As you know, this blog is showcasing independent perfumery during National Fragrance Week. I can’t possibly leave out Pia and Nick of Olfiction, and their own collection, Eau de Boujee and Boujee Bougies.
I’m going to hand you over to m’colleague Lisa, who went in up to her elbows and got to know a typical day in the life of Olfiction and the Boujee lab. This article was first published three years ago and has been updated for 2026
Lisa Jones writes: At the beginning of this month, I spent a few days in Leighton Buzzard, doing something new and exciting. TL:DR I was helping to bottle a new range of perfumes from Boujee Bougies – Eau de Boujee. They’re available via their website now. Currently, there are travel sprays online, and Pia tells me that the boxes for the 100ml bottles finally arrived, so they should be available within a matter of days.
The long version of this story is that I’ve known Nick Gilbert and Pia Long for 17 years, since meeting online on the basenotes.com forums. Perfume is a thread that binds our friendship together, so I’ve been immensely happy, proud and impressed by what they have achieved in this field. Both of them had regular retail jobs in fragrance, Nick in Bristol and Pia in Dorset, while I was a housewife with a toddler. What we – and many others – had in common was an interest in smells and a curiosity about them.
Olfiction launched in 2016 to combine their skills in perfumery as nose (Pia) and marketer (Nick) and with shared skills as writers, evaluators, and trainers. Obviously, they have been successful. Having worked for a variety of big brands, and having been nagged, begged and pleaded with by many of their perfume friends, including myself, they launched their own brand, not with perfumes, but candles. Boujee Bougies: Hellflower, Queen Jam, Succulent, Cuir Culture, Gilt, Tart and Thorny – have been very well received, with Caroline Hirons herself obsessing about the rosy, juicy berry-filled Queen Jam candle.
More nagging and begging resulted in a range of 4 perfumes, which I first smelled at the Barnes Fragrance Fair in May. The fragrances are based on the ideas behind four of the candles and are: Verdant – a gigantic green presence that sprouts out of concrete, Quir – a black leather jacket with silver zips (I’ve been wearing it to gigs and it’s perfect), Gilded – a halo of gleaming gold that feels transcendent, and Queen – a juicy rose with berries that is as voluptuous and decadent as biting into a perfect fruit and letting the juice trickle down your chin.
A limited number of travel spray discovery sets were released and the resulting reviews were overwhelming. Fast forward to early November and getting ready for the Big Launch of the range that is now available on the Boujee website. Due to a scheduling clash that would take her away from the lab, Pia needed an extra pair of hands for the bottling and asked if I fancied helping out. Did I ever!
So, I spent a few days in the Olfiction Lab in Leighton Buzzard, enjoying hanging out with my friends and trying not to be overwhelmed by the fact that these bottles represent a huge investment for this tiny company. I know the perfumes smell glorious, and hopefully they will be opened by hundreds of delighted people who will love them. Nick and I did get rather misty thinking about someone opening a bottle on Christmas morning. If that’s you, I hope you love it, and I hope you feel the genuine care that went into making it for you.
I loved chemistry lessons in school, so I am always impressed by a lab coat, and I felt very proper in my blue latex gloves and splash goggles. Nick explained all the protocol we needed to follow to make sure we had no cross-contamination and didn’t go home smelling of (amazing) perfume too much. I have learned that there’s one type of alcohol for cleaning spills on surfaces (isopropyl) and another (ethanol) for dissolving the oils in fragrances when washing equipment thoroughly between different fragrances. Even though we had almost no splashes, just the fragrance in the air is enough to penetrate your clothes and hair. It’s an odd experience to step out of a shower hours later and wonder why your whole room smells of Queen! I’m not complaining though, it’s gorgeous.
The great news is that the perfume is all bottled now. 100 litres of fragrance! It took three of us – me, Nick and Tom the compounder – three days, doing it all by hand in the lab, powered by Welshcakes and Coke Zero. Order yours now, before it’s all snapped up. And yes, there are travel sprays available (thanks to Tom).
Where to buy it
All Eau de Boujee products and candles are available from the Boujee Bougies website.
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