This is the year of early '00s trend resurgences. Belly button piercings and low-rise jeans are back in fashion, while lightweight body mists are getting spritzed left and right—and not just by tweens at Bath & Body Works. Videos tagged "best body spray" have been viewed more than 34 million times on TikTok this year, per CNN; grown-up brands from Sol de Janeiro to Tom Ford have developed their own airy-yet-fragrant takes.
Personalization-driven startup Scent Lab is also getting into the body mist game, after launching in 2022 with award-winning candles (and raising a fresh round of funding earlier this spring). But there's a difference: These scents want to take the guesswork out of how to layer perfume—or rather, perfume mists—in the name of creating a signature scent.
Scent Lab's initial lineup—which the brand is calling "perfume mists"—comprises six scents, ranging from Cheeky Rose (with rose, pink pepper, lychee, and blonde wood notes) to Lemon Fizz (blending lemon, bergamot, palo santo, and sheer musk). The entire range is non-toxic, long-lasting, and, if you choose, customizable with a $10 "potion" bottle. (Each mist comes with an extra spigot for an easy pour.)
"We wanted to create fragrances that were complex on their own if the customers wear them solo, which is totally fine," says Scent Lab chief executive officer Ariana Silvestro. (Ironically, she got her start as a store manager for Bath & Body Works—one of body mist trend's early starting points.) "But these mists can also work and blend well together to create a really nice custom potion if you're scent-layering them."
Body mist collectors wanting to go the DIY route can order any (or all) of the six scents and pour them into the potion bottle however they want. But for perfume novices, Scent Lab has nine "home run" recommended potion bundles that combine two mists (in a half-and-half ratio) or one mist with a splash of another.
Scent Lab chief marketing officer Ali Kriegsman says these mix-and-match fragrances are as much a response to those 34 million scent-mixing TikTok views as they are a natural next step for the business. Already, people are "mix and matching scents to smell different and unique every day. They're layering like crazy, they're building out scent wardrobes spanning luxury perfumes and more mass mists," she explains. These sets just formalize the process.
No one's required to follow Scent Lab's scent instructions—meaning there's almost infinite variability depending on the aromas ordered and the way they're blended. That's a complicated proposition. Fun as it is to play master perfumer from the comfort of your own home, shouldn't scent development and proportions be left to the professionals for reliable, good-smelling results?
The brand's founders say these mists are formulated to avoid unsavory outcomes—that is, a potion that smells more like a witch's brew and less like a light, wearable perfume. "We worked really long and hard with our fragrance house to ensure that these endless combinations were basically dummy-proof," Silvestro says.
"Our perfume mists are a 12 percent fragrance load and designed with our fragrance house so that you get longevity and blendability. Even if you mix like five of these together," the CEO explains, "they should still smell amazing." And definitely unlike anyone else.
