Ladies Night at the Perfume Bar: A Fragrant Night In

Planning your ladies night guest list

Small groups are where a perfume night shines. With five to ten guests, everyone gets a host's attention and plenty of time to explore. A Mini Perfume Bar, our blending bar with 60+ fragrance materials, fits on a dining table and suits this size well.

Bigger group? That works too. We serve parties from 5 guests up, and for a crowd we bring the Full Perfume Bar with 120+ fragrances, or more hosts. A fiftieth birthday with forty friends is still a ladies night at heart.

Host it where you like. Your living room, a friend's finished basement, a restaurant private room or a clubhouse. We set up an hour before your start time, and linens are available as an add-on.

What happens at the perfume bar

Every blend starts with a base, the foundation a perfume is built on. There are six styles: floral, masculine, fresh, musk, sophisticated and gourmand, which simply means sweet. Pick the one that sounds most like you, and you are halfway there.

Then the fun begins. Your host walks you through the fragrance families, floral, citrus, woody and amber, and helps you layer notes on top of your base. Signage suggests combinations if you would rather not decide from scratch.

When you love it, we bottle it. Each guest takes home an eau de parfum, a perfume-strength spray made at 50% fragrance material to perfumer's alcohol, in a 15 ml or 20 ml bottle.

Already have a favorite perfume?

Many guests arrive with a scent they already love. That is a wonderful starting point. On the Full Perfume Bar, guests can begin with one of our signature scents and nudge it their way, adding a brighter citrus top, a softer floral heart or a deeper woody base.

It feels personal, but it does not mean starting over. For a friend who is nervous about blending, this is the easy path.

One honest note. We do not record individual formulas at event bars. If someone falls hard for her blend and wants a scent she can reorder for years, a one-to-one fragrance consultation is $650 and keeps her formula on file.

The materials make the difference

I formulate with absolutes, CO2 extracts and essential oils. In plain words, these are the concentrated natural extracts perfumers use. Absolutes are the richest of them, made from delicate flowers that cannot take the heat of steam.

On a ladies night you might smell rose absolute, jasmine sambac, and hedione, a perfumery material with a soft, airy jasmine feel that makes florals glow. These are the backbone of fine perfumery, and guests can tell.

Everything is made into perfume by hand in our New Lenox lab before it travels to your home.

Ladies night ideas to pair with perfume

A perfume bar is plenty on its own. If you want to round out the evening, a few of our other stations play nicely with it. A ladies night skincare bar lets friends make a moisturizer, body butter, lotion and scrub, and it suits a group of 20 or fewer.

The Luxury Candy Bar adds sweets in glass apothecary jars, and our Digital Photo Booth catches everyone holding their new bottles. For a cozy night in Elmhurst, a birthday in Naperville or a gathering in Tinley Park, we bring it all to you, with no travel fee anywhere in Chicagoland.