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There’s a phrase floating round on TikTok these days: “We made the mistaken individual well-known,” It’s used to name out content material creators and tastemakers who, perhaps in hindsight, didn’t deserve the highlight. However I’ve been occupied with it in a different way. It’s really a reminder that the facility lies with us—the viewers, the customers. So, who’re we selecting to make well-known today?
The phrase was particularly prime of thoughts once I opened a press launch about Octavia Morgan Los Angeles. The e-mail defined that the perfume home can be Ulta Magnificence’s first Black-owned status line, and my first thought was: this is the correct individual to make well-known. I could also be simply an editor, however I do have affect over what readers uncover, care about, and even buy. So I believed: what higher story to inform than this one?
Let’s begin with the bottle. The 4 signature fragrances out there at Ulta—Darkish Rose, Midnight Orchard, Legendary, and L’Affaire—come packaged in glossy, fuss-free vessels. A minimalist spherical glass bottle, a daring black cap, and no-frills branding places the highlight on the goodness inside. “Our packaging may be very scaled down, and that was purposeful,” Morgan tells StyleCaster. The ability, she says, is within the spritz. “Once you spritz it, you see, you’re feeling. No matter it’s that you just envision in your thoughts is in that bottle.” She additionally needed the design to mirror the road’s gender inclusivity. “I need males to have the ability to have this on their dresser in addition to ladies.”
Octavia Morgan Los Angeles Darkish Rose
The fragrances themselves are simply as elegant and sensual as their packaging. Darkish Rose, my present favourite, balances floral, fruity, and woody notes with a mix of plum, pink peppercorn, black rose, vanilla, and patchouli. Midnight Orchard leans spicy and candy with peach, apricot, sandalwood, and musk. Then there’s Legendary, a recent scent that’s product of amber, coco, cedar, and cardamon. L’Affaire is mushy and candy, laced with saffron, jasmine, ambergris, and cedarwood. Every fragrance looks like a temper or a narrative—an intentional sensory journey. “Our model’s philosophy is to raise your senses,” Morgan says.
The model’s origin story is deeply private. Morgan developed a perfume sensitivity after years of carrying fragrance with no situation. It was very attention-grabbing to me as a result of I had by no means skilled these signs—nausea, complications, pink marks on my pores and skin—earlier than,” she shares. It was particularly heartbreaking given how central perfume had been to her id. She calls herself a “perfume woman” for the reason that age of 5, a love handed down from her grandmother, who all the time smelled of recent roses. “I’d watch the ladies in my household dress and the very last thing they’d do was spray fragrance. That completely caught with me. That started my love affair with perfume.”
Octavia Morgan Los Angeles Legendary
Morgan’s reverence for scent, mixed together with her nursing background and a familial connection to phytotherapy—her grandmother was an herbalist—led her to begin experimenting with cleaner, gentler substances. In 2022, she formally launched Octavia Morgan Los Angeles. The model’s arrival at Ulta in February marks a significant milestone. “On the prime—the very tippity prime—of their management is ladies making selections. There’s variety there. That basically struck me and impressed me,” Morgan says. “They stroll the stroll and speak the speak.”
Whereas Ulta at present carries 4 of the model’s scents, 9 can be found on the Octavia Morgan Los Angeles web site. “They’re all distinctive and really totally different,” she says. “I prefer to say they’re personalities.”
After all, I couldn’t finish our dialog with out asking Morgan about her go-to pulse factors. Her reply, like her scents, is alluring and intentional.
“Behind the knees, behind the ear. You realize, if somebody is rubbing your leg, they’ll get a horny whiff.”