Le Labo

Every bottle of perfume on the shelf is mixed to order. The customer watches a technician work with oil, add alcohol, shake, label the bottle by hand, and write the buyer's name on it. The whole ritual takes around 15 minutes and happens in full view of the counter. For Bruce Pinot and Eddie Rochi launched Lelabo in a small Grand Street apartment in New York in 2006. Both men had spent years working inside mainstream perfume houses, Pinot at L'Oreal Luxe, and Rochi at Armani Parfums, and both had grown frustrated by the industrial distance between fragrance creation and the customer. Their first boutique in Nolita paired 15 custom-built laboratory benches with no bottles on shelves. Every fragrance was mixed in front of the client. Mass market fragrance bottles carry heavy markups that most customers never see through because the bottle arrives pre-filled and the prices tied to the brand on the box.