When Lynn Till walked into Ironwood Collection, one of those eclectic South Broadway boutiques lined with potted succulents and mosses, terrariums, crystals and pinning blocks of butterflies, her well-trained nose identified scents suggesting the themes of introversion and exploration.
“I just wanted to try to capture the smell in that store,” she said.
And as co-owner of natural beauty product company R.L. Linden, she had the resources. Using all-natural oils, she created a fragrance that, to her, represented the character of the carefully curated boutique: a concoction heavy with spicy, woodsy palo santo, a relative of frankincense.
The Ironwood scent, which R.L. Linden bottled and sold, was a successful cross-promotion between the two businesses — a bit of olfactory branding, conveying the business’s message through what has long been reported as our most powerful sense.
Fragrance branding is often something the customer or guest is only subconsciously aware of. , meant to evoke luxury and elicit various impulses. Anyone who has stepped inside a shopping mall with a Cinnabon can attest to the power of the brand’s food-based fragrance, said Dawn Stencer Hurwitz, a perfumer and owner of DSH Perfumes in Boulder.
“When you interact with smell your subconscious and parts of your brain that are not dealing with your conscious brain before you are even aware of it start processing it,” said Hurwitz. “You can infiltrate someone’s memory and psyche with olfactory stimulation.”
Hurwitz now designs fragrances mostly for art studios, as part of exhibits as multi-sensory art, a role she calls “olfactory artist.” Most recently, she created fragrances to be paired with .
But as far back as 1993, Hurwitz designed fragrances for brands, starting with a high-end furniture maker.
“It had to be something that would make you feel very homey and comfortable,” she said.
R.L. Linden’s initial success opened the door for Till to bottle more scents inspired by others in Denver’s artisan business population. The collection has become a sensory tour of seven of the city’s makers. Among them: Ritual Chocolate, picking up the scents of cacao nibs, almond shells, cardamom and cognac; florist Beet and Yarrow with a whiff of violets, twigs and green leaves that scatter the cutting room floor; and the unlikely Western Daughters, a butcher that inspired a perfume of freshly mowed hay, sweetgrass and prairie flowers.
Till and business partner Robin Ting said they chose businesses whose work inspired them, and themed each fragrance around the tools, materials and ambiance of each one.
“It doesn’t seem like it at first, but when you really try to tease pieces apart, when you look at the pieces people use in their everyday work, there are a ton of smells in that,” Ting said.
The goal was to draw inspiration from creatives they admired, but the fragrance line continues to evolve beyond that, Till said. When it launched, smelling parties held at the retailers’ locations were bustling.
“People just react to it really directly,” said Tanya Fleisher, co-owner of Winter Session, a maker of hand-crafted bags and inspiration for another one of R.L. Linden’s fragrances. The workshop at 2952 Welton St. is filled with the smells of leather, canvas and coffee, and Fleisher said the workplace culture inspired notes of whiskey and tobacco. Fleisher said the resulting scent gets people talking, trying it on and asking questions.
Now, more businesses are connecting with R.L. Linden, seeking scents for their brand.
Ben Anderson, owner of Denver-based Icelantic Skis, has enlisted R.L. Linden to create a signature fragrance for his company. They have been working on a scent that elicits memories of that first snow of winter: pine and the woodsy dampness of the forest’s decomposing floor, sprinkled with the crisp, dry cold carried in tiny ice crystals in the air.
Anderson said the fragrance won’t sit atop a vanity awaiting a quick spritz in the morning — it will go to work at trade show booths, in boxes of products shipped to retailers around the globe, and with sponsored athletes on the slopes.
