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245: ⭐️🏆 The 2026 Smell Ya Later Awards 🏆⭐️ Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

It's the our favorite season: awards. And this marks the 6th annual Smell ya Later awards, brought to you by none other than your hosts and their impeccable taste and expertise to bestow our beloved scents with their flowers in such esteemed categories as:

The Honda Award For Best Accord or Note
The Tynan Sinks Award for Biggest Fruit
The Lactose Intolerant-Presenting Award for Best Milk Fragrance
The 'We Told You So' Award for Best Milk-Substitute Fragrance
The 'Not All Men' Award for Best Men’s Scent
The 'Surprise Bitch, Bet You’d Thought You’d Seen The Last of Me' Award for Best Flanker
The "This One’s Got A Little Sweetness To It” Award For Being Not Too Sweet
Best Pick-me Gourmand (gourmand for people who don’t like gourmands)
The Biggest Slay
The Most Unexpected Gag
The Kris Jenner Facelift Award For Best Legacy Fragrance Revamp
The Sable Yong + Tynan Sinks Award for Best Collab
The “Ladies And Gentlemen, H.E.R.” Award For Best Girl Smell
The 'Not All Men' Award for Best Men’s Scent
Most 'Oh, this old thing?' Beautiful Nothing Scent
The 'Go Girl, Give Us Nothing' Award for Best Body Mist

[What we smell like today: Serviette Immacula, Essential Parfums Ambre Latte]

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244: Fall fragrances that will get your d*** s***** Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

PSL season is upon us, which means... so is cuffing season. We're catching up after a late-summer break with a smelling spree on Fall's new fragrance drops, fragrances that were embargoed for weeks and that we're circling back to, and ones we wanted to talk about but, for no discernible reason, haven't yet. The lot includes some confusing irises, sexy cake scents, slutty going-out party girl scents, and cozy gourmands.

[What we smell like today: Nonfiction Santal Cream, D.S. & Durga Ain't That Sweet]

243: Creating fragrance's new benchmarks [feat. Nick Axelrod-Welk of Contrapposto] Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

Nick Axelrod-Welk can be credited with a lot of beauty culture's millennial-charged evolution in the 2010s, having co-founded Into The Gloss, Necessaire, and Homecourt. For his next act, he's launching a beauty house: Contrapposto, beginning with fine fragrance — 3 of them, in fact.
We welcome Nick on this week's episode to talk us through the three scents created with master perfumers Frank Voelkl and Shyamala Maisondieu, the early days from editorial beauty to brand building, and how true luxury involves collaborating with artisans and masters of their own craft, the privilege to create without bounds, and such joyfully detailed nuances that further one's point of view in beauty.

[What we smell like today: Contrapposto Musc Petille, and Melting Flowers]

242: What does your everything shower smell like? 🛀 [feat. Emily Ferber] Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

Perhaps you've heard of Athena Club, one of the millennial-era DTC personal care brands of the 2010s that offered period products, razors, and deodorant. Once fragrance entered the mix (and the brand entered Target and Walmart), Athena Club unofficially reintroduced itself with an assortment of eight scents across body wash, lotion, and fragrance mists. Most recently, their scents Banana Sunmilk and Pink Marshmallow gained traction on ScentTok, and got our attention as well. We welcome SVP of Marketing Emily Ferber on this episode to discuss creating compelling scents for the mass market, how she got her start in beauty at Into The Gloss and Glossier, and what it takes for a brand to find its legs in an oversaturated market.

[What we smell like today: Bvlgari Omnia Amethyste, Phlur Vanilla Canyon]

241: 👩‍🍳Gourmaybe she's born with it [feat. John Early] 🎭 Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

We have the pleasure and delight of welcoming comedian, director, and actor John Early as a guest on this week's episode to discuss his film Maddie's Secret— AND the fragrance of the same name, made in collaboration with Marissa Zappas and Ruby McCollister for the film.
We get into the gourmand of the fragrance and how it reflects the foodie elements in the film, how so many "LA girl" ingredients have come to define culinary culture, body odor anxieties, and channeling your insecurities into a character narrative in an era of body positivity's tyranny.

[What we smell like today: Elorea Prelude, Kayali Boujee Kitty Caramel Milk]

240: So, everything's milk now. 🥛 Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

We're catching up with new scents we've been living in for the past couple of months — some of which were embargoed by The Brands, some of which flew under the radar until recently, and a suspicious many of which are milky, musky, lactonic scents.
In short: what's the deal? In long: this episode.

[What we smell like today: d.grayi Pandan, Valentino Vendetta Donna]

239: Falling back into The Gap Scents (2026 versions) Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

The Gap re-released its beloved fragrance line, "re-imagined" for today, which, in fragrance-speak, we know to mean reformulated. Formula updates are industry standard for quality protocols, but how do they change the scents themselves? Well, we can tell you in this episode just how the new line compares to the originals we have, and as we remember them.

[What we smell like today: Athena Club Banana Sunmilk, El Morocco Lulu's Back In Town]

238: Does skin color inform our ideas on 'skin scents?' [Feat. Influxious by Funmi Monet!] Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

A repeat guest is a rare occurrence on Smell Ya Later, but when we heard that fragrance aficionado Funmi Monet had something big in the works, we had to bite. Influxious is Monet's brand-new fragrance line, inspired and informed by her Nigerian heritage. She joins us on this episode to talk us through her four debut fragrances, each with its own expression for how you want to feel, connected with a thread of Nigerian ginger. There's the party scent, the vacation scent, the confident scent, and the comforting skin scent with a rarely-smelled base informed by her personal upbringing.

[What we smell like today: Abel Double Scoop, The Nue Co Good Spirits]

237: What went down at Hotel Smell Ya Later? 🏩 Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

We hosted the scent swap of the scentury last week (kidding, but also not kidding) at the Standard Highline, and 115 of you showed up to contribute to the second annual (?) scent circulation trade. This episode is a breathless recap of everything that went down: the community, the energy, the interlopers (we had a swaplifter!), and the lovely folks who helped it all happen: shoutout The Standard team, Marc Jacobs Fragrances and Coty for sponsoring, and Purple PR for helping coordinate.

[What we smell like today: Mugler Starlicious Pistachio Praline, Atwood Penuche]

236: Fake fans and the Fifis Jun 23, 2026

Show notes

We would never be flip about attending such illustrious events as a Knicks championship viewing party or the Fragrance Foundation Awards (affectionately known as the Fifis). Ha ha, of course not. We take the honor as seriously as we take this podcast, which has its own ideas about how awards categories could probably benefit from a bit more diversity. (But no one's paying us to award perfumes anything, so don't listen to us!)

Also, if you haven't gotten your tickets for Hotel Smell Ya Later, it's this week!

🏨HOTEL SMELL YA LATER🗝️

6/25/26

6-9 pm

Join us at The Soda Shop at The Standard High Line to sip and swap with a few surprises...

Tickets are $15, and all proceeds will go to Make The Road

[What we smell like today: Discothèque Next To Me Or Nothing, Viktor & Rolf Bonbon Cola Fizz]

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🏨HOTEL SMELL YA LATER🗝️

6/25/26

6-9 pm

Join us at The Soda Shop at The Standard High Line to sip and swap with a few surprises...

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