Octavia Morgan is revolutionizing the fragrance industry with her line of clean, genderless perfumes that cater to the often-overlooked segment of fragrance-sensitive consumers. As Founder and CEO of Octavia Morgan Los Angeles, she has become the first Black and woman-owned luxury fragrance brand in Ulta Beauty’s prestige space, combining her scientific background with a passion for botanical ingredients inherited from her herbalist grandmother.
In this exclusive Q&A, Morgan discusses her journey from creating scents to address her own fragrance sensitivity to building a luxury brand that challenges gender norms in perfumery while offering safe options for the estimated one-third of Americans who experience similar sensitivities.
This started almost 8 years ago. I am a fragrance girl. I’ve been wearing fragrances since I was 5 years old. I started to develop fragrance sensitivity, and really didn’t understand what was going on. I’m a researcher. I discovered I have fragrance sensitivity – I would get headaches, I would get nauseated, and I would get fine bumps on my skin. I actually went to the marketplace to look for a clean or natural alternative and couldn’t find what it was that I was looking for. Very disappointing because when people of color wear fragrance, we want our fragrance to last, and we want it to project. When we walk in a room we want it to fill the room up, and when we leave we want it to leave a trail. And I couldn’t really find that.
I have a science background. And my grandmother was a herbalist. So I had a working knowledge on how to work with botanicals and plant extracts. I researched, took classes, got a mentor, and came up with the first four in our line, I sometimes call it a “selfish line” because those four were only for me. I never intended to put them out into the marketplace.
But what happened was, I was doing pop-up events, and at one of the events, I met a woman who was able to complete what we call a fragrance journey. After we completed the fragrance journey she started to sob. I said, “What happened?” And she was like, “I haven’t been able to wear fragrances in 12 years,” because she was so fragrance sensitive. So that really was the catalyst that lit a fire under me to take it out into the marketplace, because statistics show that one-third of the U.S. population is fragrance sensitive, or they identify as fragrance sensitive. We have people that have loved ones who are fragrance sensitive, and they haven’t been able to wear fragrances in years, and we don’t understand how not being able to express yourself with fragrances, how upsetting that actually can be.
What challenges have you faced as a Black-owned luxury brand in an industry dominated by European names?
For me, it’s my journey. I embrace my journey as being a little bit different. We don’t chase trends. Whatever comes to me, if I like it and I’m moved by it, that’s how we put things out. And so far that’s worked for us, and I feel like that’s going to continue to work for us. One of the challenges that we’ve had is always, and I’m always going to go back to it, it’s always from a financial standpoint. It’s always going to be finances. Although fragrance is like a billion-dollar business, sometimes for people of color, the financing can be very limited. And so that seems to be the running key throughout.
When you think of potential consumers, what message do you hope that every person who wears your fragrance walks away with?
For me it’s always been the same message since the beginning. I see our brand as a safe space for people to explore fragrance and break out of those gender norms. We say gender is very important, that I create from a gender inclusive perspective, because prior to the 19th century, everyone wore whatever – florals, men wore florals, women wore whatever floated your boat.
But after the 19th century, people were kind of put in a box. Men wore woods. Women wore floral. So, as I was doing my research, I was like, that doesn’t sit right with me. So I wanted to create a brand where people felt extremely safe to explore fragrance, to explore our fragrances. I have men that wear my florals – it’s very important to me that they feel safe enough to wear our florals, which all of our florals, if you look at the notes, they’re always going to be grounded with either a wood or a spice, and that’s because it helps to balance on a man’s skin. The same thing with women – all of our masculine leaning scents, they have a floral in there, they have something in there that helps to soften and balance.
Where can viewers find your products?
First and foremost, we have our 4 leading scents in Ulta Beauty Stores and Ulta Beauty Online. By the time this airs we’ll be expanding to 600 Ulta Beauty Stores. So it’ll be a store near you, and all our other scents that are not offered at Ulta Beauty you can go to octaviamorgan.com. My Instagram is @octavia morganla. My TikTok is @octaviamorganla. So you can always find us on there.
