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As a Ghanaian American, I’m proud of my West-African heritage for many reasons. The food, the music, and the fashion are all outstanding, but the parts I hold nearest to my heart are the nostalgic sensory experiences that remind me of my family and my home away from home. I think of my grandmother slathering shea butter on my skin after a bath, or the faint aroma of hibiscus as my mother stirs a simmering pot of sobolo.
Nigerian-American content creator and ISIPCA-certified perfumery expert Funmi Monet captures those cultural memories in a bottle—or rather, four bottles—with her new fragrance brand, Influxious. With almost 1 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, Monet is a trusted voice in fragrance. She’s also a licensed therapist with a deep understanding of how everyday experiences, like spraying your favorite perfume, can help you connect with your emotions and identity. “What fascinates me the most about fragrance in general is how much it’s tied to our self-care and how we show up for ourselves,” Monet says.
With Influxious set to debut exclusively at Sephora on July 27, we spoke with Monet to get the full story behind the scents. Keep reading to learn more about Influxious.
The Journey
If you spend as much time scrolling social media as I do (which is a lot), you may have stumbled across a vibrant community called FragranceTok. It’s your go-to, one-stop shop featuring discourse on refreshing your perfume game from fragrance experts, content creators, and people like me who are on a mission to build their fragrance wardrobes.
The queen of that kingdom is none other than Monet, who amassed over 100,000 followers in her first year on TikTok, and talks perfume like it’s second nature. She often leans into her background in therapy, inviting viewers to her cozy corner of the internet where she shares her fragrance favorites, non-negotiables, and self-care rituals from the comfort of her home.
“I’ve always been into self-care, and I think that also ties so much into how I also practice as a therapist,” Monet tells Byrdie. “As a creator, I was able to create a platform where I was also able to come online and share things that I found really curious and interesting with an audience that was also curious and interested too.”
Influxious—a name Monet actually came up with for an art project in high school—builds upon all of Monet’s interests. “Now I’m able to use fragrance as an expression of not only my own creativity but also how I share my personality with the world,” Monet tells us.
The Inspiration
Monet’s intention is for her fragrance line to represent movement, transformation, and presence. “Life can be soft and delicate, and life can also be bold and dynamic,” Monet says. “Life can be molten and sensual, but life can also be juicy, fruity, and celebratory. And it was about figuring out how to capture the balance of those things, and how they are represented within the materials that we use in our fragrance, and how our fragrance is packaged.”
The Influxious founder also aims for her brand to underscore A-beauty’s luxuriousness. “Let’s make this brand a living testament of my cultural experiences, my black womanhood, my you know pride in my Nigerian culture, and also the decentering of French and European perfumery, and bring that to the mainstream,” Monet says. “I want Influxious and African fragrance brands to be given the same reverence that people naturally give European brands.”
The Fragrances
The launch lineup includes Magic Hour, Gold Standard, Well Loved, and High Life—four fragrances for different moods. “The idea with this launch collection was definitely about creating the range to make a fragrance wardrobe.”
Gold Standard starts us off with a bang with notes of Nigerian ginger, blood orange, vanilla, and other gourmand notes to create a blend that’s good enough to eat. “When you put on Gold Standard, it’s not creating confidence in you,” Monet says. “It’s not manufacturing something. It’s watering this thing that already exists in you.”
Magic Hour is summer in a bottle, capturing that moment when the sun is setting but the air still feels warm on your skin. “I call that the magic hour because you’re kind of in between day and night, and anything can happen.” The top notes serve us a fruity cocktail of watermelon, golden mango, dragon fruit, and chili pepper that dry down to a beachy skin scent, rounded out by jasmine, coconut milk, and woody base notes.
Riding the fruity wave is High Life, a fragrance inspired by Nigerian nightlife and the eponymous West African music genre. If you’re out of luck scoring affordable tickets to Nigeria for Detty December, High Life is your next best bet. It’s got lasting notes of raspberry, pink pepper, and hibiscus that sound like the opening notes of “Let’s Start” by Fela.
Finally, Well Loved is the perfume that brings it all home. “This is my skin scent reimagined as a black woman, and it leans into the shea butter, and it feels like a skin scent that’s different from the traditional versions that we typically get in the fragrance space.” Well Loved layers best with the other fragrances, and it envelopes you in a hug that smells like vanilla, apricot, and cardamom.
Each scent is woven together with Nigerian ginger, a warm ingredient that sprinkles a little bit of Monet’s heritage into every bottle. “Nigerian ginger is a beautiful, bright, uplifting type of ginger. It adds so much lift to a fragrance and a very sparkling quality,” Monet says.
The Packaging
Monet says that curating the Influxious packaging was just as important as the scent. “Before people even smell your fragrance, they have to go through your box, they have to pick up your bottle, and the fragrance is the third step.”
The boxes feature an illustration of the fragrance notes, as well as a one-liner that tells the scent’s story. The bottles themselves are jewel-toned and shaped like gems, which is fitting for Monet, who says she “collects fragrances like they’re Infinity Stones.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m Thanos, like I’m collecting all of these stones, and with launching this collection, this is my gauntlet, you know, so to speak,” she says. “I wanted these fragrances to feel precious, and I wanted them to feel collectible.”
The Future
With her brand’s official debut on the horizon, Monet’s Virgo brain is turning with ideas on how to connect with her community. “We’re really leaning into activations that aren’t just influencer dinners, but community events that bring people together in a way that represents how dynamic fragrance is and our experiences, and just leaning into that idea of celebration and also feeling seen and appreciated.”
Those community-first plans are just one part of Monet’s long-term vision. Influxious may be one of fragrance’s newest arrivals, but it’s already poised to make its mark on a large scale through its retail partnership with Sephora (Monet was a Sephora Accelerate 2025 participant). “My partnership with Sephora was very intentional because Sephora is a global fragrance brand,” Monet says. “This is an excellent way to showcase that Black-owned fragrance brands can come into this space and also compete on a global scale, not just a local mom and pop, but a brand that’s celebrated and worn worldwide.”
If you’re hoping to get your hands on Influxious, the wait is almost over. All four fragrances will be available for purchase, retailing at $150 (50 ml) and $35 (10 ml), exclusively at Sephora starting July 27. You can join the waitlist for launch updates and early access at influxious.co.
Read the original article on Byrdie
