means acknowledging global perfumery in its many forms, as it has existed all along. Some of this new way of thinking is only new to those of us in Europe and the USA. Much of what has changed has been enabled by the invention and utilisation of the Internet - making it possible for people to discover suppliers, education, and one another with ease never before possible. As gatekept and full of deliberate red herrings the trade on the whole has been up to now, in the last 20 years we have seen the rise of genuinely useful and accurate information that makes it possible for people to independently assemble an education, outside of the narrow, corporate pipeline.
We invite everyone to question what you believe and hear about good perfume, about perfumery, about our trade, about marketing, about learned and repeated truisms. And if some of it gives you pause, we invite you to participate in making things better for everyone involved. Not least the person who buys and wears our perfumes.
Sustainability
At Boujee Bougies we place sustainability at our heart, choosing our palette of raw materials based on their renewable and green credentials. This means examining the biodegradability of materials, the green chemistry processes used in production, and the carbon content of molecules derived from renewable feedstocks. This allows us to formulate responsibly and work with the most sustainable materials possible.
On our perfumes...
— Undina“I can understand why everyone is going mad for Gilded. It smells like early niche, those gorgeous, mind-blowing, quilted layers of a richly furnished middle eastern dream.”
— BeautyMatter“Gilded, the story of golden light in a celestial temple, builds on Gilt’s incense-heavy focus with frankincense and labdanum but throws in some buttery suede notes and warm saffron. Quir conjures up a world of leather and pleasure, in the same manner as Cuir Culture, but goes for a more smokey interpretation with tobacco absolute, softening its sensual strike with Cashmeran, Amber Xtreme, and rose absolute. If Cuir Culture is the BDSM dungeon, Quir is the 1920s speakeasy above it.”
— The Sniff“The perfumer for the Eau de Boujee range was Pia Long, and I have been saying for a while that Pia is a name to watch in this industry. I see nothing in the Eau de Boujee scents which would make me doubt that. These are real fragrances, fully conceived and executed, they’re a little bit wild, full of energy, and robust in their construction. The scents are technicolour scents rather than pastel shades, and they will appeal to those who want something new, something funky, and something both wearable and distinct.”
On our candles...
— The Independent“This maverick candle brand has a professional perfumer and fragrance expert at the helm, so you know the resulting scents are going to be pretty special. And this one [Succulent] certainly was – the perfume equivalent of walking into one of those lovely garden shops”
— Reader’s Digest“Fed up of candles which smell divine the first time they're lit, only to lose their scent within their first burning? Boujee Bougies is your answer. Their deliciously-scented candles retain the strength of their calming smell from the first light to the last flicker of their wicks.”
— Caroline Hirons“A range of beautiful, unique candles that are genuinely different and weird and fun and luxury and lush…[Queen Jam] is actually my favourite one. It smells like someone made sweet jam in a florist that was full to the brim and in full bloom. I love it. LOVE.”
— Red Magazine“We're consistently impressed with the scent throw from BB candles, and this one's no exception. With its woody, smoky vibe paired with luxe gold leaf – this is the one if you want your home to smell expensive.”
— Harper’s Bazaar“The throw of this candle (how well the scent travels into a room) is seriously impressive. You'll feel surrounded by the jubilant scent of roses and sweet berries.”
— Good Housekeeping“Quite literally meaning 'fancy candles’, Boujee Bougies is scent and storytelling at its finest. There are no duds in the range - an impressive, yet unsurprising feat given the BB team are fellow candle obsessives - but we're particularly drawn towards Gilt for the winter months.”
— Elle"Turn your living room into a marble floored space complete with silk draperies and ornate carvings with Gilt. Everything from Boujee Bougies have an impressive throw, so expect this candle to go the mile."