SAMAR Scent Studio

Excited to pop up for a visit! See you sooooon!! 👋😌
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The last time we made polaroids was during a visit to Palm Springs, a place that feels a touch surreal. Nams kept spotting these eerie mannequins that looked one incantation away from becoming sentient 👻

She snapped photos of every single one we came across, almost like she had an instinct for spotting them. Before we left our accommodations, we hid the polaroids in various nooks and crannies for the next visitors to find. Underneath the top drawer of the dresser was especially ✨️inspired✨️

Perhaps the visitors who find the photos will spot these same mannequins and realize they're in for a little scavenger hunt. Or we just scared some vacationers sh*tless 😅

Today's polaroids are less haunted (not by much) and more dreamy evocation. Our production days with and have been so fun with the added reward of capturing the essence of each perfume the way we've imagined them since the beginning 💜
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Of course two island babies who moved to Washington state will yearn for the salt of the sea, sun warmed skin, and bright pops of fruit and spices! ⛱️ 🌊🫐🍓🫚

Beach Berry and Great Lei are alike in inspiration yet distinct in their development!

Beach Berry was inspired by a 2021 tweet by "I don't have it in me to grind like I'm so sorry...I was put on this earth to eat berries and play in the ocean." It was such a funny and striking way to sum up the widespread feeling that grinding (for what?) couldn't possibly be the ultimate measure of our time on earth. We wanted to create a scent that expresses the feeling of stepping out of that trap, even if just for a moment.

⭐️Beach Berry opens with sweet pops of summer berries reminiscent of popsicles and slightly tart wisps of passionfruit. Like a chameleon, BB morphs into  a fresh, salty ozonic base, teasing out associations of sweat misted skin and driftwood.

Great Lei welcomes us to Hawai'i and a selection of Debbie's favorite memories growing up on O'ahu. We love the scent of fresh blooming jasmine and plumeria, but found that iterations we experienced in various scented products weren't quite what we were looking for. Great Lei became our mission to express the nuances of both flowers, without sacrificing one for the other. Very rarely are they paired together in perfumes even though they typically grow in the same environments.

⭐️The opening of GL is a lush unfolding of jasmine and plumeria lifted on a salty ocean breeze carrying tantalizing hints of li hing ginger. As it settles, creamy sandalwood and nutty Hawaiian Chantilly cake (not too sweet) nuances come forward. GL is assertive yet tender, capturing the effusiveness of youth and the growing self assurance of young adulthood. We've had some special moments with Hawai'ian visitors at our in-person shows who immediately connect with Great Lei because it's so unmistakably home 💜
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Slide 1: The big finalist reveal! 🎊

Slide 2: posted up in the Chloroform perfume exhibit with our sweet faves and 🫶💕
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A round of applause for Miss Layla, the sparkling nose behind FUM Fragrances!! 🎉🎉🎉🤌 Miss Layla is no longer on IG but you can catch her on Bluesky ( fragrances. bluesky. social).

Her award finalist perfume, The Space Between, embodies the slow practice of perfumery. Highlighting sustainably harvested copal resin from Puebla, Mexico that's then hand ground using a cured lava mocajete, tinctured for 9 months, filtered, and aged for an additional 3 months.

At the finalists announcement we had the opportunity to enjoy a part of Miss Layla's artistry in this perfume - the base! A soft, mineral warmth that didn't feel quite earthbound and an elusive sweetness that I couldn't pin down at the time. I kept coming back to it, because it was playing at the edges of some of my favorite scent profiles! We would love the opportunity to smell The Space Between fresh when we can experience the full story (and when it's back in stock. CONGRATS 🎊🎊🙌)!!! For now though, you can haunt her very pretty site and make your wishlist ✨️
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A nearly empty box reminds us of the gifts we gave and received in Taiwan and Thailand. Gift giving is our quiet way of saying I see you, I love you, I'm thinking of you. When we gifted perfumes to family in Taiwan a new (old) feeling of giddy enthusiasm and nerves popped up. Like kids roping their adults into show and tell - "Look what we made!" Grove is in the Heart, Golden Hour, Great Lei, and Tea House were standout hits. Debbie's 7 year old cousin doused her stuffed penguin in Beach Berry and over the course of the week made a small ritual of asking family members to smell its belly 😂

We visited several perfume boutiques- we'll be sharing more about later- smelled our way through their collections, and broke our small bottle rule every time. We brought gifts too - bc how often do we get to share space with fellow indie perfume lovers? We also need to practice squashing the belief that sharing our work irl with shops is presumptuous or inconveniencing. In other contexts, we gift without reservations. Generosity feels good for everyone involved! Let us be generous and receive generosity unselfconsciously! ✨️

We hope you enjoyed witnessing this caption spiral into a self peptalk. Sometimes it be like that 😂 We're happy to be back and as always, honored to share this digital corner with you 🫶
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Bought jasmine garlands from a woman at the Anusarn Night Market in Chiang Mai, Thailand! Within 20 minutes of wearing them, our body heat caused them to bloom and surround us in a soft, fragrant halo of jasmine, more mild and sweet than the undiluted Jasmine Sambac Absolute we work with for our perfume The Tea House. Other than making some sticky, resinous extractions easier to work with, dilution is so important for highlighting the delicate and complex aspects of some materials that our silly human noses are overwhelmed by when pure!

What a treat!🫶🥹
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Our Vday scent combo! 100% Magic by the talented and beautiful Tea Service by

Smelling like dry oolong tea, sweet, mildly indolic jasmine, and an electric sparkle enhancing our slightly sweaty skin in the Chiang Mai sun ☀️
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Lost track of time chatting with new pals .culturel over breakfast & had to sprint through tea fields to catch our bus out of the mountains ⛰️ 😆

Thank you to the wonderful folks for a lovely evening sipping tea, describing our scent impressions, snacking, and chatting! It was really special to enjoy traditional cao (grass) nian gao that has a deep green tinge, a tea-like flavor, and is rarely made anymore because it is so labor intensive. We hope to see you again 💕

For our tea loving friends who would love to visit a town dedicated to crafting tea, Yu Tung Ming Yuan in Chiayi/Alishan is a wonderful experience to work into your Taiwan travel plans! ☕️
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