This new fragrance brand is inspired by the love language of a great hotel stay

“Antoine is here.” At only six years old, Lev Glazman did not immediately understand the enigmatic message his mother had just received from a friend at the door of their apartment in Soviet Leningrad in the 1960s. Antoine, a smuggler, was waiting for them on a nearby black market. “My mother was very anxious,” Glazman continues from a restored Jens Risom chair in the library at The Maker Hotel in upstate New York. “He put a box, the Climat de Lancôme perfume, in her hand and she started to tear it up. She applied the perfume and everything melted, ”recalls Glazman. “It changed my life forever.”

As a co-founder of beauty brand Fresh, Glazman credits the experience of seeing his mother transformed by a mere throw of contraband flowers having informed his career and his appreciation of scent association. “Scent can capture the memories you create,” he says, “especially the memories you create in a hotel.

From his vantage point centralized in the 11-bedroom property, which he recently opened in Hudson with his wife and Fresh co-founder Alina Roytberg, Glazman is in tune with what’s going on around him. Following New York’s easing of COVID restrictions, the three historic buildings together come alive on a Tuesday morning in late summer. “The hotel is alive. I have seen so many amazing moments watching the guests explore these spaces. I see the intimacy, ”he says, explaining the impetus behind The Maker fragrances, a collection of six eau de parfum and three scented candles that has just been launched, marking Glazman and Roytberg’s first beauty business in 30 years.

This should be good news for Fresh devotees: Before its Brown Sugar Body Polish and Soy Face Cleanser achieved cult status, the Glazman and Roytberg brand started in 1991 in Boston, where they had both immigrated. from Russia, was built around a luminous, lemony scent. profiles. (Real chefs will remember the Index, their concept of freshly poured perfume, which featured glass urns filled with original scent hits, such as the sweet tang of apricot to fig.) Room to develop a larger fragrance concept, ”admits Roytberg, looking out onto a glass-fronted courtyard turned into a restaurant, one of the few painstaking renovations that have brought the property back to life. But the hotel, which mixes the Belle Époque and mid-century modern sensibilities with a touch of 19th-century industrial grain, gave them this space to play. “It’s in the mood right now,” Roytberg says of Spiritus, an earthy candle with a blend of incense, cannabis, and vanilla that mingles with the room’s dark trim and Moroccan Berber rugs.