Introducing the Gallery of Scent

Introducing the Gallery of Scent

We're excited to announce Element Brooklyn Gallery of Scent β€” an immersive fragrance experience and our first-ever retail store, open now in Lower Manhattan.

The Gallery is built around a question that has fascinated our team since we started experimenting with scents: what would it look like to put fragrance on display the way a museum puts art on display? Not behind glass, but out in the open, ingredient by ingredient, with room to slow down and notice. At the Gallery of Scent, we pull back the curtain and show you the raw scent notes our products are actually built from.

How we got here

Earlier this year, we were one of six businesses selected for the Downtown Alliance's RE:Store program, giving us the opportunity to open a store in the South Street Seaport. The neighborhood has become a dynamic entertainment district, and we decided to build something worthy of the area β€” and of our first-ever dedicated retail space.

The Gallery

The centerpiece is a gallery of thirty raw perfumery ingredients β€” the materials that show up in the world's most iconic fragrances, presented one at a time. Bergamot. Neroli. Hinoki. Oakmoss. Vetiver. Frankincense. Each one sits on its own pedestal behind a touch-activated mister that lifts the scent into the air in a fleeting puff. The buildout was conceived and executed by the incredibly talented superglue studio, our neighbors in Bushwick.

The notes are organized into five flights – Fresh, Floral & Fruit, Spice & Green, Wood & Earth & The Dark Arts. Each station includes a short panel on the ingredient's history, its role in perfumery, and what makes it unique.

When you arrive, you'll pick up a paper scorecard. You smell, score each note from one to four, and at the end of the loop a staff member scans your card.

Your Scent Portrait

The scorecard is the entrance to the second half of the experience. Once it's scanned, you sit for a photo in our Portrait Studio, where the lighting shifts to match the notes you scored highest. The result is your Scent Portrait: a one-of-a-kind composition that pairs your photograph with a background built from your top notes.

You'll leave with a printed copy and a digital version in your inbox, along with a list of products we think you'll love β€” and not just ours: we run the analysis against a database of 24,000 fine fragrances from hundreds of different brands.

The Refillery

We're also proud to feature our first refillery, with ten of our most-loved soap fragrances on tap. Bring a bottle from home and we'll fill it up, or pick out a piece of glassware from our wall of vessels. Fill it up, pay by weight, and walk out with a product that generated zero unnecessary waste.

Our candles and candle refills, body care and hair care products, and a limited-edition T-shirt by local artist Smurfo are all available to browse and shop.

Candle workshops

Three nights a week and twice on weekends, we run 60-minute candle workshops where you'll customize one of our signature fragrances, pour it into a vessel of your choice, and leave with a finished 8 oz candle to take home. Sessions are $45 a seat with everything included, led by the same team members who make our candles at the Brooklyn warehouse.

Book a workshop

We'd love to see you there

For more information β€” including opening hours, directions, and workshop bookings β€” visit gallery.elementbrooklyn.com.

Visit the Gallery of Scent

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