“We have an orchard in our backyard that has these beautiful orange trees that flower in the spring,” founder of tells ESSENCE from her home in Los Angeles. “I would sit outside underneath the orange trees, smelling the orange blossoms, drinking matcha tea and just thinking, ‘wow, this is such a different life than I was living even a year ago,’” when she moved away from the rushed streets of Manhattan. Since then, DeVard has been bottling up the scent of her new environment; leading up to the launch of her first today.
Her initial inspiration wasn’t just the notes, “but a feeling,” the podcaster— who is known for interviewing the likes of Ms. Tina Knowles, Alicia Keys, and hairstylist Jawara Wauchope— says. “My first question was, ‘how do I want people to feel when they wear this fragrance?’” With help from fragrance house , DeVard set out to bottle up her new chapter––and the stress release––she felt after her move.
“I knew I wanted to create a fragrance that was based on this kind of slower pace of life,” she says, honing in on orange blossom and green tea notes. With the market saturated with “sexy, date night fragrances” developing an ideal scent you can wear everyday is rare. “I wanted something that felt still bright but down-to-earth, something that was grounded and that’s why it has kind of those woody notes,” she says, before mentioning notes like neroli.
Leaning into a unisex scent for all of her listeners to wear.