Follow Your Nose: How Ellis Brooklyn’s Founder Finds Creativity in Scent

I've never made a fragrance by starting with logic. I don't sit down with a list of trending notes and work backwards. Every Ellis Brooklyn scent starts with a feeling I can't shake: a place, a moment, a version of myself I want to hold onto. The reasoning comes later, in the lab, over months of mods and tweaks. But the feeling is the compass. If a sample doesn't move me the first time I smell it, no amount of refining will fix it.

Isla Sirena EDP began that way. A while ago I took a solo birthday trip to St Barths. Between the kids, the company and a very full life, I don't do many things alone anymore, and that trip felt like meeting myself again. I remember the salt drying on my skin, a lime squeezed over something cold, the warm sweetness of the air at dusk. I came home wanting to bottle that exact feeling, the ease and the luxury of being fully present.

So, the fragrance opens bright with coconut water, lime and sea salt. Then it softens into Blue Java banana, papaya and brown sugar, before settling into vanilla and vetiver. It unfolds the way a good day on the island does: slow, sweet and a little unexpectedly.

That's what I love most about scent: it tells stories logic never could. A note can catch you off-guard or pull up a memory you didn't know you still had. Fragrance goes straight past the thinking part of the brain, and I think we should let it.

So, when you're choosing what to wear each morning, don't overthink it. Skip the question of what ‘matches’ the day or the outfit. Instead, what mood or emotion are you feeling or what would you like to feel today through your fragrance? Some days that might be something cosy and familiar. Other days, it might be a little escape to a sun-drenched island.

Choose the feeling. The reasons will catch up.