As you climb the ladder towards Debbie Lin and the Hollywood apartment on the second floor of Na-Moya Lawrence, a smell begins to materialize. It is earthy and relaxing, even to land, and when you open its door, the aroma envelops you. This is because Lin and Lawrence have established their artisanal perfume company, Samar, in a corner of their home study space. Sitting in a small folding table there is a precision scale where the duo weighs mixtures. The shelves along the wall are covered with hundreds of small bottles of essential oils and chemicals of aroma.
“Have you smelled this?” Lin says, holding a bottle of green tea oil under my nose.
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These headquarters may seem surprising for a duo that creates awarded perfumes and has built a loyal fans follower. Its production of small lots, inspired by highly personal memories, challenges industry standards. Instead of obsessing with rapid growth, they adopt a spirit of exploration and creativity, along with a little humor.
Much of the messages in the perfume landscape has been aspirational, explains Lawrence. “'I'm in Paris and I'm a sexy lady,” she says, imitating traditional advertising. “That's great, but now you can smell like a dirty pond elf if you want. And that is great.”
Lin and Lawrence launched Samar in Seattle in 2022, succeeding something in which many failed: keep alive a pandemic hobby. “We were talking about the places we want to travel when we can, the things we miss doing,” says Lin.
With names like Grove is in the heart, the golden time and the Holy Spirit, Samar unisex perfumes are made in small lots.
They tried several projects, at first, doing cakes and then starting a line of skin care, but they realized that their true call was not in baking (“we are not people in the morning,” says Lawrence with a smile) and the beauty effort was proven to be too ambitious.
Lawrence had a passion for unusual aromas from the university, when a roommate presented her to the independent fragrance brand A amorphous perfume. The duo soon began to think about entering perfumery. There was only one problem: Lin didn't like perfume so much. Lin told Lawrence that he had never found one to enjoy.
For Lawrence? Accepted mission. She remembers having thought: “There is no way that there is nothing we can find [Lin] To enjoy. And so, while we were speaking like that very bold, 'What if we did? But where the hell do we start? “
At the rabbit burrow they were, touring message and subnets boards, where they found many bad tips, even some of them dangerous. Finally, they ran into the perfumery apprentice, hermitage oils and the pinched wall, material suppliers where you can order the fragrant oils and molecules that make up perfumes. “We think, 'Oh, this is the S.. This is what we are supposed to use,'” says Lawrence.
To develop their complete aroma profiles, perfumes must macerate or sit for several weeks to let chemical processes take place. Lin demonstrates the dilution of the fragrance material, above.
The two began to make aromas that were “based on specific memories and emotions that we wanted to revive for ourselves and share with other people,” says Lin. Samar was born soon. The name has a double meaning in Arabic for both “Paradise fruits” and for “night conversations with friends”, which summarizes the feeling of its perfumes. His first fragrances were Garden Heux (a green, vegetable perfume) and happy paths (a fire and a firewood aroma inspired by Lin's love for camping with friends in the desert near Seattle).
Now his homemade study, the duo moved to Seattle to Los Angeles last April, is beginning to take charge of parts of his apartment: a storage closet is full of finished perfume bottles that is macerating, a term for when the perfume is found for several weeks to let the chemical processes take place.
For each fragrance, one of them takes “point”, for example, in Garden Heux, Lawrence acted as the perfume and Lin as the fragrance evaluator, deciding if the aroma needed adjustments. It is an intimate work environment for partners both at work and in life. “Being able to work closely together is really lovely,” says Lin. Because they have different palates, each can resume certain notes with much more force. “Then, between the two, once we are both happy, so we know that we have something that is really pleasant and balanced,” adds Lin.
Lawrence, right, smells like a sample fragrance. Lawrence and Lin are partners both at work and in life.
Of course, there is not always an instant consensus. They discovered this with Grove Is in the Heart, the winner of an Art and Oflfaction award, presented in Lisbon in 2024 “.[Lawrence] It was like, 'no, it's not quite right. It should be sweeter, but not too sweet, ”says Lin. Some materials replied, but something was still missing.
Lin says: “And I'm just like, 'ok, what is it?' She is like, 'I don't know.
Lawrence laughs at this story, mentioning that sometimes 13 or 14 trials can go before they manage to satisfy both perfumers. “I wanted him more juicy, but there he was standing with a slide of dry orange in his hand,” she says.
“I would never have arrived there,” Bita Lin.
Where they are easily aligned it is in their commitment to make the fragrance available and emotionally resonant. As a small business, Samar does not benefit from the discounts enjoyed by the main brands: large companies literally buy tons of essential oil from a discount rate. Then, the brand reflects that smaller scale by offering smaller sizes to more accessible price points (the bottles cost between $ 10 and $ 55). Each perfume comes in sizes of 2.25 ml, 5 ml or 10 ml, smaller than the 30 ml or 50 ml industry standard. “Many people are samplers,” says Lawrence. “We are samplers.”
Samar's inclusion goes beyond its prices. In Los Angeles, they are surrounded by friends in the fragrance community, particularly the perfumes based in Orange County, James Mijuyen and Kael Jeong, who direct the brands of artisanal perfumes D. Grayi and Kst Scent, respectively. They have formed something like an independent queer perfuming club. For these manufacturers, the genre is not on radar: everyone can enjoy a perfume. In an Instagram publication, Samar explained that in the shows in person, the company asks customers to suspend their beliefs about masculinity and femininity, and discovered that most men gravitate towards their most floral and sweet perfumes such as Blay Berry and Great Lei.
1. Shelves lined with bottles of essential oils and aromachemicals. 2. Samar packaging. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
One of Samar's most different creations, Speakeasy, was inspired by the underground queer bars of the 1920s and the light of the illicit moon that fed the era of prohibition. “It is one of our most polarizing aromas, in reality, but it is also one of my favorites that Debbie has done,” says Lawrence. They do not shy away the complexity of the smell, leaning in the most unusual notes such as Geneva, Savia and Leather Flower. “I really love the darkness towards her,” adds Lawrence.
Its exploration of the smell is thrust of limits. On a recent trip to Thailand, they found themselves in a chocolate coffee called Chocolate Culture Club, where they filed a conversation with the owner, a chocolate player named MK. MK suggested that they create perfumes from fermented chocolate shells, and before leaving Bangkok, he gave them several bags of cocoa peels.
Lawrence borders a shelf with several jars of a brown gross ink, whose results will use to create a cocoa perfume. They will send half of each lot to Thailand so that the Chocolate Culture Club will sell. The smell of chocolate-vinegar is not what one might think when you think about perfume, but that is part of the fun to try to find that perfect mixture.
Lawrence says it is intrigued by the potential of “a little out of the aromas.”
The final result will be “perhaps beautiful, maybe just a bit strange,” she says. “But weird is beautiful.”
