I first encountered Marissa Zappas—both the cool girl-favored indie perfume brand and Zappas herself—on my birthday last year. My favorite perfume shop was having an in-house event with Zappas, and having been dying to check out her scents, I made sure to stop by before my birthday dinner. Given the occasion, I beelined for her famous Annabel’s Birthday Cake—and instantly understood the hype.
Like all the best scents, the emotions hit me before the notes: I was immediately transported to my 4th birthday party (Pink Power Ranger themed, of course), sitting in my frilly party dress in front of a frosted mountain of cake. The scent had notes of freshly-baked birthday cake, of course, but also lemon, honeycomb, heliotrope, and—the real stroke of genius—a note of latex balloon.
Zappas has an uncanny ability to manifest both fantasy and memory, each fragrance evoking a nostalgia for an unknown place you somehow miss dearly. Her scents feel like discoveries akin to the first person to salt caramel. Cake-themed gourmand scents are a dime a dozen, but only Zappas’ work conveys the full olfactory landscape of a real birthday memory by adding that final element of home-blown balloons.
That day Zappas was wearing an enviably dreamy vintage dress, appearing to embody her creative world like one of those rare artists who live entirely within their own vision. After interviewing her for this piece, I can say with confidence that my initial impression was correct.
Ella O'Keeffe
Wearing a simple black baseball cap over her signature dark curls, Zappas walks me through her Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn apartment while pointing out her favorite things. “Number one is a framed five-foot tiger made out of monarch butterfly wings that my father bought in Thailand in the eighties,” she tells me, “ At this point, though, the butterfly wings are all sort of broken off because the picture itself has just been through so much, but in my opinion, it sort of makes the whole thing look even better.” (She’s right; it does.) Next is her books, and third is her fragrance lab.
Her lab is in her home? She explains that she built it out in her apartment during the pandemic out of necessity, but now loves working from home. We discuss how it makes it easier for her to cocoon in her creativity. Does being in her home surrounded by her favorite things help with the creative process? “Definitely,” she says, “I’ll be [working on something] in my lab, and I’ll be like, ‘I can’t get this.’ And then I’ll just go watch a movie and then realize, ‘Oh wait, I think I figured it out!’ and I can just go back in.”
Ella O'Keeffe
Zappas tracks her first significant perfume memory to receiving the juicy 2000s-era Baby Doll by YSL for her bat mitzvah. She ultimately fell in love with the raw materials of fragrance and the alchemy of combining them. “I think of myself as an alchemist,” she says. She loves classic, what she calls “basic” smells—“lilacs, violets, the sweat of people I love”—but from her formulas, it’s clear this preference is counterbalanced by her alchemical ability to elevate lesser-known notes. I ask her to describe the scents of different emotions: She tells me she associates the smell of “laundromats, cigarettes, fresh bread and billowy air” with the city of Paris and “total freedom”; the smell of Northern California with “incurable depression”; the smell of old books with “peace” and the scent of her dog with “pure love.” I ask her what heartbreak smells like. “The absence of smell,” she says. (Zappas is also a poet, in case you couldn’t tell.)
All of this sounds very on-brand for Zappas. She’s known for finding inspiration in classic films, such as with her sunny-but-moody, champagne-at-dusk fragrance Maggie the Cat is Alive! I’m Alive!, inspired by Elizabeth Taylor in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," or "Carnival of Souls," a swirl of incense and musk that perfectly captures the dreamy surrealism of the black-and-white ‘60s horror film of the same name. As we get into her closet, it becomes even more clear why she enjoys working from her home: It’s packed with inspiration.
Ella O'Keeffe
Zappas walks me through her favorite pieces: a vintage Chanel bag, a red military-inspired vintage Moschino dress, a pair of yellow linen boots previously owned by Elizabeth Taylor. She confirms that she mostly wears vintage besides some jeans and t-shirts, but admits she’s not necessarily trying to save the planet—”I just like quality designer pieces,” she explains. “And even designer brands today don’t make the same quality as they did years ago. I much prefer the look and feel of clothing made before 2010.”
She’s also attracted to the stories behind vintage pieces. It tracks that the perfumer behind the most iconic contemporary Elizabeth Taylor-inspired scent owns multiple pairs of shoes and a Valentino sweater that once belonged to the famous muse (in a stroke of luck, Zappas and Taylor wear the exact same shoe size). “I think there’s sort of a magical quality about vintage shopping,” says Zappas. “It’s hard to go shopping and be looking for something specific in any type of used clothing store. I feel like you have to go in energetically open to whatever is pulling you. That whole process is really fun for me.” She especially loves vintage shopping in Paris, where she’s found some of her favorite pieces, and specifically recommends the aptly-named Nice Piece in the 3rd arrondissement (those doing a euro summer, take note).
For style inspirations, she also looks to the past. “I think having an older father and being very close to my grandmother is what made me really inspired by Old Hollywood,” she says. “I love old movies and old books. My reference points are not really modern.” She adores Elsa Schiaparelli, saying, “She’s someone I really look up to, in terms of the brand she created and the level of artistry and creativity she infused into it, as well as her collaborations.” (Schiaparelli famously collaborated with artists like Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau.) “She was incredibly sophisticated and romantic, and had a sense of humor at the same time," she continues. "Every single detail of what she created was surreal and just completely beautiful.”
The love of the surreal and the tension of unexpected contrasts underscores Zappas’ aesthetic. She describes her most impactful style moment as seeing Penelope Cruz wearing a white, flowy summer dress with a black top hat in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. “I still think about it,” she says wistfully. “I think it’s my ideal outfit, my soul’s outfit. A slip dress and a top hat.”
If her fragrances were women, what would they wear? She gamely considers my thought experiment: “I think all of my fragrances are a girl with a long skirt and tall, sexy boots under it.” She mentions Violette Hay, her sensual, pastoral fragrance composed of sweet violet and apricot, smooth saffron and suede, earthy hay and carrot seed. “She’d be wearing a long, silk, lilac-colored skirt and brown cowboy boots with some type of linen blouse, open but knotted in front," she says.
Ella O'Keeffe
Does she have a “fragrance closet” in addition to a clothes one? “I have a million bottles of perfume,” says Zappas. “Some I bought for myself a long time ago, but a lot of them are perfumes that I’ve bought as inspiration. I also inherited a bunch of perfumes from my grandma.” She’s a fan of collecting novelty perfumes, such as the "Phantom of the Opera" perfume released in tandem with the musical in 1989. I ask if she ever wears them. “They’re just for fun,” she says. “And for reference points. I typically wear whatever it is I’m working on.”
Speaking of, I have to ask: What is she working on? She’s not working on anything for her own line currently, she explains, as she’s currently going through, in her words, “a deep transformation.” “Once I’m out of it, I’ll know what my next fragrance will be," she says. While she’s sworn to secrecy for her other projects, she can tell me that she’s working on a perfume for Miranda July, the author of "All Fours." Can she give me a hint on the notes? “If you read her book, you’ll have some ideas,” she says slyly.
Are there any “weird” notes she’s loving right now? While she clarifies that she’s not someone that normally goes crazy for unusual notes, she is currently very into the smell of seaweed and the ocean. “Less so fish, but not not fish,” she clarifies. “[More like] the tidepools: rocks, salt, small sea snails and starfish. The smell of the moon pulling back the water, revealing all those tiny little cold organisms. I love those smells.” (As someone that loves a briny marine scent but usually finds them too coldly masculine, I am crossing my fingers that this scent profile gets the classically feminine Zappas treatment and soon.)
At this point, I finally notice what her hat says: the name MARY SHELLEY in all caps (as in, the author of the classic 19th-century Gothic sci-fi horror "Frankenstein"). This discovery coincides well with her answer to my question about any trends she’s excited about this year. “I don’t really follow trends,” she admits, “I’m not someone who really lives in this year. Like, what even are the fashion trends of 2025? You know? I’m wearing a Mary Shelley hat, with Lord Byron in my head.” (Lord Byron was a 19th-century romantic poet—very on-brand for Zappas’ aesthetic—with whom Mary Shelley was close.)
Like many prolific artists, Zappas finds a spiritual element to her work. “Perfume is always a spell or a way of getting closer to God," she says. "If it's a spell, one imbues meaning into it and then places it on their skin and it becomes something embodied. Perfume is a method of interacting with ghosts, and it's certainly a tool ghosts use to interact with humans.”
As the nose behind one of the few truly indie perfume brands operating today—let alone the most exquisitely timeless perfumes on the market—we can only hope that Zappas keeps expressing herself, both poetically and olfactorily, for years to come.
Photography: Ella O'Keeffe
