Elizabeth Gaynes of strangelove in Cannes 2019

Profile: I was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Vancouver, and have lived in New York City for the last eleven years. I started my career working with startups all over the world, helping them raise funds and find their way to market. I’ve always appreciated the idea of handcrafted, beautiful quality products over mass production, which is one of the reasons why I lived in Italy for three years prior to moving to New York. I just love the idea that there were towns that only made wedding dresses, ceramics, or shoes for the gondoliers in Venice. Every family in these towns were part of a specialized industry, taking great pride in their work and producing some of the highest quality products in the world. Today, that respect for quality is still found throughout the country.

Borneo Field

Around the time that I moved from Rome to New York in 2008, a friend of mine from a prominent Bornean family asked me to help her with business development and marketing for sustainable farming. Her family owned agarwood plantations in Borneo that were producing sustainable oud. I was already intrigued, but as I began learning more about oud, I discovered that it has long been rumored to be an aphrodisiac. How could I not dive in to this adventure?

I worked with them for three years, during which time a few of the major fragrance houses were vying to do business with us. Their customers were asking for transparency and sustainability, and at the time, not many suppliers could provide this. Eventually we ended up doing a deal with Givaudan where we created a 600 acre patchouli plantation and a vetiver plantation. This three year journey was my introduction to ingredients for fragrances. Throughout this process, I went from plantations in Borneo to boardrooms in Geneva talking to perfumers, marketers, and executives. I was absorbing so much information and wanted to learn more.

While I was going back and forth from Borneo, a close friend of mine, Helena Christensen, would come over with her little boy—my son’s best friend—and she fell in love with oud, just as I had. After we completed our deal with Givaudan, I decided that I wanted to start a perfume house that was purely about the quality of the perfume, using oud and other rare and unusual ingredients. When I told Helena about my plan to start a fragrance house, she asked to be a part of it and signed on as Creative Director. I was thrilled!

Elizabeth Gaynes of strangelove walking in London

We launched strangelove in 2014 at Harrods’ Salon de Parfums with one pure perfume oil called deadofnight. This was an incredible way for our brand to start out and gain name recognition, especially considering that we had just one product to sell.

strangelove deadofnight

We grew quickly as our customers found us. Since then, we have added four more oud-based scents to our collection:  Strangelove meltmyheart, silencethesea, lostinflowers, and most recently, fallintostars, which we just launched this fall. All five of our scents combine two types of sustainable oud with other unusual ingredients like ambergris, orris butter, red champaca, gardenia enfleurage, jonquil nectar, sandalwood, and Peruvian balsam.

Sourcing these special ingredients outside of the purview of major fragrance houses has been a wonderful, rewarding adventure—it feels like finding secret treasures. I will never stop searching for the jewels that make our perfumes so different and special. The high quality of our ingredients is what we believe defines strangelove as authentic luxury.

Elizabeth Gaynes with Helena Christensen and Christophe Laudamiel in the lab

On a related note, I also like to push the limitations of the average perfume buyer towards something a little more daring. It’s exciting to see people try something that doesn’t smell like anything else they’ve ever tried. Whether people love our perfumes or hate them, you can’t not have a reaction to them. Christophe Laudamiel, our “rockstar master perfumer,” is so creative, dedicated to his craft, and passionate about the industry. Helena, our creative director, works closely with me and Christophe in the lab, in addition to working on brand development and outreach.

Helena, Christophe and I do not rest until we finally reach a scent that we’re all thrilled with, even if it takes a whole year to get there.  Strangelove fallintostars actually ended up taking that long, but we couldn’t be more thrilled with the final result!  We know that not everyone will gravitate to our perfumes…and we’re OK with that. It takes time, education, and a desire to stand out and feel, well…super sexy.

On running an American perfume house: Growing up, and even well into my career, I never thought I would run a perfume company. But as I gradually discovered my passion for perfume, I had to keep following it. Running a niche perfume house in America—and in New York City, for that matter—is a very unusual and challenging thing. There are very few fragrance houses in America; most are based outside the US. There are really only a handful of true niche perfume houses based in the US, compared to hundreds in Europe.

Elizabeth Gaynes and Helena Christensen of strangelove with perfumer Christophe Laudamiel recently at Bergdorf Goodman

strangelove is a niche brand, so naturally, we are competing with a lot of larger companies with bigger budgets and larger staff. We constantly work to figure out the best ways to provide a top quality product to our customers while remaining within our budget. Doing that amidst the chaos of New York City sometimes makes our job even more challenging—but it also makes it more adventurous and fun!

Jean-Michel Basquiet via Wikipedia

Favorite American artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat was not only a born and bred New Yorker, but a visionary who pushed the limits of what art could be and what the mainstream art world would accept. He was highly socially conscious and never shied away from exploring political and social issues in a cutting, dramatic way. I find his use of color and incorporation of graffiti and other street art into his work to be striking and visionary. Even over thirty years later, his work holds up remarkably well today; it is timeless and never feels dated.

–Elizabeth Gaynes, Founder and CEO of Strangelove

 

strangelove fallintostars photo via strangelove

Thanks to Elizabeth Gaynes, we have a draw for a 15ml bottle of strangelove fallintostars eau de parfum (for notes click here) for a registered reader in the USA, Canada or EU. (you must register on our site or your comment will not count)

OR A DISCOVERY KIT OF ALL FIVE (INCLUDES deadofnight, meltmyheart, silencethesea, lostinflowers and for this article fallintostars . To be eligible, please leave a comment with what you enjoyed about Elizabeth’s path to perfumery, if you have a favorite strangelove perfume, if you choose the discovery set or the 15 ml of fallintostars and where you live. Draw closes 12/13/2019

strangelove is available at Jovoy Paris, Luckyscent and Net-a-Porter

All photos belong to Elizabeth Gaynes of strangelove unless otherwise noted.

Elizabeth Gaynes of strangelove is our 148th American featured in our series.

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