Making Scents, Or Uncommon Scents
Shelley Callaghan, co-founder of Antica Farmacista
Interviewed by Paul L. Underwood, writer and editor based in Austin, Texas
Shelley Callaghan co-founded the luxury fragrance brand, Antica Farmacista — best known for its sumptuous diffusers, though they also make candles, room sprays and body care products — in 2003, after her friend, Susanne Pruitt, had received a cancer diagnosis. Together, while facing down the big questions around purpose and meaning, they hit on a plan: Going into business together, following Callaghan’s lifelong passion for scent.
More than two decades later, the business is still going strong, continuing to innovate with new scents and product categories. We spoke with Callaghan about what drives her, where her passion comes from, and why her secret source of inspiration might just come from a different kind of bottle altogether. (Hint: It inspired AF’s bestselling scent, prosecco.)
the interview
Paul: I’ve read your story in a few interviews, but it’s always great to get it in your own words. What was the journey that led to Antica Farmacista, and what has been your journey since co-founding it?
Shelley: It's always funny when you kind of think about the big picture, right? Like, how did I get here? It's never a straight line, that's for sure. At the root, it really all filters back to fragrance, and my love of scent, and how it's been front and center my entire life. I moved around a lot as a child. My parents were from Seattle, but I was born in Pasadena, and then lived back east in Connecticut and Pennsylvania and then back to the northwest. But as a kid, I remember making candles — I would take all the candles I could find in the house and melt them in the basement, which I'm sure was a massive fire hazard.
I bet your parents loved that!
Exactly. I had two older brothers that were seven, eight years older, so they were doing their own thing. I spent a lot of time on my own. I had that scent interest from a very, very young age. And when I think about how it ties into Antica 21 years ago, I was doing some work for a buddy of mine who had started a shoe company here in Seattle, and I was doing some creative work. I have a creative background, but at the time my kids were young and at home, and so I worked for an advertising agency in marketing for four years, and was doing some project-based stuff for this guy who had started this shoe company, and on his desk was a diffuser. And this is 22 years ago, and it was from Italy, and I had never seen it. Which sounds nuts, but that many years ago, there really weren't very many options on the market.
And, long story short, I started to do some research and realized there's nothing like it in the US. The fragrances that I was smelling, I didn't love, but I loved the delivery system. And I thought, gosh, this is something that's really interesting. I wanted to live with it.
At the same time, one of my best friends[1] , who had a financial business, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it was one of those moments where she was asking herself these questions like: What do I want out of my life? And what do I want to change? It prompted me, as her closest friend, to ask myself the same questions. It sounds so crazy, but the element of fragrance was front and center for me in that moment. And, my gosh, it was really transportive.
I said to her, “Hey, let's mess around with this.” I've always loved fragrance. I've always loved perfumery. I just dabbled in it on my own. She's got a business background, and so we went and met with the gentleman who had produced this original diffuser in Italy, which he claims is where it originated. (There are lots of theories out there that it came from elsewhere.) We decided to partner with him. We created our own brand, and the brand name means ancient chemist. It was a nod to the Italian roots of this product that we had discovered.
We ended up creating the brand, importing the juice from him. Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom were our first two customers. At Nordstrom, I went to the fragrance department because I felt like what we were wanting to produce was something that felt like fine fragrance, but for your home. The customer we were after wasn't necessarily an air care customer in the home department. Back then, they didn't even have a home department, or it was tiny, and they weren't doing much in the world of candles.
We love that idea of telling the story that, if you're buying Jo Malone or Diptyque or other niche brands, if you're in that mindset of buying a high-quality, beautiful fragrance for your body, then why not do the same but in your home?
Honestly, at the time, we thought, “This is just a hobby.” It gets me into perfumery, which I loved. It was a great distraction for my friend at the time. It started there, and there's no way, 20 years ago, we thought this would turn into anything. That's the origin of how it all got started.
Then we just kept going and realized that we were a pretty good team. For me personally, just the education process of perfumery, that's been a real joy of mine, personally and professionally.
Before we get into what goes into the product, what was the process behind creating the brand itself?
The look, the feel, who we're targeting, at the time was probably the customer and people I surrounded myself with. I felt like there was a real void. When I was presented with this diffuser concept, I thought, OK, this is very effective. But how do I make it something that, aesthetically, I really want to display? Something that is not hiding behind a stack of books, but maybe a bit of a focal point? I wanted something that felt very old world, apothecary-inspired. Classic and timeless, and yet had a freshness and a bit of a modern feel to it. I think we did that early on, just with some typography. The brand obviously evolved in 20 years. But some of those elements, the primary logo, the scroll logo, those are things that we pulled from Italy.
Back then, we thought, “Who knows how long this is going to last?” The shoe company was well behind us, that failed immediately.
I took that philosophy of what I thought Antica was for as a brand, and when I worked with the perfumer who's now really kind of my right arm, I work almost exclusively with one, and we know each other intimately. She's such a fabulous person. It's been a real treat to develop fragrances, and we can kind of fill in one another's language, because we work together so much.
One of the things that I recognized early on, but I really didn't have the words for, was the direction I was going. There was always a little bit of an edge to my initial fragrances, and I still think I carry that through today. Some of the really, really old, classic, Old World fragrances that are beautiful, there's a softness, there's a roundness to them. What I've tried to do throughout the entire collection is maintain some of that Old World feeling, but inject something that might not be anticipated, or not even describable. There's a sharpness to it that is interesting.
Totally. How do you balance what resonates with you personally versus what you think will do well commercially?
It's a good question. If I look back, I was creating for myself. I would think about people I knew, and I would create these images in my mind of like, okay, this isn't necessarily a fragrance. Maybe I'm not, personally, I'm not a big honeysuckle fan, but I feel like there's a demand. I think there is that girl, and who is that girl? And so I would come up with a creative brief for who that girl is, if it's not myself, and the classic questions of Where does she live? What does she wear? What does she do? And I’d build something that I'm developing for someone who I think is going to love the product.
We never, ever did focus groups. I rarely would develop a scent, and show options to anyone. And I still feel this way. In most companies, you've got to share your creative work, and receive criticism, whether it's positive or negative, and then make adjustments. And I think now that we've got the distribution we do, I definitely feel like I'm a better judge of what works and what doesn't. There's things like, wow, this is probably going to appeal more to the masses. And this [other one] is probably going to be a little too pointed in a direction that might not generate sales. Over the course of the last 20 years, I've paid close attention to what I really believe is the right fragrance for whatever that application is. So it's a delicate dance.
It's funny. Have you read the Rick Rubin book, The Creative Act?
No, but it's in my queue.
Oh my gosh, that book is like poetry to me. I read it a couple years ago, whenever it came out, and then I made notations. Now I just grab it and open it up to any page, and there's little morsels here and there. He makes the point, I don't remember exactly how he puts it, but it's basically like: The real creative work is not in the end product. It's really about the process of creating. If you're worried about how it's going to end up, who it's for, and who that person is, what that person is going to want, you destroy your creative process. I remember reading that and thinking like, yeah, that's it. That's how I create. At some point, you're thinking about who the end customer is, because now it’s business. But if I try to stay true to what I'm trying to create — like, what was that original concept for that particular fragrance? — I need to stick with that and not let the waters get too muddied. It's a struggle, but I've tried to really hold onto that over the course of time.
Well, with apologies to Mr. Rubin, I did want to ask how you judge between a scent that you like, versus one that actually fulfills the initial goal of the creative brief, designed with someone else in mind?
That's a really good question. For example, our new fragrance for spring. It was the concept of that Saturday morning cozy white t-shirt, cashmere, maybe a cup of Earl gray tea, just warm, warm, warm, hints of vanilla. Just enveloped in kind of that coziness. I had this lactonic note and toasted rice, and I really had it going, right? It was like, okay, good. And then all of a sudden, I smelled this particular oud — I have a mini-lab in my office that I just work from initially — and then I handed over the chemistry piece of it to my perfumer.
But there was one particular oud that I was like, gosh, this is so sensual, and this woody element really would be amazing in this, and the fragrance I was just describing is called Warm White. And so I added it, and I was really loving it. And then all of a sudden, just this past week, I'm like, No, that does not work. I went back to my entire creative mood board, the whole thing, and I'm like, I love it, because I'm kind of on this kick right now with just this particular oud. But it doesn't fit at all with what I'm trying to do.
It requires discipline. To your point, to go back to the creative brief, like, What problem are we trying to solve here? Is it a void in our collection, or is it just the pure inspiration of x, and you're going to try to create a fragrance that really evokes the spirit of that? But trying to stay disciplined is something that we do. I just don't do it in that format of around a boardroom table with everyone else.
I do have one person, my art director / graphic designer. When I come up with a creative brief, we're collectively adding artwork or music or whatever it is, we're kind of layering these elements and that are the spirit of what we're trying to create. And so I'll let her smell things. But I know her well enough that I'm like, “Oh, I know why she's saying that, because she's incorporating this information.” I do bounce ideas off of her, but otherwise it's pretty streamlined to just my nose.
"...if you're in that mindset of buying a high-quality, beautiful fragrance for your body, then why not do the same but in your home?"
- shelley callaghan , Founder of antica farmacista
What spurred you to follow that youthful passion for scent all the way to starting a business?
Some of my oldest scent memories are from Palm Springs, and time spent with my grandparents. We are all smelling the minute we come out of the womb, but I was paying attention to the fact that scent is everywhere. I've got two brothers who are seven and eight years older than I am, so I was raised a bit like an only child for many years. I had a lot of alone time with my grandparents, and I just remember really paying attention, whether it was playing with my paper dolls, entertaining myself for hours and hours and hours, or going outside and exploring. It wasn't like I was a friendless child. I feel like I had plenty of friends, but I just recall having a lot of free time on my own, where I'm smelling books. I have vivid memories of smelling my baby doll, the Barbies, the skin on the Barbies, right? I mean, like all those funny rubber [scents], or the chlorine on my grandparents’ towels from the pool. I come from a family of just old Greek heritage, lots of cooking, and my father smoked a cigar every day of his life. I feel like everyone is surrounded by scent, but maybe I was surrounded by an overload of it.
It's also just how our brains are wired. I think I just was very sensitive to smell.
I remember describing to someone in college, actually, about an experience somewhere, and I found myself explaining it by scent, instead of with words that described it visually. This person said to me, “Oh, my God, you're explaining it with my smells.” Scent had been a much bigger part of my life than I ever really acknowledged. Having kids really changed that for me. My eldest son, who is a creative kid, when he was little, we would sit at the table and put the napkin up to our noses. I remember him smelling the napkin and saying, “Oh, this smells like x.” And I said, “Everything has a smell.” He said, “Well, why?” And so we kind of got into the chemistry of smell, which I didn't really even know, and we started this little game around the table for years to come, where I'm like, “Okay, everybody pick up something. Explain what it smells like,” whether it's a fork or a piece of bread or, you know, anything that happened to be around, the salt and pepper shaker or whatever.
Having kids, and when they started asking questions, is probably what made me aware of the fact that I probably have a sensitive sense of smell, and I also am intrigued by it, and I pay close attention to it, and I realize that a lot of other people don't. I was surrounded by flowers as a kid, my mom always had fresh flowers, and that striving to have, whether it was a candle, of course — we didn't have diffusers back in the day — so finding something that had that beautiful scent, like the roaring fire or whatever that candle was. I just always found myself reaching for those types of products.
When the opportunity to really get engaged with fragrance at a business level, with Antica, that was just wow. I could have the opportunity to work with a perfumer and actually create fragrances that are inspired by things that I find interesting, things that I've never smelled that I could create on my own. That's just endless.
Being able to pay attention at that level is such a gift, and then to to experience the sort of pleasure of scent is a real luxury for people.
I'm gonna cite Rick Rubin again. My nephew is a football player in the NFL, and he's a really creative kid, so I gave him the Rick Rubin book. I'll find quotes here and there, and I'll send it to him. And one of the things that he comments on is that, as a creative person, success and creativity is really just seeing things that no one else sees. With scent, whether it's trained or whether I just was born with it, or the way my brain is, I feel like everything slows down, and I can capture something, maybe that other people aren't seeing, and put it in a bottle and put it on a shelf. And it's like I'm presenting something to someone that they otherwise didn't know they were missing, or that even existed.
You touched on the chemistry of scent a little bit earlier. I'm curious how much of the appeal of what you're doing is that you're able to touch people at a lizard brain level.
I'm mesmerized by it, totally mesmerized by it.
When you do those little games when you're young, like, Okay, if you had to get rid of one of your senses, what would it be? And everybody says sense of smell, right? But what's fascinating about it, and I love it, and it's rewarding for me all day long, is it's the first sense that our brain recognizes, way before sight and sound and touch. It's so deeply seated in our limbic system, and the base of our memory. That's what's being triggered before every other sense. It's powerful — quietly powerful. It's not in your face, it's not loud, it's silent. And it's really transformational. I love when people smell something and they're like, “Okay, wait, that is totally reminding me of…” There's certain things, little notes in some of my fragrances, where I'm like, “Oh, I know this person's gonna totally like it.”
You remember the old candy the Lemonhead? Super tart, but then it's got that sugary sweetness, and it really is unique to the Lemonhead. One of my favorites is this tiny hint of that. Not everybody gets it, but when it happens, someone's like, “Oh god, there's something in this. What is it reminding me of?” And if they don't come to [realize] it, I'll be like, “It's not a lemon.” They're like, “Oh, my God, totally, it reminded me of riding my bike as a kid.” That kind of stuff is really cool, and it just continues to be really interesting to me. And it's endless. Being able to tap into our memory is pretty special.
Absolutely. What keeps you inspired to create new scents? And is there one scent that you love, in terms of how it went from inspiration through the final product?
The fragrance development piece of this work continues to inspire me. I'm never at a loss for a new fragrance. On the weekend, sometimes I'll just end up in my office, pushing papers around, and then all of a sudden I'm like, I’m gonna go dabble, not even for work purposes. I go in and I have a creative brief, and I'm thinking about a lot of different factors, but sometimes I go in and just start dipping blotters. The creative process is such an escape, personally, because I do it on my own, and that's entirely fulfilling.
Now it's a business. We've sold the business, and now I'm more careful to produce things that are going to be successful. Whereas in the past, I'm like, “Well, I trust that this is going to be successful because I know it.” I'm hoping that I can keep that going.
Quite frankly, I think that now it's about product extension. That's really fun for me, too. We started with the diffuser. That's still the hero product in our collection. I think that's probably what we're known for the most.
I love how, if I develop a particular fragrance, how it smells in a diffuser, that formula is formulated much like a fine perfume. You've got a high alcohol content there, and it's the best carrier, in my opinion, for fragrance oils, whether it's for the skin or in a diffuser. You've got that brightness because of the alcohol and that effervescence of the alcoholic sense itself, but then taking that exact fragrance and then formulating it into a candle base, it just becomes creamier. I love the nuance of that.
But inspirationally, new products, new extensions. How do people use fragrance in their home? How can we just keep that going? So I'm excited for this next chapter, because I've got a team now that's really excited for me to be rolling out new developments. As a small, independently-owned company, we were a little reluctant to go out on a limb and financially, take some risks. I've got some really fun ideas [like] new vessels.
We're working with a company right now that is doing essentially like a luxury plug-in concept. That's really interesting, too. It's all app-based. So I can have, let's say, orange blossom and Prosecco — two cartridges in one unit. And I can program on my phone that I want to wake up to orange blossom. So at 5am I'm going to have orange blossom going in the family room or in my bedroom at this X intensity. And then at this hour it turns off. And then when I come home from work at five o'clock, I want my Prosecco to be going.
The education of how to use our fragrances throughout the home is something that felt like a little bit of a burden to me. Like, oh, gosh, this. Do people really need the education? What I've realized is people get pretty overwhelmed with fragrance. Like, okay, how many fragrances can I have in one space, and how do I do it? So now I'm finding a lot of pride in like, Okay, let me ask a few more questions about you. What fragrances you wear on your body. And let's narrow down maybe three fragrances that might be good for you in your home, and then let's layer those throughout the house, and create kind of your own little scent. It's been good for me to take a step back because I'm so close to fragrance, and then see it through other people's eyes, of how to do this and how to feel excited about it.
The plug-in product would be amazing at events, or even a retail space or hotel space. It’s similar to music — you don't want to hear drum and bass at nine in the morning. But you don't want to hear, you know, something really mellow later on.
Totally. That's one of the projects that I really love: We've been working with the Ritz-Carlton for probably 12 or 15 years, and I've done 20 or 23 different fragrances for different properties. The actual fragrance development piece is really where the joy is. Central Park, awesome example. The Ritz-Carlton property’s right on Central Park South, right across from the Park. I love that project. I was just like, Okay, I want to do fragrance for you. I'm going to do a lot of research. I basically went through the botanical Conservatory of Central Park and looked through thousands of botanicals, and walked through the park and looked at places I thought were interesting, different types of trees and flowers and plants, put together a list and cobbled together something that I just love, and it's really reflective of what's happening out your door [at the hotel]. Not garbage on the street [laughing], but just a few steps further in the actual Park. It was really fun to take that fragrance, and then we pipe it in so that when you walk in the door, it's piped through the HVAC system. The bartender in the bar — there was sort of an iconic New York guy for years, he passed away — but we developed a cocktail with a bunch of those botanicals, and that was on the menu.
It wasn't that long ago, when you were walking into a hotel, there was no scent. It's hard to believe that now. But now, you walk into a hotel with no scent, and it’s just naked, you know? We've been working with Alaska Airlines, and we're noticing that even the airlines are becoming more open-minded and willing to bring fragrance into lots of different aspects of their industry. It's that mood enhancer, that silent, powerful fragrance that hits you. You're not seeing it, you're not tasting it, you're not touching it, so it's not as obvious.
It has such a personal impact that your experience with a fragrance might be completely different than mine. And I love that it's not right or wrong. It’s like art, right? Your interpretation of it might be completely different than mine, and that's awesome, because our brains are just unique. I love to encourage people to smell. I think that oftentimes smelling fragrance, for people, it's like sampling wine. They don't have the words to describe what they think, what they're tasting. It's the same thing with fragrance. Sometimes people are intimidated, especially with all the niche fragrances out there these days, I just always encourage people to try to explain things, just dumb it down, even if it just smells like a piece of paper.
And then I think your question was, if there was one particular fragrance that I feel like really crushed it. The one that is front and center is our Prosecco fragrance. I developed that probably 15 years ago, and this was a holiday scent. My creative brief for this was, I need a great holiday fragrance. I don't want it to be an evergreen. I don't want it to be cinnamon spice. I don't want anything that is typical. But what are the holidays about? My creative brief was really about friends and family and celebration. And what do we do during the holidays? We gather, we share a meal, we drink champagne, we toast one another. So I was like, okay, champagne is really central to this. I just started sampling a lot of different champagnes. I'm like, Okay, there's so many elements to different champagne. I really wanted to capture that feeling. I wanted to capture that effervescence and the sparkly notes of champagne and Prosecco.
It took us a long time, and I'm really proud of that one, because it started out as something that we were struggling to achieve. We ended up including one particular aldehyde note that was unique, and just gave it this fizz. Today, it's our number one. It started as a holiday fragrance, and then we ended up keeping it in the collection year round because there was demand for it, and it really wasn't seasonal. That sells three to one over whatever the second top seller is at that time. What we created there, it told a story, and we conveyed it pretty well. People get it, and they love it, and they bring that into their home, and it's like this little pop of celebration. It's really uplifting. That's probably the one that feels the most successful.
First of all, saying that you conveyed it well is interesting to me because it's very challenging to message a scent online or in print, purely visually or with words. The other thing I'll say is that any time your job involves sampling champagnes, I think you've chosen a proper career.
Trust me, the cocktail portion of my fragrance development has really gotten expansive. [Laughs.] Let's just put it that way. I mean, I'm not kidding. We love cocktails. Have you ever heard of the cocktail The Last Word?
Somehow, not yet.
So put it on your list. Do you like gin?
Yes, very much.
Okay. So it's gin, and the other key ingredient is chartreuse. Green Chartreuse. I'll send you the recipe. But the green Chartreuse is made by Carthusian monks[1] and it's made up of 129 Alpine herbs. And the reason I know this is because I'm obsessed with it, and it's one of those really polarizing liqueurs: It's incredibly herbal, so you either love it or you don't. But it’s lime, gin, the chartreuse, a little bit of Luxardo cherry[2] , and it's so fabulous.
So I fell in love with this, and I took the chartreuse, I gave it to my perfumer. I'm like, “Alright, I'm obsessed with this. How do we break this down?” She puts it through this headspace monitor, essentially, and it prints out the chemical makeup of this. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you have to go back and really tweak things. But we crushed this one, I think. And so Hendrick’s gin, I've broken that one down. I have all these different oils that I really should probably just do an entire cocktail collection. You know, Negronis and Manhattans and… I mean, a lot of people are doing that right now. But the liquor store provides a lot of inspiration. Let's just put it that way. [Laughs]
In more ways than one, I'm sure.
I mean, the bottles themselves, the labels, all of that is inspirational. And then the actual booze, there's something to that, so it's all good stuff.
Well, that was the way I planned this segue, but: What do you do outside of creating fragrance?
Cooking is at the core. That's my happy place, even when it's just me. After a long day at work, I'll put my apron on and start chopping garlic. I start there and then see where I go from there. That's big passion mine.
I love to entertain. My kitchen is home to all my kids and their friends. I love to be outside, and I love the water. I do a lot of snow skiing in winter. I love salt water. Kite surfing is a big passion of mine. My husband-to-be and I play a ton of golf. Even in a manufactured place like a golf course, I find it really funny that I always find inspiration just from this mountain, different types of grass, cut grass. So, yeah, fairly active.
That's great. And you're in a great part of the world to experience all the seasons and the outdoors.
We only have a few minutes left. I’m sure we could go on and on, so I'm trying to decide if it's worth asking. You have a 1960 Cadillac Eldorado, right? How did that come into your life? And you know, sometimes cars have, like, really amazing smells. Some do not, but some do …
Yeah, you know what? I just got chills as you said that, because the car… So I think I mentioned that I moved around a lot as a kid, and my grandparents had a place in Palm Springs. I was born in Pasadena, and I would go out and spend a lot of time with my grandparents. It's the only place I've been every year of my life. It's such a vacation destination for most people. But I even went to elementary school there for a bit. Like, for two months back in the ‘70s, my parents were like, “Oh, we're gonna go out and spend a couple months with my grandma and grandpa,” and so they put me in school for 45 days. Like, who does that? Can you imagine doing that now? Like, it's crazy.
It's really a soulful place for me. My grandfather always drove a Cadillac, and not fancy Cadillacs by any stretch, just, you know, basic old Cadillacs. He’d have one and get rid of it and get the next one. So my childhood, back probably to some of my scent discovery, was rolling around in the back, no seat belts, rolling around the back of the Cadillac. I still can smell that leather, and the warmth of the red light as the door would open, that kind of stuff.
I inherited one of his old Cadillacs when he passed away, and I just always knew that I wanted to have one of my own, so I did a bunch of research. And the 1960 Cadillac is — the ‘59 has the most exaggerated fin on the Cadillac, it's kind of iconic, and I didn't want that exaggerated fin. They really started to tame things in 1960, and then ultimately got rid of that fin. The 1960, I looked all over and found one in Pennsylvania. The color of it was original, and it's called heather, and it's a lavender color. I have a place now in Palm Springs. And so the Cadillac is named Glo after my great aunt, Gloria. She lives in Palm Springs now. But the smell of the car is unbelievable, and it's the petroleum smell blended with the leather. It's a very… it's a strong … I mean, it's amazing. I love it.
It smells like mid-century modern man.
Totally, exactly. And here's the thing, when you've got a 1960 Cadillac, you have a mechanic in your life, you have to. I recently found this guy who's a mobile mechanic. He's a German guy, and he just loves working on these cars. He'll come, and he's got all sorts of stuff going on, and the hood's up, and it's a lot of sound and smell. I'm like, Oh, my God, this is nuts, and I love it. We sit and we talk about that scent. That might have to be my next creation. I might have to do a 1960 Cadillac scent.
Sign me up.