Yazhini ManimudiAs silly as it is to type out the words ‘luxury grocery store’, that is what Erewhon is. As quality of life and access to healthcare get worse day by day in so called developed countries like the US (where Erewhon is located), the pursuit of health and wellness has become a marker of status. The US Department of Agriculture put the average price of a dozen eggs at $2.25 (around AED 8.25) in 2023 when Erewhon was selling them for $9.99 (around AED 36.67).
The first time most of us outside the US heard of Erewhon is when their smoothies began trending in 2022, thanks to Hailey Bieber. Smoothies, like the organic food Erewhon sells, fits right into their wellness obsessed wealthy customer base. This is when a grocery store goes from a simple place to do your week’s grocery run to a part of a lifestyle you want to show off on social media. Food is becoming as much of a status symbol as a luxury bag with larger swaths of the population unable to afford it. It’s little surprise that such a grocery store would venture into a lifestyle product type like perfumes.
Erewhon’s perfume company DedCool was launched in 2016 and has 15 fragrances so far. In addition to perfumes, they sell other fragrance products– detergent, candles, air fresheners as their philosophy is to ‘make scents to live in’. DedCool ticks all the wellness culture boxes from the ‘clean’ identity to fearmongering of parabens.
When encountering brands that center their identity completely around being ‘clean’ and ‘natural’, remember there are no regulations around such definitions. It’s simply greenwashing. The bottles aren’t refillable, a move most perfume houses have taken in an effort to at least look eco-conscious. The atomiser isn’t even removable– the absolute bare minimum they could do for sustainability. But they certainly create an aesthetic of sustainability through their plain bottles stripped of personality. Dropshipped from alibaba-core.
Another claim is their use of ‘raw organic extracts’. Their About page brags about using ingredients with anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory properties, grapefruit extract to even out skin tone and get rid of blemishes and discoloration, kelp extract to regulate skin tone and texture. I can understand such claims if they were coming from a skincare company, but why anyone would need any of these benefits from their perfumes is beyond my understanding. It screams of a boardroom slapping on trending skincare terms on their unrelated product.
Some have complained that they can’t smell their popular Milk and XtraMilk. because it feels like nothing but ambroxan, a compound that’s physically impossible for some people to smell. Their most recent perfume Mochi Milk smells nothing like mochi. It’s nice, but you could get a similar profile from a subtle sweet gourmand from any other perfume of a similar kind. It capitalizes on recent western interest in Japanese culture, selling a product that in no way explores or respects it.
If I had to describe their fragrances in one word, it would be…nice. Underwhelming, uninteresting, inoffensive. It’s the brand for the modern-day clean girl, the ‘go girl, give us nothing’ of perfumes. You wouldn’t hate any of their fragrances and that must be the point- universal appeal. But when you want to be liked by everyone, you create something bland and unremarkable. They smell like boardroom decisions, not like perfumers having fun with their art.
Sowmya Gibish
