When you’ve spent any time on #PerfumeTok, then likelihood is you’ve come across one of the vital lauded body oil brands — Brown Sugar Babe. 

The brand, which began as a hobby for making fragrances, has morphed into body scrubs and oils which have literally had the web in shambles — in the easiest way possible. We now have Maekaeda Gibbons to thank for that. She began concocting body care recipes out of her Atlanta home, and although Gibbons didn’t comprehend it on the time, her fascination for creating recent (and inspired) scents and discovering her connection to fragrance would propel her to put the inspiration for a complete body care brand.

Family and friends began asking for the formulas, and eventually, she realized she had bonafide business on her hands. 

“Inspired by” many luxury creations, Brown Sugar Babe offers perfume oils, body scrubs and body oil dupes for popular scents equivalent to Baccarat Rouge 540 by Maison Francis Kurkdjian (MFK), Parfums De Marly’s Delina Exclusif, Kilian Paris’ Love don’t be shy and Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry. They’re dupes, as in fragrances which can be nearly an identical to popular perfumes — they usually’re being sold for a fraction of the value of the actual deal, so you possibly can wear them on their very own, or layer them with the accompanying scent.

And it’s secure to say, the girlies are loving it.

Nonetheless, Gibbons’ love affair with scents began long before she even made her first oil. “[It] began once I was about ten years old,” she says. “My mother wore a selected fragrance and when she was not around I’d get really completely happy once I got a whiff of it. Looking back at those moments now, I now understand it was a self-soothing practice once I missed her.”

For Black women, that self-soothing that we do, is a component of the rationale why radical self-care is crucial to our wellbeing. But often we don’t carve out more time for ourselves to take pleasure in these moments. Brown Sugar Babe helps women take these moments on a regular basis — even when it’s something as small as slathering your body every day together with your favorite perfume-inspired body oil. “I believe selfcare is a vital practice for all Black women, in whatever ways in which looks like for every individual,” she says. “Aromatherapy and fragrance is one in all the only ways to create a selfcare pattern for yourself. Being within the presence of a delightful aroma is one in all the surest ways to spice up your mood. Overall though, ensuring all of us make intentional time for the things that bring us peace and joy must be really high on our to-do list every single day.”

Despite the success that Gibbons has found — especially through promoting her products on social media, she had no roadmap for being an entrepreneur—especially a Black female founder navigating emerging growth; so she created her own. “I formulated the Nourishing Body Oil alone through years of trying to find a non lotion option for moisturizing my skin,” she shares. “The Original Mix fragrances are also my creations as well.”

Unconsciously starting to unlock her purpose, the concept for Brown Sugar Babe was born. “A few of my fondest memories ever were listening to R&B and neo soul music with friends in highschool,” she recalls. “One in every of my favorite artists of all time is D’Angelo. To honor my love for music and fragrance I combined these two things in essentially the most obvious way. The name of the corporate is my favorite song by my favorite artist and I also kept the theme going by naming a few of fragrances popular R&B songs. Music and fragrance have lots in common in my view. They each trigger memories and will even have a chilled effect on you if done accurately.”

Beyond sparking a feel-good experience during your skincare routine, Gibbons is most happy with the impact that the brand is making on the fragrance community and the way they’ve begun to reinvent the way in which you possibly can experience luxury fragrances.

Through its customer connectivity, product quality, and—most significantly— commitment to helping Black women practice self-care, Brown Sugar Babe is redefining luxury body care, and our beauty routines are significantly better for it.