Rosie Johnston never set out to create a beloved clean fragrance brand worn by celebrities like Jennifer Aniston. In fact, Johnston, who worked as a makeup artist for “a bazillion years,” says she only started creating perfumes because she wanted to smell good.
“You’re so close to people, everything about your appearance and odor you’re aware of because you’re in such close proximity,” she tells POPSUGAR. “I think that’s where my fascination of how I presented to people and what I smelled like really started.”
Although she originally only intended to create her own signature scent, the final result was so good that she couldn’t keep it all to herself. “I had a product that I wore, which was Leila Lou, one of our best-selling fragrances,” she says. “People asked me for it and I made it for them, and then that became bigger and bigger.”
Johnston officially launched By/Rosie Jane in 2010, and now, the brand has eight different fragrances, as well as perfume oils, body oils, lotions, body milk, and even deodorants. Keep reading to learn more about Johnston, her journey launching By/Rosie Jane, and the creative process behind each fragrance.
POPSUGAR: How did you create the first By/Rosie Jane fragrance?
RJ: There’s a bunch of different websites now, but in those days there was a company called the Perfumers Apprentice. I ordered individual notes, and a girlfriend of mine and I sat around over a couple bottles of wine, and I told her I wanted to create a signature scent so that when I walked in the room, people would be like, “I want to book the makeup artist that smells like this.” That was my soul, my only intention. I bought the notes that resonated with me, started playing around, and then I had Leila Lou ($75). I jumped from having a fragrance that I mixed myself to mixing little bottles for people, to taking what I mixed and talking to a perfume house and saying, “Hey, I want it to smell like this.”
PS: Did the quality drastically change once you started working with a perfume house versus creating your own scents at home?
RJ: Yeah. Notes that you could buy online tend to have the same kind of base to them and I didn’t want that. The complexity and sharpness of the notes are what became so different. Leila Lou became more sophisticated when I turned it into a real fragrance. It went to a place where I was like, “Wow, OK, this is intense and incredible.”
PS: What is your creative process like now that you’re creating for the masses versus just for yourself?
RJ: The initial idea that I have to love it is still there for me; it’s got to be something I would personally wear. I realized after creating Leila Lou that what I was pulling on was reminiscent of a lot of classic scents. I’m influenced by all of these parts of my childhood and my first experience with fragrance. I’m always trying to recreate either a memory, a feeling, an emotion, or a location. With Dulce ($75) for instance, I wanted to create something that felt like the ’90s when I very first moved to Los Angeles, when everyone was wearing this grunge vanilla essence. I think the process has remained the same, but I want it to feel familiar to other people, so I probably go a little more general with the idea. Still, it’s so personal to me. Everything I create feels like a memory of my own.
PS: How do you decide on fragrance names?
RJ: Leila Lou is named after my eldest child. Maddie ($75) is named after my daughter Matilda, and James ($75) is my son William James. The fragrance Rosie ($75) is named after me. It’s either what it’s inspired by or what it smells like. Dulce is sweet, and Lake ($75) is inspired by Lake Tahoe. I try to keep them pretty much what they’re inspired by and very literal to what it is.
PS: What is your favorite By/Rosie Jane scent?
RJ: Leila Lou holds a special place in my heart because it was the first, and I didn’t launch another fragrance after that for a while. Now we’ll do at least one a year, but we launched Leia Lou in 2010, and we didn’t bring out [a second scent] until three or four years later.
PS: The brand has now expanded into candles, body washes, and deodorants. What’s been the most fun to create?
RJ: Honestly, every fragrance. I imagine that it’s like writing an album or a new song. Every time I’m doing a fragrance, I feel like I’m in a different place emotionally, and mentally, and experiencing something very different. The creating part is the thrilling part, and I love doing it because of the emotional journey that fragrance puts you on. Trying to figure out what I’m trying to say and what I want people to hopefully experience and feel from whatever I’m creating.
PS: Do you always smell good?
RJ: Smelling bad is my biggest fear, because everyone knows that I’m a perfumer. That’s probably why I created a deodorant you could scrape over really stinky smells. It should be called the “Walk of Shame” deodorant because you can put it on top. This deodorant just eliminates it. But, privately, yes, I smell like sh*t. Publicly, I never smell like sh*t.
Image Source: By/Rosie Jane and Ava Cruz