LONDON — “Don’t get so emotional” isn’t a phrase within the Charlotte Tilbury playbook.

As a substitute, the celebrity makeup artist and entrepreneur is preparing to fire up all styles of emotions, vibrations, actions and reactions with a recent collection of six scents developed with IFF’s proprietary technology.

The gathering of neuroscents is the culmination of Tilbury’s long-held desire to create mood-enhancing fragrances to empower customers in the identical way that she believes good makeup or skincare can.

The introduction is an enormous one for Charlotte Tilbury, which launched in 2013 and is aiming to turn out to be a 1 billion-euro makeup, skincare and fragrance business.

The corporate said that entering the fragrance category will supercharge its ambitions to turn out to be “a tri-axis powerhouse.” It has little doubt benefited from the know-how at its parent Puig, which has built a portfolio of area of interest fragrance brands including Penhaligon’s, L’Artisan Parfumeur, Dries Van Noten and Byredo, not to say the larger Carolina Herrera, Paco Rabanne and Jean Paul Gaultier beauty businesses.

Charlotte Tilbury is already the number-one prestige combined makeup brand within the U.K., and a money-spinner for Puig, which on April 8 revealed plans to hunt a public listing in Spain.

The brand new scents — dubbed Love Frequency, More Sex, Cosmic Power, Magic Energy, Calm Bliss and Joyphoria — are the fruits of her own historical research; a childhood spent inhaling the perfumed air of Ibiza, and proprietary technology from IFF, which has been on the forefront of research into the impact of scent on the brain.

“I used to be brought up in a really wealthy world of fragrance,” said the mile-a-minute talker in an interview. “Within the hippy markets of Ibiza, there have been people coming back from the East, and from all all over the world, with scents and aromatherapy oils. There was incense within the churches and my father, an artist, all the time had incense burning.

“My parents understood the ability of aromatherapy and aromacology, and I all the time knew that scents could work on hormones, that they might calm people down. Having mixed oils and worn my very own scents for 30 years, I also knew how you may time travel with scent, and that it could open and unlock things,” continued Tilbury, who’s president, chairman, chief creative officer and founding father of her namesake company.

Tilbury admitted it was a moment of joy — and relief — when she began working with IFF, which has proven the link between scent and frame of mind — and created bespoke molecules to conjure moods.

“It was like my prayers had been answered,” she said.

The Power of Neuroscents

Neuroscents are a fast-evolving, area of interest category of functional fragrances created with an olfactive note, or notes, to elicit emotional responses which can be neurologically proven using a mixture of brainwave mapping and consumer surveys.

They’ve been gaining steam because the pandemic with anxious, housebound consumers desperate to explore mood-boosting scents for mind and residential. Neuroscents are also a part of a wider wellness trend that’s moving toward healing and the metaphysical realm of crystals, astrology, numerology and cartomancy.

Millennials and Gen Z, specifically, have shown an interest in these functional fragrances. While older generations can have experimented with hallucinogenic drugs and stimulants, many younger consumers are desperate to explore the mood-boosting effects brought on by fragrance.

Céline Manetta, Ph.D., senior consumer science manager at IFF, has described neuroscents as “aromatherapy 2.0. Today, we’re reopening all these doors and territories.”

She said IFF has been researching “the invisible power of ingredients” for greater than 40 years through its Science of Wellness program and worked closely with Tilbury to comprehend her ambition of unlocking emotions through fragrance.

IFF measures the emotional power of certain ingredients by taking a look at the responses they elicit across groups of individuals. The corporate then uses a proprietary tool called the IFF Scentcube, which analyzes the information using AI technology.

The 5 billion data points it has gathered to this point give perfumers modern ingredient mixtures which can be known to reinforce specific emotions. Scentcube, Manetta said, “creates a particular palette of ingredients so that they can compose with it.”

She added that for Tilbury’s recent collection, IFF tested a bunch of ingredients “to grasp which a part of the conscious, and unconscious, was activated when smelling. Each part was linked to a particular emotion.”

Although these are usually not the primary neuroscents to hit the wonder counter, they’re modern of their scale and ambition.

Anne Flipo, master perfumer at IFF, said it’s “unique” to have a set of six fragrances created from a mixture of scientific research, AI and consumer studies, aimed toward “awakening specific emotions.”

Tilbury and IFF imagine their research has resulted in powerful formulations. In response to user trial data, the overwhelming majority of individuals using the six fragrances had “enhanced” feelings because of the specially made molecules used.

Research Results

Of the six fragrances, those with the best responses were Magic Energy, Calm Bliss and Joyphoria. 

Some 98 percent of individuals spritzing on Magic Energy, a mix of palo santo (a conventional treatment derived from a wild tree native to South America), bergamot oil and cypress ultimate agreed the scent “boosted and enhanced” their energy levels during a weeklong trial.

Calm Bliss, which incorporates lavandin oil, fresh bergamot oil, white musks, orange flower absolute and tonka bean, enhanced feelings of calm amongst 92 percent of users over the same time period.

Joyphoria, which incorporates neroli oil, a coconut water accord and petitgrain oil, enhanced feelings of happiness amongst 91 percent of its test audience.

While the fragrances stands out as the results of myriad laboratory tests, there may be nothing clinical about them, Flipo said.

“We wanted something that might tell a story beyond science. In fact, it needed to smell amazing — so each of those fragrances could be very instinctive and really tell a story of affection, seduction and serenity,” she said.

Tilbury layered her own research, history — and experience — into the six formulations.

She looked across 1000’s of years of history to see how humans have used fragrance “for spiritual, emotional and medicinal purposes, and I used to be very specific concerning the ingredients I wanted to make use of: the palo santo for Magic Energy; the amber and sandalwood for More Sex, and the frankincense for Cosmic Power,” she said.

Tilbury has been down the fragrance road before.

In 2016, pre-Puig, she launched Scent of a Dream, based on a combination she created when she was 13 years old. She approached it along with her signature gusto and long-held belief that fragrance had the ability to change an individual’s mood, and open portals to the past and the long run.  

What she didn’t have was the science to back it up.

“I believe I used to be frustrated back then because I desired to prove that you may elicit certain feelings” with scent, she said.

Before launching that juice, she assembled neuroscientists and perfumers in a room. She said they chatted, but told her it wasn’t possible to make a fragrance that connected scent with mood. Tilbury said that when IFF told her they might do it, “it was truthfully the perfect moment of my life.”

The brand new fragrance collection has therapeutic and metaphysical dimensions, too.

Different Bottles

Each fragrance is available in a flask cut in a crystal shape in a distinct color with therapeutic powers. The fragrances have numbers derived from numerology and their very own historic symbols. Each fragrance also comes with mantra cards in order that customers can bolster their intentions with visualization and positive pondering.

Joyphoria’s bottle is rose gold, meant to reflect its promise of sunshine and summery happiness even at nighttime days of January. Love Frequency is soft pink, and meant to evoke the “rush of past love” and the ability of “all-encompassing love,” in accordance with Tilbury.

Calm Bliss, which Tilbury spritzes on her pillow at night, has a “milky innocence, and helps to calm the nervous system,” and is available in an aqua blue bottle, just like the sea. Magic Energy’s is forest green, with a smell that’s meant to be grounding and energizing.

Tilbury argues that More Sex, which is available in a burgundy bottle, enhances “natural magnetism and seductive energy,” while Cosmic Power is “a forcefield of confidence,” in a purple bottle.

She describes the fragrances as unisex and ageless and desires her customers to layer them throughout the day, depending on their needs.

She also suggests making a “scent aura,” by spraying a halo above the top, and applying to pulse points after showering when the pores are open and higher capable of absorb the juice.

There’s more tech to return.

Tilbury has added a dedicated fragrance pillar to the brand’s app, which known as Easy Beauty for You. The app already offers shade-matching using AI and light-weight technology; tutorials; celebrity favorites; news, and well-being guides.

The fragrance pillar will feature a personalised fragrance profiler that helps customers select what’s right for them and match makeup looks to fragrances.

The app will even offer a first-to-market scent mapping tool that permits the user to “see” how ingredients in a fragrance progressively change in prominence over the course of its 18-hour trail.

Of the app, Tilbury said she loves “morphing myself into an algorithm” and living within the pockets of her customers. She said the app makes her products “easy-to-choose and easy-to-use” for her thousands and thousands of shoppers all over the world, all of whom she addresses as “darling!”

The fragrances can be released on April 30 on special order through the app, after which from May 2 at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty Wonderland stand-alone stores and counters, the brand’s e-commerce site and in the remainder of the world.

The worth of a 100-ml bottle is $150, while the 10-ml travel spray costs $25. The invention set box of six 1.5-ml bottles cost $30.

The corporate, which is officially a part of Puig’s IPO process, declined to supply or confirm any sales projections for this story.

Nevertheless, in accordance with independent research by WWD, it is assumed that first 12 months retail sales could reach at the least 50 million kilos.

The launch of fragrance is the crucial third axis to this brand, which has been gaining momentum across all markets and plumping up growth at Puig.

In 2022, makeup was the fastest-growing division for Puig, and in 2023 it was skincare. The Charlotte Tilbury brand was a “key driver” behind growth in each years.

Charlotte Tilbury Magic Cream is the number-one face cream within the U.K. prestige skincare market, while the brand as an entire is the number-one prestige combined makeup brand within the U.K., in accordance with Circana.

Charlotte Tilbury closed 2023 because the number-four premium makeup brand within the U.S., even though it has limited distribution in comparison with its competitors, in accordance with the corporate.

Having launched in 2013, Charlotte Tilbury was acquired by Puig in 2020 in a deal valued at 1.2 billion kilos. BDT Capital Partners also took a stake, with multiple strategic buyers, including the Estée Lauder Cos., said to have been considering acquiring the business.

As reported, Puig intends to drift on the Spanish Stock Exchanges in a bid to boost 2.5 billion euros to finance further and future investments (including in Tilbury’s business); solidify its corporate structure, and future-proof the family-run business.

Within the midst of all of it, Tilbury is juggling product, retail development and design; the fragrance launch, and her private, red carpet clients (she was working on the Oscars last month).

She said it’s a joy. Plus, she now has six recent scents to spritz on when she must rev up, or wind down.

“I’m a redhead, I actually have numerous energy, and am so keen about what I do. And I believe the high of winning, and the high of gratitude is essentially the most unbelievable feeling. I even have an incredible dream team, and I believe while you do innovate, and disrupt and break records, it’s essentially the most powerful, energizing feeling. We’re all energetic, frequency beings — and I just get high off my very own supply,” she said.