How to Bottle a Feeling
An interview with the founder of Dedcool, a secret website announcement, and a signature scent giveaway.
This edition of Feeling! Magazine’s Design Dive column includes an interview with the CEO of the fragrance brand, Dedcool, an introduction to a new secret society, and a report on spring design trends. This edition is free for everyone because Squarespace sponsored it.
There is a giveaway to win Dedcool’s newest scent, “Mineral Milk,” in the comments!
Fragrance is fascinating to me. Perhaps because, like color, it is this ambiguous, wordless storyteller that lives alongside us. Sometimes, a scent crosses my path that is so viscerally memorable, it is nearly like time travel.
I walked into the hallway where my ninth-grade locker was many years after high school, and the musty smell of the cinderblock hall brought back memories I had long forgotten.
Some scents transport us through space and time. The laundry detergent I used in my dorm, the inside of a certain leather purse, my husband’s flannel shirt collar from college, the coastal air at a specific beach, and the way my home smells after coming back from a trip.
Certain fragrances enter our lives and stick with us; a bond to memories, people, and places we can no longer access.
But could you craft a fragrance that captures these intangible, wordless feelings and bottle it up?
My scent collection throughout life has evolved with me.
The glitter Bath & Body Works Charmin’ Cherry spray is something I can close my eyes and still smell.
Pink’s Fresh & Clean makes me imagine P.E. class and a red iPod shuffle.
A few years ago, I became obsessed with finding a “signature scent” and tried many on to no avail.
One day, I discovered “Xtra Milk” from Dedcool, and that was it. I had an immediate all-time favorite. Now, I will always associate the fragrance with moving to New York, starting something new, and nights at home just my husband and me. It is a fragrance I associate with becoming me.
So, you can imagine how excited I am that I got to interview the creator of the scent and CEO of the company, and ask her all my burning questions about how their iconic fragrances come to life.
Meet Carina Chez, the founder and CEO of Dedcool, the fragrance brand with a cult-following she built as a college student.
Carina called me from her sun-filled Los Angeles office with glowing gradient shades of orange and pink behind her. She seemed to radiate the same colors as the artwork.
“The fragrances are really personal to me,” she explains.
In the early years of Dedcool, inefficiency reigned. It was all grit.
Carina ended up back home in Los Angeles for college and found herself with a lot of time on her hands. She began mixing and playing with scents, which was not entirely unfamiliar territory, as her entrepreneurial parents manufactured all-natural spa and massage oils.
She started posting photos of the scents she was making on Instagram when she was only 21. Her friends became intrigued and began sampling and wearing her fragrances, which seemed to fall outside of the traditional perfume mold. Dedcool is innovative in the fragrance industry. The scents are not targeted to sell to one gender, and the price point is approachable (distinctions they still maintain).
Carina never anticipated her ideas would transform into a business, but demand grew.
The scents felt more fit for living real life: not overpowering, wonderfully layerable, and playful. She calls Xtra Milk, the fragrance she developed as a junior in college, “your favorite white t-shirt in a scent.”
The massively popular brand, Nasty Gal, reached out directly to her one day, unexpectedly requesting a sample of the fragrance to feature. Amazed and in shock, Carina hustled to manufacture samples in professional packaging, which was a new feat, and successfully delivered the kit to Nasty Gal. It felt like her one big shot to get Dedcool out there. But in waiting for a response, she saw online that Nasty Gal had announced a complete business closure. She took the loss and thought, “If they saw something in this, so will others.”
Carina knocked on every mom & pop shop in Los Angeles to try to get her perfume in their store. She brought her scents to trade shows, trunk shows, and across the city. This is truly her passion, she explains to me; it was not an incubator idea or celebrity-backed. It was just her, a college-student with a trunk of handmade perfume, and a passion for natural ingredients and memorable scents.
It was only a matter of time before Dedcool’s scents were picked up by major retailers. Notably, the brand entered Barneys New York in 2018 and Sephora in 2022. Even last year, they collaborated with Erewhon on an Xtra Milk smoothie release! The world she built as a student has become a major player in the fragrance market.
The team aims to launch two thoughtful scents into their collection each year. Mineral Milk is the newest in the family. The notes are: golden nectar, passionfruit, coastal lavender, ocean air, marine salt, amber milk, virginia cedar, and Australian sandalwood.
I asked Carina where this scent came from. Dedcool stays unique, not by following scent trends, but by telling personal stories. Every scent, she explains, is a representation of a memory. Mineral Milk came from the early days of her relationship, falling in love by the ocean. The salt air, the saltwater in her hair, the wild lavender growing on the beach. It was all so lovely, she asked herself, “How do I bottle this?”
It seems the secret recipe of Dedcool is a mix of personal memories, grit, authenticity, and a deep understanding of their community.
How marvelous that we can make feelings more tangible through scent when words fall short. We can transport across time and space with just a whiff of a memory.
Dedcool is the very best at crafting these fragrance experiences, and it was an honor to talk to the woman who crafted the scent that lives with me every day and brings such rich memories and joy alongside it.
It’s also an honor to introduce you to Dedcool’s new scent (and give one of you) a Mineral Milk perfume to try!
A Coastal Giveaway:
Win a bottle of ocean memories in the form of Dedcool’s coastal Mineral Milk perfume. The bottle will ship directly to the winner, with love from Feeling!
To win: Ensure you are a subscriber of Feeling! Magazine, then leave a comment on this article sharing what fragrance you’d turn into a perfume if you could.
Is it your first day in your favorite place to travel? The scent of your wedding morning? Your grandma’s coat? What feeling would you bottle? Detail scent notes in the comments!
*Paying subscribers who comment will be entered in the running twice as a thank you for their support!
Introducing the Secret Society of Feeling! Magazine
We are going offsite, everyone! Time for a URL field trip!
Welcome to the Secret Society of Feeling! Magazine, a members-only website exclusively for paid subscribers of Feeling! It will host a variety of exciting, wonderful activities just for you. Built on Squarespace, the website will house custom mini games, our complete collection of all our downloadable desktop and phone wallpapers, and even a color palette generator for your next creative project.
I am still building out the space, but I want to welcome subscribers inside early for the first time to access the April wallpaper collection. (The password to enter is in the chat!)
It’s really nice to have a place online that is not owned by anyone but you, and completely open to your creative ideas with no limitations. I have used Squarespace for my personal website for years, because the visuals are already beautiful and therefore simple to adapt and customize to my creative vision.
Specifically, the ability to password-protect this space will keep it like a clubhouse, with the password changing monthly for any supporting subscriber of Feeling! to access. The custom code features will allow us to inject custom mini games for you to play that will be reminiscent of the Disney Channel ones from the 2000s.
Squarespace also offered to take 10% off your website project, just for readers of Feeling! You can click here for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, use code “FEELING” to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So now you can get started right away on your creative website project, too!
An exciting spoiler: I am also building a matchmaking system to find you a perfect match for letter-writing. No algorithms, no formulas, no robots. You can apply to be in the letter-writing club this spring, and a panel of real people will meticulously review your profile and find you a friendship match. The panel so far has a professional HR rep, an education consultant, a marketing expert, and a UX designer. It’s serious business.
I am so excited to see the real-life friendships bloom from this new endeavor, exclusively available on the new Secret Society of Feeling! Magazine. More on that, coming very soon.
For now, sign up for a paid subscription ($5/month, $50/year, or $89/year to join the mailing club too! You receive a greeting card in the mail every month), and you’ll get the password to enter the secret society right away.
Adding in some condensed, but classic Design Dive reporting below. Consider this a digest of fascinating new products, brands, and people to enjoy. I genuinely want to make something that you love to read.
Join me as I traverse through New York to discover new brands.
✷ Ceramics brand, Small Things, collaborated with Ithica Humus to make a limited-release olive-holding spiral in a bright pink color, inspired by the beet hummus blend.
✷ Pink Lemon Ceramics makes wonderful candle holder sculptures for mounting to the wall. I spotted one at a friend’s apartment and was enamored by it. There’s this really lovely cozy effect the flickering candles give off on the ceramic shine that really makes the room glow for such a small object.
✷ Feeling! Magazine’s Design Dive interview series is launching in April. I will be interviewing small business owners, designers, and inspiring artists on VIDEO to accompany the article! Why video? I am married to a documentary filmmaker, and he is my very favorite person to work with. As I scheme the future of Feeling!, there is no way to tell the stories I want to tell without his distinct eye, storytelling, and medium. The series will bring articles to life. Documentaries forever. Thoughtful, artistic documentaries should totally be married to imaginative, editorial magazine publications. A perfect match. The first interview has already come together wonderfully with an artist I have mentioned many times here! Get your popcorn ready.
✷ Not quite home design, but home adjacent — I tried another game from my favorite game makers, CMYK Games, called Hot Streak. They make beautifully designed games for people who don’t want to sit through a lot of instructions and just want to play. Hootin’ and hollerin’ ensued.
✷ Loeffler Randall released a wonderfully patterned and colored rain jacket collection. The designs make me want to frolic with some ducks in the countryside rain.
✷ One of my favorite brands, Joyn, released a fabulous polka dot collection of totes and purses. The canvas material is printed by hand with a block printing technique, making an incredibly durable bag.
✷ The Daughter Club is a small jewelry business I have watched for years, based in Austin, Texas. The way she pairs colors, textures, and charm motifs together really inspires me. The classic red dottie choker really has my eye. Daughter Club also made a “mini me” series for some of the jewelry, which makes a really unique and thoughtful gift for a mom you love on Mother’s Day. Matching with your cute baby in cute jewelry?!
✷ Underwater Weaving x Loeffler Randall collaborated on breath-taking colorful basket totes. A luxury splurge for spring fashion, the collection combines distinctively modern colors with traditional basket textiles. The color combinations truly inspired so many wonderful ideas for me. Vibrant seafoam and cherry red, rustic brown and butter yellow. Yum.
✷ If you like stripes, primary colors, and classic silhouettes, I’d like to introduce you to a new favorite brand of mine: Alex Mill. I first stumbled upon the brand by wandering through their store’s door near the Rockefeller Center. Connor remarked that the whole store looked like me. It’s true. Brightly colored classics! Their new spring collection came out today, and it is full of fun-colored crisp linens.
I hope that inspired you to create something, enjoy a new brand, or just immerse yourself in color for a bit. Be back soon with more reports. XO Jenna O.
If you know a brand that fits the bill of whimsy, color, and story — send me an email at jennaisfeeling@gmail.com, I’d love to work with you!
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A note: Working with brands and businesses helps make this magazine dream come true. If I do work on a paid basis with a brand, I disclose the partnership to my readers. A few of the links I included in this article are from ShopMy, which gives the curator a little payment if someone buys a product from their recommendation. If you shop from my links, you directly support my creative work. Thank you!
I would bottle the sweeter smells of farm life. :) Honeysuckle, mowed hay, sunshine and fresh air, endless wildflowers, homemade dirt paths through woods... Something simple, down to earth, and filled with life.
I would bottle the smell when you woke up as a kid for field day. It was always the most bright, sunny day and the birds were so much louder. It smells like wet pavement, sunscreen, and melting popsicles.