THE CHIC COMMUTE
BEE SHAPIRO FOUNDER OF ELLIS BROOKLYN
My signature scent is our Myth eau de parfum, which I developed two years ago. One of the luxuries of having your own line is that you can work on something you’ve always dreamt of. For me, that’s Myth. I love that it’s complex yet simple. It’s also a pretty musk that captures all the qualities I love about musk — warm and alluring — without falling into any hippie stereotypes. Myth has levity to it. It’s because we focused more on using ambrette, a plant-derived musk, rather than synthetic musks.
I always tell New Yorkers that it’s my L train scent. I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the commute to the city
requires a hellish, jammed subway ride on the L train. Myth is a gorgeous scent in that it stays close to the skin as opposed to those super-strong fragrances that are like reaching over and slapping your subway neighbour on the nose.
I don’t necessarily wear every single one of our scents regularly, and I definitely have my favourites, but I’ve noticed that when a scent is good, everyone agrees. People certainly have different tastes and different, what I like to call, scent histories. But an amazing fragrance is like great art: it doesn’t require a lot of explaining.