What started life as fragrances for candles get reinvented for these personal fragrances which are bursting with personality.

The vibe

Boujee Bougies are the original brand which spawned Eau de Boujee – you can read our brand guide to their candles to find out about the candle scents. The creators, Pia and Nick, got so many requests for their sumptuous candle fragrances to be made into fragrances for people rather than rooms, that eventually they gave in and decided to do just that!

True to the Boujee Bougie candle fragrances, the Eau de Boujee scents are up-beat, vibrant, and that little bit subversive. These modern, cosmopolitan fragrances cock a snoot at stuffy, old school perfumery flimflam and instead carve their own path with scents which are fun and irreverent.

The brand

Sometimes brands come along who disrupt the way that things have been done in the past, the traditions that we adhere to. Sometimes that can be for shock value, for a marketing USP, or to stand out in a crowded marketplace, but now and again it’s because the people behind that brand believe that we have an opportunity to break the mould and to make things better, more equitable and more open. This brand is one of those and the Boujee Bougie manifesto goes into their stance in more detail.

The scents

If you’ve smelled the Boujee Bougie candles, you’ll know that they have depth, intensity and a throw which fills your whole house. The brand certainly set the bar high with the fragrances they made for the candles, so they needed to match that with the personal fragrances, and thank goodness they did.

The personal scents are zoomed out versions of the candles themselves, so whilst there are definite similarities between the two, the personal fragrances take in a view of the wider picture and allow for the addition of new facets into the scents. My favourite candle is Cuir Culture, so I was interested to see if I would like the personal fragrance (Quir) just as much, or if something else would knock it off the top spot when it came to putting on my skin.

Bougie

Listed notes: Wax, peach skin, silver smoke, incense, candle wicks, musk.

Despite having one of the most romantic notes lists ever, Bougie is definitely the most difficult, strange and artistic fragrances in the collection. It hovers somewhere between the real and unreal, like a scented representation of the veil between worlds. But that artistic representation and joy of exploration is what the brand were going for: a piece of olfactory art.

Nutty, plasticky, voluminous, sheer, Bougie is all those things. It does smell of candles, cold, snuffed out candles in cold churches, but also freshly lit candles in New York apartments. It’s as if the brand has simultaneously managed to capture candles of all forms throughout the ages. It’s definitely weird, but also kind of wonderful too.

This fragrance is a limited edition.

Quir

Listed notes: Bergamot, pink pepper, Amber Xtreme, rose absolute, tobacco absolute, leather harness accord, castoreum, cashmeran, patchouli, labdanum, musk.

Smoky, sultry, leathery, I find a lot of similarities between Quir Culture the candle and Quir the fragrance, which is addictive, bold and very grown up. Unapologetically edgy is how I would describe this scent, which is very much an evening – even night time – wear.

It starts with a cool, sparse clarity from the bergamot, quicky heated up by the spicy pepper. The rose adds a wonderful richness to the heart of the fragrance, it doesn’t feel particularly floral, but you can feel this aspect filling out the middle of the scent, cushioning the smoky, leathery facets which orbit it. The tobacco adds a curl of sweetness and the castoreum brings a purr of animalic warmth.

Quir is a fragrance which could so easily have gone trashy, skanky, shocking and ultimately boring, but it has neatly side-stepped all those traps. There’s a hidden power here, a self-assuredness and confidence. It’s a scent which doesn’t scream in your face, but instead whispers, its breath hot against your ear. I imagine wearing this on days when I need my confidence turning up to 11 and it strikes me too that it would be an interesting first date scent. Your beau would either turn tail and flee or become your devotee with just one sniff.

Queen

Listed notes: Rhubarb, bergamot, nutmeg, carrot seed, rose, violet, raspberry leaf, geranium, iris, black tea, benzoin, opoponax, myrrh, sandalwood, patchouli, earthy notes, musk.

The original candle was inspired by the scent of making jam from foraged berries, and Queen follows that up with a scent which is more grown up, not quite so sweet, but all the more elegant for that. The rhubarb and bergamot open with an invigorating rush of energy, tart and zingy. This is followed by a fruity, semi-sticky mid section, fleshed out and contained with rose and violet petals – perhaps as if they themselves have been dashed with droplets from a spilled jar of jam. Because the floral elements here take up which feels like a larger space than they do in the candle, the perfume becomes very appealing, sophisticated, and likely to appeal to a wider client base. A complexity has been injected into the basic idea for the scent, which brings nuance of spices, resinous touches, and a woody platform for it all to rest upon.

In a way, Queen feels to me like the fragrance which has travelled furthest from its original candle, however that journey has brought with it a level of sophistication that a debutante could only dream of. Our queen is all grown up, and is a powerhouse in her own right now.

Verdant

Listed notes: Timut pepper, neroli, cactus accord, violet leaf, tomato leaf, white flowers, Australian sandalwood, javanol, vetiver, oakmoss, concrete accord, musk.

“Green” fragrances seem to be a hot topic in fragrance land at the moment, and if that is the case then Verdant is bang on the money. The tagline for this fragrance is “millions of green stems weave through brutalist buildings” and, as a description, that is spot on. Imagine celery growing through cracks in the pavement and you’re really not far from how it smells – including with the peppery liveliness that Verdant opens with.

Green fragrances that have concrete accords in them sometimes make me think of the end of the world, and they can have a sombre, seriousness about them. Verdant does makes me think “apocalypse” but not necessarily in a melancholy way. Instead this is sipping a vodka and green juice cocktail, and cackling as tower blocks are toppled by invading plants. More “Day of the Triffids” than “Nature is healing” but in a way which feels very relevant to this particular moment in time.

Gilded

Listed notes: Lemon, saffron, gold accord, frankincense oil and resin, carnation, cedar leaf, beeswax absolute, myrrh, cedarwood, labdanum, leather, civet, musk.

If you like the smell of metal then you are going to love Gilded! It has that electrical crackle of licking a battery when you first sniff it. The scent does this weird chameleon thing at the start where it does indeed smell like lemon, but it also smells like golden metal too, it’s interestingly peculiar and although the scent itself feels quite edgy it was touches like this which kept me sniffing my wrist to see what it was doing next.

The lemon does sneak away, but the metallic accord persists, softening and sweetening slightly but remaining at the heart of the scent right through to the end of a wear. The edges of the gold become smudged by a smoky, resinous ribbon. All in all, I imagine that Gilded smells like a new censer, fresh out of the box and ready to be swung in church.

The verdict

The perfumer for the Eau de Boujee range was Pia Long, and I have been saying for a while that Pia is a name to watch in this industry. I see nothing in the Eau de Boujee scents which would make me doubt that. These are real fragrances, fully conceived and executed, they’re a little bit wild, full of energy, and robust in their construction. The scents are technicolour scents rather than pastel shades, and they will appeal to those who want something new, something funky, and something both wearable and distinct.

My favourite of the group remains Quir, because it makes me feel like a badass when I wear it, but Queen comes in a close second. The scents all perform well, and last at least four hours, often much longer in the case of Quir and Guilded in particular. I’m excited to see what comes next for this brand. Will Hellflower become a fragrance? Will the next scent be candle first or personal scent? I’m looking forward to finding out.

It’s worth saying as well that you don’t need to know the candles in order to “get” these scents: they stand in their own right for sure.

Buy it

The Eau de Boujee scents are all priced at £160 for 100ml of EdP. They’re coming soon to the Boujee Bougies web boutique and I highly recommend that if you like the fragrance, then you should try its partner candle too for the full, immersive experience!

We were gifted samples of these fragrances by Nick and Pia – huge thanks to them. Header image by Hoàng Kim Long Lê from Pixabay. Other images of the products by The Sniff.