If you’re looking for a fun indoor activity during these cold winter months, check out .NOTE in Seoul. They have three locations: Gangnam, Hongdae, and Seong-Su. This is a perfume/cologne-making experience where you find your own “note,” which is why it is called .NOTE. You can enjoy this as a group with friends, or it can be very intimate, perfect for a date or for alone time.
When you enter .NOTE they will ask you what language you speak because they offer the course in 13 foreign languages; the primary language is Korean but English, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, Malay, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Italian, Indonesian, Thai, and French are offered. You start by watching a video tutorial that is self-paced and educational explaining how perfume works. It teaches you things like what top, middle, and base fragrance notes are, why they are important, and how they change the smell of perfume.
At specific intervals in the course, the video will pause giving you time to smell a variety of notes helping to discover how different fragrances blend by sampling various scent families. After studying a little about smells you get to experience over 60 scents to help narrow down your individual preferences. At this point, you pick the fragrances you like and you get to make a sample.
You start by adding one drop of each and if one fragrance is too strong then you can adjust it to make your perfect blend. You do this about three times to get the fragrance that you like. It becomes a bit of a science experiment balancing out the fragrances until they are perfectly satisfying. At this point, the staff feeds your recipe into the computer to give you the perfect combination to replicate the fragrance you’ve created. After you finish making your perfume they will add rich oils to the bottle to balance it perfectly. You can use your perfume right away but, they tell you that if you wait one week the smell will get even better.
I visited the Gangnam location. They did have an employee, but the video did most of the teaching. The staff was there to help if I needed it but it was very individualized, making it a personalized, custom experience. When I finished my formula, I chose a name for my scent. They printed a custom label for me and I got to bottle my very own perfume. The studio was kept sanitary with the staff cleaning the bottles and all of the glasses that we used along with the earbuds, the iPad, and the table.
While the video was only 16 minutes long, with all of the essences they have and making the perfume/cologne, this experience will take you about one hour and a half to complete. The atmosphere was peaceful and relaxing with spa music playing in the background. A visit to .NOTE is a great way to release all of your tension by getting lost in a serene, emotional state where you only focus on what smells make you happy.
When I went they had a promotion if you gave them a Google review they would give you a free roll-on perfume. I got to make a roll-on oil with the same aroma as my custom cologne! This oil formula is different because the smell starts after a while because the oil has to heat up on the body to amplify the fragrance. If you want to find your own bespoke fragrance, then come visit .NOTE. This was such a great adventure and I can’t wait to return and make another cologne. If you want to book a personalized session, find them on Instagram and you can easily make a reservation in English or you can book via their website. Currently, the class costs about $35.
Website: https://dotnoteus.imweb.me/
Instagram: @dotnote.perfume
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Gangnam Perfume Workshop .Note
813-10 Yeoksam-dong Gangnam-gu Seoul
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Hongdae Perfume Workshop .Note
175-4 Donggyo-dong Mapo-gu Seoul
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Seongsu Perfume Workshop .Note
16-22 Seongsu-dong 1(il)-ga Seongdong-gu Seoul
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