November Nichols Dishes On Her CHÉMIN Fragrance House

A force in the fragrance industry is dishing on the sumptuous scents offered at her intentional boutique fragrance house.

November Nichols is the owner of CHÉMIN, a luxury collection of custom fragrances, luxury goods, and sensory experiences for individuals, groups, and organizations. The perfumer offers artisan tea, aura and pillow mists, body products, candles, fine fragrances, and more at her fragrance house, a standout in the billion-dollar olfactory industry. Insistent on intentionality, Nichols caters to customers whom she calls “muses” as she walks them through the process of customizing CHÉMIN scents attuned to their lifestyles and interests.

For Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting #MagicMakers who are leaving indelible marks in entertainment, entrepreneurship, and music, and we think November Nichols is a perfect fit.

 

Below Nichols details her beginnings, the intentionality she personally pours into CHÉMIN, and her affordable luxury collection with JCPenney.

 

Tell us about launching CHÉMIN and your intentional fragrances made for your “muses.”

I’ve been in this fragrance game for a long time. Most people think, ‘Oh my God, where has she been? She just popped up overnight!’ I’ve been doing this since 2014 and really leaning into the artistry of fragrance. I was led there with my practice of meditation. So the company that made the candle that I meditated to discontinued it and it was hard for me to find a replacement. I looked high and low literally to try to find something that didn’t aggravate my allergies or send me into a tizzy and couldn’t find anything.

And so I said, it couldn’t be that hard to make a candle but it turns out it’s a little bit more complex than I thought; but I made it happen. And the energy candle was the very first candle that I launched. And so the reason we call it intentional fragrances is because every single formulation that I create that you find in our candles or in our teas or in our body products, is an intention behind it. So the energy candle is obviously to help you to reset your energy. It’s an orange, pineapple, and sandalwood, and it’s my meditation candle that I meditate to every single morning. If you know anything about the mindfulness practice, then you know that they teach you to put a ritual in place so that you will continue to show up to your cushion. And my ritual is the candle, tea, and then just sitting.

And so after I created energy, I created relax because I was like, okay, I need something to bring me down at the end of the day. And so at the end of the day when I’m reflecting on my day with gratitude, I burn my relax candle and I’ll have a cup of tea and I’ll write in my journal about what I’m grateful for. And so those candles were what started it all because after that came love after that then, after that home. And that’s what I mean, each of those words are intentional words, and are what I wanted to call into my life because I believe that you speak into existence what unfolds and manifests into your life.

When we first started on the trade show circuit, [my friend] Robin told me that Pinners was having a conference in Atlanta, I was living in LA at the time, and I said, ‘Oh, why are you telling me that?’ She’s like, ‘I think you need to put these candles and your body products out’ because by this point, it was the beginning of 2017, and I had been dabbling in making this stuff for a while and realized I could use body products and things with fragrance in it. I just couldn’t use the ones that had things that aggravated my allergies. So I created this process where you would pick a base and then you would pick the fragrance, and then you could determine the intensity and you would walk away with a custom product.

And so we took the candles and we took that to the Pinners conference. And we were supposed to be there the whole weekend, and literally, we sold out of everything by midday on Saturday. And so we had one muse; because you know we call all our clients our muses, to come up, and she’s like, ‘I don’t want a scrub or a butter or an oil.’ She said, ‘I really just want a fragrance. The company discontinued my fragrance. I haven’t been able to find it.’

So does that sound familiar? That’s the same reason why I created the energy candle.

After some back and forth considering that she wasn’t making custom fragrances at the time, Nichols agreed to create a perfume for the “muse” on the spot. The moment turned out to be something pivotal in her life. 

“I was like, what do you like to smell? And I began to ask her all the questions that we now ask all of our muses who we create custom fragrances for on our fragrance assessment. And within 20 minutes, I created her a fragrance based on how she lived what she liked, and what she liked to smell. And that’s why we say that our collection is intentional. It is not a top-down collection. It’s not a collection that comes from the top as the major companies. It’s more of a bottom-up because we start with our clients and we build from there because we believe that our clients are the final note to anything that we create.”

Some people don’t know what a fragrance house is, can you break down what that means and detail how pivotal it is for you to have that?

So people have brands. We’re not the only Black women-owned brand, there are tons of Black women-owned fragrance brands that are out there on the marketplace. We are not by any means discounting anything that anyone else has done in this space because some amazing black women are killing it in the fragrance game. The differentiator I think, between us and most other brands is that we formulate everything in-house. We are our own manufacturer and production house, and we not only formulate for ourselves, but we formulate for other people as well. And we helped to launch other brands as well. And so I think that is the distinguishing factor. And I never want to say that we’re the only one in the world because I’ve not been everywhere in the world. There could be someone else, somewhere else in the world doing the same thing, it’s just that when you Google, we’re pretty much the only ones that come up. We are doing this at a very high level and with our partnership with JCPenney, it’s taking it even further. I don’t know any other Black female brands that have that kind of partnership in play right now.

So I think those are the distinguishing factors between what CHÉMIN has going on. A lot of times people enlist perfumers from other fragrance houses. They have master perfumers and they put out beautiful fragrances all over the world, and they provide fragrances for major brands. And a lot of times we go to those larger houses in order to launch our brands and our collection. And I think that we do that sometimes, not knowing that CHÉMIN exists, and other times because you just feel more confident working with that kind of company versus our company. So there’s a lot to be said in this space around how people value us in this marketplace.

What are some of the notes accessible at the fragrance house?

We have about 450 notes and accords that are in our library at our production space. I mean, they run the gamut. I mean, some people have fragrances that are in our library now that are inspired by the moon. Some have fragrances that are inspired by the beach and their favorite travel destinations. And I answer the question this way because one of the ways that we’ve been able to get to the heart of what people love is to get them to talk about how they live and the things that they choose to spend time on and do.

 

We use those pivotal kinds of questions and conversations in order to get to the heart of what you like. So you said you like warm, deep sensual senses. I would put you probably in a woody category with an oud. And so that’s where I would lean if I was beginning to fragrance you. And then I would bring in some of the florals because I do believe that floral has a place, especially when you’re pairing it up with something as deep and yummy as an oud would present itself. I think a lot of times people don’t give themselves credit for how much they do know in terms of what they like to smell and what makes their heart smile. I think that as consumers these days, they’re savvy, you know more than you think you do about what brings you joy and what you want to smell like. And so I think that continuing to put that power in the consumers’ hands is critically important in this space and time that we’re in. People want to know more about what they’re putting on their bodies.

You bought it up earlier, but let’s dig into this CHÉMIN affordable luxury collection with JCPenney. 

I’m from Lafayette, Louisiana which is a smaller kind of area in Louisiana. And when you go to Lafayette, there are not many places where you can shop. I mean, you have your JCPenney, you have a Target, you have this one main mall, but when you go, they don’t have a Fifth Avenue, they don’t have a Nordstrom. They don’t have those kinds of places there. And so a part of the collaboration is really about making luxury accessible to everybody. I don’t feel like the geography of where you live should impact your ability to get your hands on good products and luxury products. And just because you live in a place that doesn’t have one of these high-end boutiques, doesn’t mean that you don’t have the money to spend on nice things for yourself.

It just means that you’ve chosen to live in another location. And that’s okay. And so a part of the partnership with JCPenney is really about accessibility geographically. And then we offer our collection at a lower price point. If you know anything about CHÉMIN a custom fragrance experience with us inside our fragrance house is anywhere from $190 up to $1,500. That’s pretty pricey for just the normal person, that’s our luxury collection though. And so the partnership with JCP provides an entry point with our body products that range from $38 to $50. And then we did an eau de toilette for JCPenney, not an eau de parfum, but our eau de toilette still has a very high concentration of fragrance oil in it. We offer that at $100, which is more affordable to individuals out there in the marketplace and it doesn’t compromise CHÉMIN quality as well, because it comes in our vintage CHÉMIN box and our bottle. I mean, we don’t compromise the quality of what it is that they’re getting. So it is a bit of luxury at a little bit more of an affordable price.