Carlos J. Powell wasn’t on the entrance rank of the perfume machine. Luxury manufacturers didn’t invite him to social gathering at their ateliers in Venice or to go rose choosing at daybreak with influencers in Isparta, Turkey.Mr. Powell, who lived in Sheepshead Bay and was recognized to his followers on YouTube as Brooklyn Fragrance Lover, labored as a youngsters’s shoe salesman at Lester’s Clothing and Shoes for 35 years earlier than he was laid off early within the pandemic. He roomed with two cats, Claude and Jean (named after Jean Claude Ellena, a grasp perfumer), and his perfume assortment, with bottles numbering within the 1000’s.A exhausting employee, spiffy dresser and preternaturally gifted smeller, Mr. Powell was additionally the ur-New Yorker, residing paycheck to paycheck and doing what he cherished in his off hours. Unlike a number of the area of interest personalities who’ve proliferated on YouTube and TikTok, he was extra ardour than polish, from the earworm-ish opening jingle that he composed for his movies to his uninhibited enthusiasm for each the scents he dissected and the combination of individuals he dissected them with. His friends ran the gamut from well-known “noses” and profession chemists to nieces and colleagues from the Lester’s shoe division.Brooklyn Fragrance Lover’s following of just about 69,000 was a fraction of the 1.4 million subscribers to Jeremy Fragrance, the German-born Ken doll look-alike who vlogs in night costume. Nor was Mr. Powell in league with Junior Barreiros, the upbeat Brazilian who opinions fragrances in Portuguese for greater than half 1,000,000. But Mr. Powell was with out rival in different methods, this five-foot-six Latino man who cherished Broadway musicals and Oreo cookies.While Mr. Powell didn’t outwardly begrudge the perfume world’s superficial values, he didn’t undertake its algorithm-dictated priorities. Browse his channel and also you’re extra more likely to land on a boisterous vacation music medley, with him accompanying buddies on keyboard or piano, or a goofy “Niche or Designer” recreation night time. Videos with clickbait names like “12 Sexiest Men’s Fragrances” or “What Colognes Women Can’t Resist” have been uncommon and reluctant concessions.‘Our World Isn’t Nice’The video that greatest encapsulates Mr. Powell’s spirit would be the one chronicling his night time out on the 2018 Fragrance Foundation Awards ceremony.He was a nominee within the Consumer Choice Vlog class, for a video that he had shot the night time of the earlier 12 months’s ceremony, together with his expensive good friend and fellow vlogger Steven Gavrielatos.A tenth grade English trainer who lives in Jersey City, Mr. Gavrielatos is the founding father of the Redolessence perfume evaluate channel on YouTube, which has 150,000 subscribers. The two appeared in lots of one another’s movies, which they filmed in batches each week, usually till 1 or 2 within the morning.When their periods came about at Mr. Gavrielatos’s house, Mr. Powell usually slept over. In an trade during which the phrase “collaboration” is so usually a cynical advertising ploy, the pair’s model of teamwork stood aside.The awards night time video opens in Mr. Powell’s house, the place Claude the cat and a panoply of waving cat collectible figurines preserve our hero firm. He spritzes on Tom Ford’s Amber Absolute, slips on his Brooklyn baseball cap and Men’s Warehouse rental tux, and off he goes.At the ceremony, Mr. Powell stands to the facet of the purple carpet. He greets Jeremy Fragrance, a fellow nominee, who appears eager to maintain shifting via the group. Mr. Powell’s face lights up when he spots the grasp perfumer Olivier Cresp. (Others readily available, like Jane Krakowski and Naomi Campbell, haven’t any such impact.)We leap reduce to the second when the winner is introduced. Jeremy Fragrance ascends the stage like a dastardly Disney prince. He thanks the room, then proceeds to decrease to the ground and do 10 one-armed push-ups. The crowd goes wild.“We have been each feeling a variety of feelings,” Mr. Gavrielatos recalled. “Carlos preferred Jeremy, and all the time had an appreciation for his hustle. But that night time he was upset. He thought, ‘This is my solely likelihood. Jeremy’s subscriber depend was rising 300 p.c sooner than both of ours have been, and he was like, ‘If we don’t win this 12 months, we’re not successful ever.’”Mr. Powell’s spirits had recovered by the tip of the ceremony, when he was handed a bag of fragrances on his method out. His pleasure bought one of the best of him. He turned to Mr. Gavrielatos and instructed, “Want to go to your house and shoot some movies?’” It was a late night time.Mr. Powell dreamed of constructing as much as 100,000 subscribers. His different dream was to launch his personal scent. He and Mr. Gavrielatos started to work on a perfume line known as Redbrook.The brew was combined on the Society of Scent, an indie firm that favors the “gradual scent” motion and is in a former button manufacturing unit within the South Bronx. Overseeing the potions lab is Jean-Claude Delville, the grasp perfumer behind the well-known scents Cabotine de Gres and Clinique Happy. The agency’s artistic director and founder, Frederic Jacques, spent greater than a 12 months going backwards and forwards with Mr. Powell and Mr. Gavrielatos, discussing elements and design parts, bottle form and advertising copy. “It is crucial to get not simply the notes however the narrative,” he stated.There was a setback final fall, when Mr. Powell, 56, who had lengthy struggled with diabetes and different well being issues, vlogged a couple of keep within the hospital for low potassium ranges that had despatched his physique into shock.Then, final month, after asking odd questions throughout a dialog with Mr. Gavrielatos’s spouse, he stopped answering calls. Police despatched to examine on Mr. Powell discovered him unresponsive in his house; paramedics couldn’t revive him. His stepbrother, Billy Davidson, Jr., stated the reason for dying was considered a coronary heart assault.“It was all very sudden,” stated Nina Pelton, a singer, longtime good friend and the voice on the Brooklyn Fragrance Lover jingle. “The morning I heard about it, my first thought was: Thank God he was house and together with his cats.”Mr. Gavrielatos is shifting forward with their genderless potion, which is scheduled to come back out on Sunday, March 21, timed for a vacation known as National Fragrance Day, and maybe extra meaningfully, Mr. Powell’s birthday, March 19. Redbrook’s debut scent is named the “Underground” version, after the two-hour commute between their properties (and their south-of-the-radar standing on the earth of Big Scent). The first run, of 1,000 bottles, offered out through pre-order earlier this week. A new batch is in manufacturing.Identifying a formulation that encapsulated their distinct aesthetics and tastes had been a problem. “They had their variations: Carlos was homosexual and in Brooklyn, Steven is an English trainer who lives in New Jersey together with his spouse and daughter,” Mr. Jacques stated. “Carlos was extra bling, Steven is extra traditional.”What most excited him concerning the pair, he stated, was their shared ardour and groundedness. “Our world isn’t good — it runs near the style world, and there’s a component of perspective greater than kindness,” Mr. Jacques stated.The buddies have been extra thinking about being educated than they have been in being well-known. The formulation Mr. Jacques and his shoppers landed on is much less of a center floor between their particular person preferences than one thing new altogether. It’s additionally pretty, brighter and sunnier than what you could think about if you happen to heard that its major notes are patchouli, pink pepper, ginger and vetiver, kin to modern scents from D.S. and Durga and Le Labo.Finding the FragheadsMr. Powell’s first ardour was music. He taught himself learn how to play the piano, the accordion, and trumpet, in line with Mr. Davidson, whose father, a wholesale shoe salesman, married Mr. Powell’s mom, Hilda, a hairdresser, when Mr. Powell was 12.“He bought actually into theater as slightly child,” Mr. Davidson stated. “Being a child within the ’80s, in a closely Italian neighborhood as a half-Dominican and half-British-Panamanian child, he had loads to cope with.” Mr. Powell attended summer time camp at French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts in Delaware County, N.Y., the place he met Ben Stiller, one other camper, Mr. Davidson stated, and advised of forming a band, with Mr. Stiller enjoying the drums.After finishing his highschool diploma at City As School, Mr. Powell landed a job at Lester’s in Coney Island (later, he moved to the Upper East Side retailer). As a younger grownup within the early Eighties, he was targeted on his band, UBoy, and exploring the membership scene. He additionally dabbled in musical theater, writing music for Off Broadway corporations.More lately, he organized the Godspell 2016 Project, a reprise manufacturing that includes the unique 1978 solid of Edward B. Shallow JHS 227’s staging of “Godspell.”Mr. Powell’s affinity for perfume progressively tipped into an obsession. At first, he traded within the patchouli oil he had favored as an adolescent for the moss- and pine-heavy scents that reigned within the ’80s. “He cherished Pierre Cardin Pour Homme and the unique Polo,” Mr. Gavrielatos stated.His ardour was fanned additional within the early 2010s, when he fell in with a bunch of fragheads who known as themselves “The Goodsmellas.” This society of males, a number of of whom labored in legislation enforcement, went on weekend sniffing expeditions, sampling new perfumes and taking within the metropolis’s scents. The West Village perfume boutique MiN NY functioned as their clubhouse, the way in which Supreme was once for skaters. “We have been regular guys,” stated Edward Libassi, who runs the YouTube channel Frunkinator.Most of those die-hard perfume followers had their very own YouTube accounts. Mr. Powell created a Facebook group known as Peace, Love, and Perfume, which grew to become a hub for trade gamers and perfume obsessives. He began his personal YouTube account in 2016, and labored his method as much as posting three movies per week: quick, candy and adorably enthusiastic. “He cherished life, he cherished to be completely satisfied, and he was very jovial however not juvenile,” Mr. Libassi stated.The GoFundMe web page that Mr. Gavrielatos set as much as elevate cash for funeral preparations has obtained contributions totaling over $38,000. A stunned-looking Jeremy Fragrance posted his response on YouTube: “that’s very, very surprising and really, fairly, fairly, fairly hard-core.”The grasp perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, the creator of Mr. Powell’s beloved Amber Absolute by Tom Ford, delivered an Instagram eulogy to his good friend: “You weren’t only a spritzer, you’d present up at occasions, set up movies with perfumers to get some actual information, and all the time convey some good temper too,” and revealed the key formulation in Mr. Powell’s honor. “That’s an enormous no-no, and a really huge deal,” Mr. Gavrielatos stated.Donna Quinones, who works at Lester’s, recalled Mr. Powell as a playful colleague who preferred dressing up in Halloween costumes, pulling pranks on his co-workers, and sometimes making an attempt on new scents all through the day. “Whenever Carlos walked in, you smelled him,” she stated. “I’d say, ‘Oooh what are you carrying? That smells slightly citrusy,’ or, ‘that smells slightly woodsy.’ Most of all he cherished the feedback.”Tiff Benson, a fragrance blogger and one in every of Mr. Powell’s greatest buddies, remembered their common dinners and salsa dancing periods as a supply of pleasure and help for Benson, who’s Black. “He understood who I used to be as an individual, and that’s super-rare particularly on this trade which is so white and male and European,” she stated.One of the explanations Mr. Powell championed underdogs, Ms. Benson reasoned, was that he was one.“A lot of the folks he was speaking to on his movies have been folks no person had heard of,” she stated. “The trade is so small, if you happen to talked a couple of small model, it might be life-changing, and he knew that.”
