ÁMEZING NEWS #17: 420 FRAGRANCES w/ NOSE CANDY
Nosing around for cannabis notes
Tierney here! Today we’re celebrating CANNABIS! Not only as the good stuff in our spliffs and the anti-inflammatory ingredient in our favorite body care, but as a plant material with its own iconic SCENT. This post is a f*** you to everyone who's ever said they hate the smell of weed! Especially to my face! Like, have you heard of terpenes? Please. Weed can literally smell like lemons (limonene) or lavender (linalool).
Granted, it can also smell like a big, burnt bong rip or a stinky skunk. But for some people, that’s no problem at all. While cannabis is not exactly commonplace in the designer fragrances you’ll find at most department stores, it is a relatively popular note among niche fragrances. Since niche fragrances aren’t designed to be sold to the masses, they offer more uniquely inspired olfactory experiences than mainstream perfumes.
When it comes to niche fragrance, Nose Candy knows best.
Nose Candy is a weekly perfume podcast hosted by LA ladies Chloe Coover and Maddie Phinney. In honor of 420, Chloe and Maddie were kind enough to share their cannabis-inspired fragrance recommendations with us.
Whether you enjoy the bright, green aroma of freshly trimmed flower or prefer the smoky, viscous scent of the resin stuck inside of your grinder, Nose Candy knows a cannabis scent for you. You’re about to be introduced to the absolutely dankest perfumes. Even if weed smoking isn’t your thing, you still might love wearing scents characterized by its earthy, herbal aroma. So blaze away, babes! Read along to experience two of our favorite co-hosts in conversation. And stick around ‘till the end for a list of all the fragrances discussed!
Chloe: I love to “smoke ‘em if I got ‘em,” every goddamn day.
[Chloe is clearly lying.]
Maddie: You’re a sketchy person to be talking about this with…
Chloe: I mean, I’m a sketchy and unreliable person across the board, especially on this topic.
Maddie: I was maybe about to spark something before we started talking…
[Maddie is clearly stoned.]
Chloe: Hey, listen. “Smoke ‘em if youuuu got ‘em.” Not me. I got nothing.
[Laughter]
Chloe: You’re like a weed-head, no?
Maddie: Hell yes. I love it. We’re friends.
Chloe: But I will say, the only expertise I bring to this [topic] is my love of the fragrance. The aroma of weed.
Maddie: So you like the smell when people are smoking weed around you?
Chloe: I do. So like, I was a stoner in high school.
Maddie: WHAT?
Chloe: It turned on me in college.
Maddie: Girl, same. But you power through.
Chloe: No, you don’t. You don’t if you’re me.
Maddie: Wow.
Chloe: I set down the old joint. I set down the bong. But every time I experience the scent, it’s a nostalgic hit for me.
Maddie: As it were!
Chloe: I like it because it takes me back to being in my parent’s bathroom hotboxing with my friends while I was supposed to be at school. Doing the fun things I loved to do. Looking in the mirror and seeing my arm as an extension of my nose.
Maddie: Looking in the mirror and fully dissociating?
Chloe: I was a huge America’s Next Top Model fan so I remembered them having Kiena pose like an elephant and tell her to make her arm an extension of her nose. I was waving my arm around in the mirror.
Maddie: It was your on-camera debut, just you looking at yourself in the mirror…. Ok, let’s get into our fragrance picks. You were worried we were going to have the same pics.
Chloe: We might! What of it?
Maddie: Well then I want to go first…
Chloe: You want to make me have to go back to the drawing board and scramble…
Maddie: The first one I want to talk about is, for me, the most photo realistic weed perfume. Ganja by Comme des Garcons.
Chloe: She was on my tabs to investigate…
Maddie: Iconically, they don’t carry it at either Scentbar location in LA.
Chloe: So they’re kind of narcs, you would say. On the record.
Maddie: I smelled it for the first time at the Ministry of Scent in San Francisco. I think they had me smell another fragrance and I was like, “Oh this kind of smells like weed,” and they were like, “Want to smell one that really smells like weed?” What makes it photorealistic isn’t that it’s this beautiful, well it is, but it’s not like a particularly green, aromatic perfume. It’s like after-burn. A lit and extinguished joint.
Chloe: That’s similar to what I like about Akro Smoke [Eau de Parfum]. It’s like a cigarette in an ashtray stubbed out. There’s something sexy about a recently extinguished item.
Maddie: When you smoked weed, did you ever put the joint out in a cigarette box?
Chloe: Yeah, yeah.
Maddie: And then all of the cigs smell horrible. Even like smoking a joint and saving the little roach and going back to it tomorrow…but it tastes bad. I feel like I’m not selling this perfume by comparing it to the after-burn of a previously lit joint, but there is something very cool about it.
Chloe: I also feel like we have to acknowledge Comme des Garcons is the GOAT when it comes to taking a more bizarre conceptual idea and realizing it in a way you actually want to smell like.
That’s a good point. It’s not just nailing it, it’s nailing it in a way where you’re like, “I’d wear you.”
There are crazier conceptual perfume houses, but CDG nails it when it comes to making them wearable.
Maddie: Yep.
Chloe: Ok, so my first pick is Gorseland by Jorum Studio.
Maddie: Does it smell like weed? Let’s tell the people the truth.
Chloe: I think, YES. I will say that. I’ll be strong and wrong, but I believe it to be so. The stated notes talk about “pineapple weed” and “kush.” There’s two weed-yI think they mean pineapple weed, not like some weed that grows from a pineapple..
Maddie: I thought you were going to say not like Pineapple Express.
Chloe: I mean, do I know what Pineapple Express smells like? I’m not a stoner.
Maddie: Are you getting more of the catchfly or the zdravetz?
Chloe: The notes on this are all over the place.
Maddie: They don’t make sense.
Chloe: But the impression of it is so atmospherically evocative. You feel like you’re standing in a field of grass with little flowers coming through, and there’s a big concrete structure, and there’s kids smoking weed. It’s from their marketing copy, so I didn’t invent that. But it was persuasive and I was planted right there.
Maddie: Gorseland. It gives me erasers. Chewing on erasers.
Chloe: I get that too.
Chloe: It’s bouncy.
Maddie: I think it’s iris. He uses iris in everything, and it has that spring-y, chewy eraser thing.
Chloe: When I smell this, I really get that mixture of chamomile and weed. With the pineapple.
Maddie: I do get really bright fruit, but I always describe it as apricot.
Chloe: I get that too. I haven’t smelled very beautiful chamomile scents in fragrance very frequently. It’s not something that’s utilized very well very often.
Maddie: Harvest Mouse by Zoologist. The scent I tried to sell the hardest at Scentbar but I never sold one bottle. But I’m obsessed.
Chloe: Well, keep trying babe.
Maddie: The perfume wasn’t the problem, it was my sales issues.
Chloe: You know what, don’t sell yourself short. I’m not a fan of that one.
Maddie: It’s polarizing. But I love it.
Chloe: Ok, what’s your next one?
Maddie: Ok, if there was a spectrum, I feel like we’d be traveling on it…My next one is Orange Kush by 19-69.
Chloe: OOOP, that was gonna be my second one.
Maddie: You know I love this perfume.
Chloe: I do. Me picking it was almost cheating.
Maddie: Cheating…or stealing…really.
Chloe: Theft-coded. Talk to me about it.
Maddie: I’m obsessed with it. I don’t get weed at all. But the name is iconically stoner-ish. And similarly with the marketing copy...remember it was supposed to be kids at a skatepark, drinking orange soda and smoking. While I don’t get the weed, I really get photorealistic, bubbly orange soda.
Chloe: I definitely feel like I got a contact high from that one when we smelled it. There’s a woozy-hazy-stoney kind of vibe.
Maddie: You probably got a contact high because I loved it so much.
Chloe: One kind of contact high or another…
Maddie: I will forever regret not getting a bottle when it was on sale for like $1.99 at SSENSE. I just didn’t do it. And now I’m on Depop like all of the rest of the losers asking sellers to lower their price.
Chloe: Yeah.
Maddie: I feel like orange notes can go air freshener, but this is a bright mandarin orange. Not an aluminum canister of air freshener at the veterinarian.
Chloe: I agree. There’s an artificiality that’s conceptually fascinating about it, but it’s not air freshener. Or cleaning product. Any of those things. Does it have a fizz to it? Is it soda-y?
Maddie: It’s crazy fizzy, girl.
Chloe: It’s 19-69 x Palm Angels so it’s a collaboration with a skateboard brand.
Maddie: We love a collab.
Chloe: Ok, going back to the drawing board for my final pick. I’m gonna do a speed round where I mention three that I’m curious about. The first is Black Afgano [Extrait de Parfum] by Nasomatto. I feel like I’m itching for a Nasomatto in my collection. One of them is going to come home with me soon. I’ve smelled Black Afgano recently-ish, but I don’t remember it well enough. The stated notes are cannabis, green notes, resins, woody notes, tobacco, coffee. Base notes of oud and incense. I love the sound of those elements in combination. Obviously, how it plays out on the flesh is going to be a little different. There’s a warmth to it.
Maddie: That one I know pretty well. It’s very warm. Sweet, in a way that you would like. For me, it’s predominantly wood and incense. The other thing of note about this one if the bottle. The bottle is iconic and the juice is pitch black.
Chloe: So don’t spray it on your all white outfit, obviously. I also want to smell this Dries Van Noten one. Voodoo Chile [Eau de Parfum].
Maddie: We’ve got to go to the Dries store and try it.
Chloe: This one has cannabis, rose oil, patchouli, sandalwood, and cedar. So again, it sounds like a great combo…The final one I want to touch on, which also seems like it's affordable, Boy Smells Italian Kush.
Maddie: Those aren’t affordable, girl.
Chloe: They’re more affordable than some.
Maddie: Oh babe, [Italian Kush] is so you. Pompelo, basil, rhubabarb, oregano, cannabis, patchouli.
Chloe: Boy Smells is obsessed with a rhubarb note. But so am I…. No problem with that. I’m kind of a Boy Smells hater. But I do really appreciate the sound of these notes in combo.
Maddie: You know what’s funny Chlo, as we go through, most of the ones we’re talking about have patchouli.
Chloe: Maybe that says something about the relationship between patchouli and weed.
Maddie: People draw an association because they’re like, “Oh that’s like, hippie stuff.” I guess if you want to make a weed perfume, it’s patchouli and citus and you’re done. We’re there.
Chloe: Ok, well. I’ve gotta go….load up my bowl.
Maddie: Wait, you didn’t hear my joke about this chat being cashed.
[Laughter]
Chloe and Maddie: Until next time……SMELL YOU LATER!
Fragrances Discussed
Orange Kush by 19-69 x Palm Angels
Black Afgano Extrait de Parfum by Nasomatto
Voodoo Chile Eau de Parfum by Dries Van Noten
Have any lingering fragrance questions or suggestions for the Nose Candy gals? Leave a comment for Maddie and Chloe using the button below. Follow them here. And join the other frag-hags in listening to Nose Candy wherever you get your podcasts.
For more deep dives into niche fragrances and the sociology of scent, subscribe to Maddie’s “Perfume Enjoyer” Substack here. One of the best reads around!
The 4.20 Collection on ShopMyShelf
Check out my new 4.20 Collection on ShopMyShelf! It features cannabis-infused beauty favorites, some CBD, some THC, etc.
One of my favorites you’ll find on ShopMyShelf is the VENA SOAKING CBD bath salts. These were my saving grace when, unbeknownst to me, I was having a gallstone attack. These salts and my bath were the only thing that got me through those initial hours of pain and nausea.
Another standout is the BLNCD Vital CBD Face Oil. My friend and fellow holistic esthetician Daniela Serra co-founded this brand. When she told me she was working on a range, I knew it would be a dream. The density of this facial oil is just delicious, and I’ve recommended it to countless clients. You can feel how nourishing it is!
I know some of you are going to ask me about CBD skincare! For those with reactive, sensitive skin and/ or dry, mature skin, it’s a great because of its anti-inflammatory properties. But since most CBD skincare ranges tend to be oil-based, I suggest patch testing first if you have oily or acne-prone skin.
Other Weed Stuff We Love
My fave edibles: SUNDAE FLOWERS. MOCHI + WEED? My literal dream combo. The flavors are UNIQUE and just really speak to me… think LYCHEE, YUZU and WHITE STRAWBERRY. A small craft cannabis company with roots in Seoul and Northern California. 5mg of THC per gummy.
My favorite preroll: PURE BEAUTY. These are so cute and just perfect. I’m an indica or hybrid person and have tried both! Stocked in most dispensaries!
Tierney’s Favorite Cannabis Candle: Cannabis by MALIN + GOETZ. Smells so good, with massive throw.
Looking for a new dispensary? Support Gorilla RX! The only Black and Woman-Owned dispensary in LA! 4233 Crenshaw Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90008
ÁMEZING UPDATES:
Busy spring time! New IG feature, you can hit the email button directly on my instagram page and it will leads you to bookings@amezskin.com
If you entered our giveaway, you should have received your products by now! How are you liking them? Let me know! I’d love to see pics too. Thank you to our dear friends at SAIE Beauty!!
Thank you all for reading!
