Fast work.
Leah Kateb was only announced as the new chief creative officer and re-founder of the clean fragrance brand Skylar three months ago, but she’s already launching her first official scent, Double Dates.
Inspired by her viral shower routine — which featured a lineup of food-scented body care products, including Lush’s Sticky Dates Shower Gel, chocolate body wash, L’Occitane’s Almond Shower Oil and Eos’ Vanilla Cashmere 24-Hour Moisture Body Lotion — the new fragrance blends notes of sticky toffee, brown sugar and, of course, dates.
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“This is for my gourmand girls,” Kateb told WWD over the phone. “It’s a very edible scent. I always say I love to smell edible, and my favorite time to smell edible is on date nights.”
Kateb joined Skylar in July, a year after she starred on season six of “Love Island USA” as a fan-favorite cast member, gaining north of 3.55 million followers in the weeks she was on-air. She also left the show as a runner-up, alongside her now boyfriend, Miguel Harichi, who’s featured alongside her in the sultry campaign shoot for the new scent. Harichi, Kateb says, is a fan of all the Skylar perfumes. In fact, he wears a few such as “Banana Candy,” even though they’re not technically “unisex.”
“I feel like there are a few of our scents that go both ways,” Kateb said. “I have had men DM me, and they’ll see Miguel using Banana Candy, and then they’ll be like, ‘Honestly, love.’ It’s really funny. I feel like we definitely have scents that are not just for the girls.”
That said, as a certified “gourmand girly” herself, Kateb knew the audience she wanted to target for her debut perfume, and good thing she did as burgeoning interest in the gourmand scent category online is predicted to top holiday sales inside major retailers such as Target. These “edible scents,” however, aren’t anything new for Skylar. In fact, the brand, originally founded by Cat Chen, already offers a menu of food- and drink-inspired options, including Vanilla Sky, Peach Fields and Night Boss. And while Kateb is throwing another into the mix with Double Dates, she isn’t planning on limiting the selection to gourmand perfumes in the future.
“I know people have different preferences for fragrance, so I wouldn’t want to just hone in on one certain area,” she said. “Just because I like gourmand doesn’t mean that the next person does. So, we’re definitely very mindful of making a lot of different types of scents. We have so many coming up that are not gourmand, but they’re amazing. It’s a mix.”
Honoring the launch of Double Dates, Kateb and the Skylar team have organized pop-ups at Sephora in New York and Los Angeles. From the start, the former reality star knew she wanted to leverage her position at Skylar to connect with her followers. “Something that’s really important to me is connecting with my supporters outside of the phone. I really want this to feel like a community,” she previously told WWD.
The influence of her fan base is not lost on Kateb. Already, they’ve helped catapult Skylar back on the map as a must-watch fragrance brand. “I literally cry every day because people are literally spending their money on these things,” she said. “I never thought I would be in a position where I even had my own perfume company, but the fact that people love these scents and they’re going out and looking for them, it’s the most amazing thing. It makes me want to elevate the company even more, to give everyone, you know, the best of the best.”
