What Does This Wisconsin-Inspired Perfume Smell Like?
Originally published on Milwaukee Magazine 6/20/23How would you respond if someone asked you what Wisconsin smells like? Beauty industry veteran and founder of Zodica Perfumes took that question and turned it into a specialty line of products called Eau de Wisconsin, an homage to America’s Dairyland.
While a Wisconsin-themed perfume could invoke a variety of less-than-pleasant scents, Kristi Moe uses oils from clementine, violet, tobacco and nearly 200 other botanicals to create an intoxicating fragrance that honors the state in a unique way, through it’s zodiac sign – Wisconsin’s a Gemini!
When COVID lockdown hit and people were exploring new stay-at-home hobbies, Moe was eager to find a way to virtually “visit” different cities. She created the Wanderlust collection, based on the natal charts of cities like New York, Dallas and San Francisco. The last formulation of the Wanderlust collection is Eau de Wisconsin, based on where the stars were placed when Wisconsin was admitted into the union 175 years ago.
“Looking at the Wisconsin natal chart, there’s clearly a lot of Gemini influence,” says Moe. “ Wisconsin actually has three placements there, the sun, the mid, heaven and mercury. So Wisconsin is actually a very Gemini. Wisconsin has two placements in Aries (Uranus and Pluto) and a rising sign in Virgo.”
But what does it mean to create a scent based off a zodiac alignment? Moe spent years figuring out formulations that would resonate with each zodiac sign. Whether you’re a stern believer of the zodiac, or think it’s frou frou, according to Moe’s studies, there’s an 80% chance that you’ll pick your sign’s scent in a blind study.
“I was reading a scientific study that spoke about how personality is really influenced by the time of year that we are born into,” says Moe. “It has to do with the amount of sunlight hours and fresh nutrients that mom was receiving and that was then received by the baby in the womb. So it wasn’t mentioning Libra, it wasn’t mentioning Pisces, but I had enough of a passing fascination with the Zodiac that I knew those were the seasons. And so I wondered if it had anything to do with scent preference as well. So that’s when I got this idea in my head to see if there’s something there.”
Moe tapped into a consumer panel of beauty industry professionals that she met through the years working for other beauty and beauty-adjacent brands. She used her contacts to help develop her custom scents. Each person was given unmarked scent notes (lily, amber, patchouli, etc), and the participants ranked the scents, sending back the information along with their birthdate, time and location so Moe could see if any patterns would emerge.
“I was really blown away because I saw these patterns happening,” says Moe. “Leos were liking a certain kind of scent note, Geminis were liking something else. That’s when my creativity took over and I started introducing seasonal ingredients for and added in reflections of archetypes from the Zodiac. I played around and over a three-year period eventually developed the 12 formulations.”
She then went on to host blind studies to see how well the final formulations tested for each zodiac sign. The results were just as promising as the first test – just about 80% of participants blindly chose their own zodiac sign as their preferred fragrance.
To formulate Eau de Wisconsin, Moe combined the existing scents for the star signs of Wisconsin including Gemini, Aries, Capricorn, Libra and Pisces.
Eau de Wisconsin has top notes of grapefruit, blackberry, neroli, clementine and pear, middle notes of violet, green sage, freesia and lavender and bottom notes of tobacco flower, amber, cedarwood and sandalwood, creating a complex, unisex and alluring all-season scent.
“Of course Eau de Wisconsin sounds like beer and cheese and other not so great smells,” says Moe. “Which is fine, people have fun with it. But then they smell it, and understand that the scent is really broadcasting the beauty of our state.”
