A story about scent branding and emotional design
I run a small cake studio, but it has never felt like a bakery to me.
Even during renovation, I didn’t imagine pastel colours or anything too cute or sweet.
To me, a wedding cake is never only about ingredients or technique. Those things exist, but they are not what the cake ultimately means.
People don’t choose a bespoke cake because it tastes better than one from a café. They do it because a cake, in that moment, carries something beyond taste — a quiet sense of meaning, of celebration, of being seen.
When I bake, the air fills with that buttery sweetness I love, but that’s not the atmosphere surrounding a finished cake.
By the time my clients see their cake, they aren’t meeting food anymore, they’re meeting emotion.
So when the renovation was finished, I realised something was missing: the scent.
The air smelled of baked sponge with flavours of vanilla, chocolate…etc, which I love, but that scent belonged to production, not presentation.
That’s when I began searching for a fragrance that could express the feeling I wanted people to sense — love, elegance, and confidence. I didn’t know it then, but that was my first lesson in scent branding — the way a fragrance can shape how people feel before they even see your work.
I began visiting different stores, smelling every diffuser I could find.
There were so many scents I liked — lavender, citrus, even the soft warmth of sandalwood.
Most of them felt too much like a spa, some were pleasant, yet a little too casual — the kind of scent that belongs in a small café or a garden on a lazy afternoon.
Whenever I smell something, I see a scene.
Yet none of those scenes felt like mine.
Until I discovered Suede Vanilla by Rituals.
Wow. It says “vanilla,” but it’s nothing like the vanilla you find in an Italian gelato shop, or the kind that makes you crave a slice of cake.
This vanilla smells as if it were wrapped inside an Hermès or LV box—
you untie the satin ribbon and find a perfect vanilla pod resting on a piece of finely crafted velvet.
No wonder it’s called Suede Vanilla—the name couldn’t be more fitting.
Rituals’ Private Collection fragrances are remarkably refined.
Unlike many scents where you can instantly identify the raw ingredient, this collection doesn’t describe a material—it gives you a scene.
It makes me feel as if my cakes were presented in the same way luxury boutiques present their treasures.
That’s exactly how I want my clients to feel.
I bought it right away and placed it at the entrance of my studio.
When clients come for tastings, they always pause at the door and smile, saying,
“Wow, it smells so good in here.”
I know what they mean—it’s not the smell of a bakery.
It’s a scent that quietly hypnotizes them into a different kind of happiness.
I’ve used it for years now—long enough that I even joined their membership program, and it’s quietly become part of my scent branding. Sometimes I think about trying a new one, but I haven’t found anything yet.
For me, this scent belongs in my studio — other places deserve different moods. Maybe I’ll share them another time.
(And no, this isn’t sponsored — just something I genuinely love.)