How Boy Smells Co-Founder Matthew Herman Is Breaking Gender Norms With Candles and Fragrances

In a world in which fragrance is so often crafted with specific genders in mind, Boy Smells, a fan-favorite candle and fragrance company, is an anomaly. Here, the brand&rsquo;s co-founder, Matthew Herman, talks about his journey creating the brand, why he refers to the products as &ldquo;genderful&rdquo; and what he envisions for the future of the brand.What was your career path before starting Boy Smells and what led you to start the company? I used to be a fashion designer before I started Boy Smells and David, who is the other co-founder and my partner in all things, was the head of production for a luxury cashmere brand. Both mine and David&rsquo;s worlds were really steeped in luxury fashion which was super exciting and fun to be a part of, but I think my true love was telling a brand story and exploring what a brand means to the consumer. I just love building the culture of a brand and a product because I think that&rsquo;s so enriching. Working in fashion was where I developed this love for branding. When David and I were really getting interested in home and lifestyle, we were feeling like there weren&rsquo;t a lot of products out there for us. We have more of a modern sense of identity 一 we don&rsquo;t follow this camp or that camp, so things that were overly targeted to women or men didn&rsquo;t really resonate with us. Then when we came up with Boy Smells and we put it in the pink box and poked fun at gender by using pink and &lsquo;boy&rsquo; together, we thought it was fun and it turns out it really resonated with people. It felt like all the walls were coming down on what the rules of fragrance is and who can wear what. Why candles? What did you feel was missing from the candle space specifically when you started the brand? We started with candles and I feel like price point was the biggest white space that we noticed. I really love elevated fragrance combinations and I felt like there was so much we could do with candle fragrance at a price point that was inclusive and invited people into the brand. Sometimes buying your first high-end fragrance can be intimidating, so we wanted to bring a modern olfactive perspective to something that everyone felt invited to participate in and reflected the shifts in how people were identifying. We wanted to bring a new sense of identity to the candle space.You use the word &ldquo;genderful&rdquo; to describe your fragrances as opposed to &ldquo;genderless.&rdquo; Why is that so imperative in your brand identity and why is it so important today? &lsquo;Genderless&rsquo; is kind of the go-to term for the products that are supposed to be for everyone. But it ignores gender. A long time ago, fragrance wasn&rsquo;t gendered. It was really at the turn of the century when we invited &lsquo;blue for boys&rsquo; and &lsquo;pink for girls&rsquo; when fragrance became gendered, too. Men are supposed to be into wood and musk because they&rsquo;re strong and capable, and women are flowers because they&rsquo;re sensitive and emotional and it&rsquo;s such BS. We&rsquo;re all all of those things. We need to tap into both sides of our power systems and really be the best person we can. For me, &lsquo;genderful&rsquo; doesn't ignore gender 一 it embraces all gender at the same time. We always mix traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine scent notes together and it&rsquo;s kind of a subtle, tongue in cheek middle finger to these outdated, irrelevant gender constructs. We really hope that by creating modern scents that embrace both masculine and feminine 一 what we call genderful 一 that we&rsquo;re encouraging everybody to be a more authentic version of themselves. If the idea of &lsquo;this is for boys and this is for girls&rsquo; didn&rsquo;t exist, and we were free to just follow our tastes as they truly are, these are the types of fragrances we would have. You recently expanded into the world of fine fragrance. Do you find the creative process between creating candles and creating fine fragrances different? Not totally. There are lots of times where we&rsquo;ll be developing something for a candle and I&rsquo;ll see how we can utilize it in fine fragrance. I&rsquo;m constantly pulling something out of a candle and putting it into a fine fragrance and vice versa. Obviously, the format of wax versus alcohol and the price points are different. But at the end of the day, your fragrance pyramid with top, middle and base notes can hold true between both mediums which is great because we can take inspiration from both categories. Where do you see the brand going next? Are there more categories you want to expand into? Our exploratory set for fine fragrance has been our #1 SKU on the website since we launched fine fragrances which really shows an appetite for the consumer to go on a journey with us into new vertices. I personally think the bathroom is the place most in need of a genderful face lift. These potentially throw-away moments in your day from brushing your teeth to putting on your deodorant, etc., which are things you would rush through so you can show up appropriately for everybody else 一 I would love it if those are identity-affirming moments that you can do for yourself. I always joke that nobody looks at mint toothpaste and says &lsquo;ugh, that&rsquo;s just so me.&rsquo; When I brush my teeth I want it to be rose or pink peppercorn so I can make sure I&rsquo;m tapping into my sacred feminine but also engaging in my spice notes so I can be ready and take on the day. All of those subtleties and making sure we&rsquo;re completely reinventing product categories is so exciting to me and I think it&rsquo;s really important from the underwear you slip on to the candle you light next to your bed, the fragrance you spray on, brushing your teeth, all of those things 一if they&rsquo;re affirming moments then you can go out and tackle anything.

How Boy Smells Co-Founder Matthew Herman Is Breaking Gender Norms With Candles and Fragrances

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