Let’s kick off this post with a few fun facts about our olfactory sense:

It’s the only sense directly connected to the brain’s emotion center.

Smells go straight to the amygdala and hippocampus, which is why scents trigger vivid memories and emotional reactions instantly.

Humans have around 400 types of olfactory receptors.

Dogs have over 1,000, which is why their smell ability is far superior.

Smell is the fastest sense.

You can detect an odor in as little as 0.2 seconds—faster than your brain can process visual information.

Our sense of smell is closely tied to taste.

About 75–80% of what we perceive as flavor actually comes from smell, not the taste buds.

Okay, now to the really fun stuff. Olfactory NYC opened up their first and only Texas location a few months ago and I got the opportunity to have a private visit to check out their newest store. The store is located at 3699 McKinney Avenue Suite 103A in the West Village in Uptown Dallas. When you walk in, you are greeted with a clean, almost sterile, palette that is brought to life by neon lights and complementary in-store signage. Olfactory NYC makes creating our own scent easy and interactive which elevates the overall experience. In a few easy steps, you’ll be able to create your own one-of-a-kind scent that you can easily re-order, as needed.

Step 1: Pick Your Base

They have 9 core fragrances that you can choose from that you will use as your base. You can smell each one (I recommend you waft like they showed us in chemistry class) by spraying each base onto paper scent blotters. Toss the ones you for sure do not like and put aside the bases that are still in the running. Once you narrow it down to a single scent, that will be the base scent for your custom fragrance.

Step 2: Build Your Fragrance

Once you have selected your base, you can proceed to the Scent Bar where your personal Scent-ologist will help you build on your core fragrance. You’ll first sample secondary scents built on top of your base scent so you can see how each pairing smells. These pairings will be placed on paper blotters. Once you narrow it down to four pairings, you’ll then test the remaining pairings on your skin so you can see how each one reacts to your body’s natural chemistry. Once you select your favorite pairing out of the four, it’ll be bottled up right in front of you!

Step 3: Personalize

Now that you have your fragrance scent selected and it is bottled up, you have to choose a name. Make it unique and a name that is easy to roll off the tongue. You do have a character limit to keep that in mind. The name you select will be stamped on a label and placed on a colored label of your choice. And voila! You have your own personalized, custom scent. They’ll save your personal scent on file which you can find on your online profile make it simple for you to place re-orders.

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A few notes to keep in mind: 1) If you want to re-order your fragrance, you can return to the store to re-use your initial fragrance bottle and get a discount off of your re-order. 2) If there are scent pairings that you really like, but that may not make sense as a body fragrance, set them aside to create custom shampoo, body wash or candles. Nothing screams over-the-top like giving a candle in your signature scent as a hostess or parting gift.

Book your appointment today at the Dallas store or at the store nearest to you to reserve your spot. You can also experience the process online.