Dane Fragrance an alternative brand focusing on concept fragrance

Rachel Latimer, a perfumer, an experimental scent designer, at her cabinet of pure and natural essential oils, absolutes, isolates, fragrance oils, aroma chemicals and specialty blends that she uses in the formulation of a scent.(photo by Karen Rifkin)

By KAREN RIFKIN | for The Ukiah Daily Journal

PUBLISHED: December 1, 2023 at 6:15 a.m. | UPDATED: December 1, 2023 at 6:18 a.m.

Rachel Latimer, perfumer, moved her business from Oakland last year—to be closer to family—and opened the doors of Dane Fragrance in July of this year.

She runs a fragrance lab that caters to an international clientele and offers workshops in her second-floor studio of the Victory Theater— originally an opera house and now a multi-tenant office building with 16 suites in two buildings.

*Rachel Latimer’s studio in the Victory Theater, set up with separate work stations, for those who want to learn about the art of perfumery.(photo by Karen Rifkin)*

“It’s the architecture, the aesthetic of the building, that attracted me to this space,” she says.

And she’s taken to Ukiah, as well.

“This is a small town, charming. Everybody knows everybody. At first, I felt out of place but now that I’ve talked to other business owners, I feel that everyone is open. You don’t get that in the city.”

It was happenstance that led her to her unique profession. Transitioning from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, she found a job on Craigslist in order fulfillment for a fragrance and flavor house, a company that independently designs and produces perfume.

Working in the warehouse, she looked up at the lab on the top loft of the building and decided that’s where she wanted to be. In two months she was promoted to manager of the wholesale flavor side and in two more months was promoted to workshop instructor where she began working in the lab.

Over the past dozen years, she has received training in-house and has traveled to receive training with other renowned perfumists; she has excelled in her craft, as an artisan.

A perfumer, an artist trained in depth on the concepts of fragrance aesthetics, is an expert in creating perfume compositions due to their fine sense of smell and skill in producing olfactory compositions.

A perfumer must have a keen knowledge of a large variety of fragrance ingredients and their smells and be able to distinguish each one alone or in combination with others and how each reveals itself over time.

Latimer’s studio is artfully decorated with cabinets and shelves that she [built] burned and painted herself.

“I like inventing things, making unique things.”

There’s a tasteful spread of salami, cheese, crackers and jam on a small side table.

The large table in the middle of her studio is set with six stations, each with 15 bottles of pre-diluted fragrance oils—ocean, gardenia, grass, cotton—ready for workshop attendees to participate in an initiation of creating their own personal fragrance.

She offers a variety of workshops to learn the basic building blocks of perfumery: perfume parties using synthetic ingredients; novice and intermediate workshops using synthetic and natural ingredients; study hall for continuing education; natural workshops using raw materials and natural isolates used in perfumery and bachelorette private soirees.

Her retail products include air deodorizer, a signature series line of three fragrances, sample packets, bath salts, bath toppers, body slick—cream oil that has hyaluronic oil and a Japanese green tea extract.

She walks over to a cabinet and opens the doors to reveal hundreds of tiny bottles—pure and natural essential oils, absolutes, isolates, fragrance oils, aroma chemicals and specialty blends—that she uses in her work in fragrance formulation.

She explains that essential oils—blue tansy, blood orange, cedarwood— are one category of ingredients she works with—raw, natural ingredients derived from plant-based sources.

“If, for example, you were to fractionally distillate blood orange, it would be comprised of different aroma molecules including linalool and beta-pinene, single aroma isolates. Combining these isolates is one of the ways that natural oils are made.”

Pointing to a bottle of natural linalool and synthetic linalool, she explains that she works with both synthetic and natural isolates, some of the ingredients she uses to create a fragrance and ultimately a final product.

“Like any trade, you have to know your tools to get the job done accurately.

“This is 99 per cent of what my company does. I work with an international clientele—Vanuatu, Pakistan, Turkey and locally—in fragrance development for brands worldwide.”

Her services include fragrance formulation, manufacturing, IFRA compliance, regulatory documents, filtration, dilution, packaging, GC/MS analysis and scent scaping.

A client will reach out to her, a company that has a product that needs scent enhancement—shampoo, lip balm, soap, candles; they fill out a form and tell her their concept, their deadlines, their restrictions. They sign a non-disclosure agreement and proceed with the first sample.

“For example, they might be looking for a scent that smells like ‘walking on a cliff, next to the ocean under redwood trees in a fog.’ I work with textures, colors, moods and feelings putting together the ingredients I think would make this concept come to life.”

She creates an evaluation sample in a small vial for her client and moves on with the client toward further development; perhaps something with more pop.

“We go back and forth until the client is satisfied, anywhere from one week to a year and a half of product development. The longer process usually involves the client evolving their concept.

“When you think of perfume, we are not that. We are more than what you think we are. We are not DIYers, we are professional; we work with regulations. The fragrance industry is small, very small, but our impact is vast. People take for granted their sense of smell; they don’t realize how it impacts their lives every day in multiple ways.”