From Pacific Palisades to Brooklyn, How I Discovered My Signature Perfume

There’s nothing better than a great referral. Though we live in an era of plenty—by that, I mean both options and choice—sometimes the sheer variety of it all can be numbing. That’s how I got hooked on the Skin Deep column, by Bee Shapiro, in the New York Times. Every month or so there would be a new fabulousperson featured. Sometimes it was a well-known celebrity like Gwyneth Paltrow or ZoëKravitz (could she be any more beautiful?) and other times it was an interesting influencer type (lately, Chriselle Lim and Arielle Charnas) who had an impressiveline-up of serums that I would then go out and hunt down. The column became my de factoedit when I went beauty shopping. Last fall, Shapiro also came out with the Skin Deep bookthat handily compiled all the columns together which I snatched up and gifted—because sharing is caring, right? So it was perhaps to my surprise that I discovered, by chance, while browsing at The Apartment by The Line on Melrose, that she had started a perfume line too, called Ellis Brooklyn and based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.Traveling, as my family has done so much of in recent years, I’ve come to the conclusion that home is where the heart is, but also where your favorite scents are. I later checked out the brand’s candles and body milks at Credo near the Beverly Center, which are sustainable and with clean formulations (win-win!). But it wasthe Ellis Brooklyn FableEau de Parfum that really won me over. It’s a neroli-petitgraincomposition that isn’t oversweet, while still matching the freshness of the California lifestyle. As luck would have it, my husband Fletcher Jones found something for himself on that shopping trip too. He now wears Raven from the brand, which is a unisex peony-patchouli and, hush-hush, will be Bobby Axelrod’s Manhattan penthouse scent on Billionsfor this coming season. I like to think of it as the power scent to go with your power suit.