LeNose Is Coming to Democratize the Luxury Hand Soap Market

"We want to create a world where everyone can have nice things," the brand's CMO Zee Carlstrom tells Fashionista.

What does money smell like? For new home fragrance brand LeNose — the brainchild of three former Bubble Skincare alumni — it’s notes of linen, iris, cashmere and cool ink, all found in its I’m So Fancy, My Soap Smells Like Money hand soap, created to literally evoke the scent of dollar bills. But to hear the founders tell it, it’s also the yet-untapped opportunity to bring accessibly priced fancy hand soaps to Gen Z and millennials. On Wednesday, CEO Caroline Valentini, CBO Lindsay St. Clair and CMO Zee Carlstrom officially introduced LeNose to the world. All former members of Bubble Skincare’s creative and marketing teams, the three industry veterans came together to develop a “fun-forward home fragrance brand delivering luxury-quality scents Gen Z and millennials can realistically afford,” as described in press materials. All of the founders are members of these two generations, and they’ve identified “a growing disconnect between the worlds brands are selling and the realities consumers are living” over the past few years. “We founded LeNose to answer a simple question: Why can’t we all have nice things?” Carlstrom tells Fashionista over email. “LeNose was created to bring fun and quality to the lackluster big-box soap aisle, democratizing the luxury home fragrance experience with excellent packaging, luxurious formulas…and elite fragrances. As a human being, though, I must also add that LeNose was created because we wanted to make a luxury soap and fragrance brand that didn’t rip people off.” Photo: Courtesy of Le Nose LeNose debuted with a range of five hand soaps that retail for $10 each: I’m So Fancy, My Soap Smells Like Money (the aforementioned dollar bill scent); Yeehaw I’m A Sandalwood Cowboy (santal, violet, cedar, cardamom and sagebrush); Orange You Glad Life’s Not So Bad (mandarin, rosemary, lavender, cedar); Don’t Call me Boring, I’m Extra Vanilla (vanilla, tonka, amber, orchid, jasmine); and Kiss Me On Coconut Coast (dragonfruit, coconut, tuberose, pineapple, orange blossom). Photo: Courtesy of Le Nose “Much of Gen Z (and Zillenials) have been priced out of a lot of traditional luxury, yet they still care deeply about quality, design, ingredients, ethical business practices and the way a great brand can make them feel,” Carlstrom notes. “At the same time, most brands are still treating Gen Z like they’re children, but Gen Z is turning 30. They’re making lives and homes, often in rentals or fixer-uppers that don’t measure up to the high level of taste they’ve gained coming of age on the internet.” They want their homes to feel as beautiful as others they see online, he continues, and “they know they’re getting scammed by overpriced brands that underdeliver on quality.” So what do these consumers want from their hand soap? For Carlstrom, it’s pretty simple: “ingredients they can feel good about, addictive scents they can’t get enough of, in a bottle they want to display.” The industry is ready to bet on this proposition, too, it seems: The founders closed an oversubscribed pre-revenue round with strategic backing from Aesop’s early investor Era, as well as Fifth Growth Fund, OpenSky Ventures and others. When it came to developing LeNose’s inaugural scent family, Valentini says she and her team were “tireless [and] obsessive” with “very exacting” standards. “We had an incredibly clear vision in mind for each product,” she says. “Our three-word fragrance brief, ‘smells like fun,’ means luxury that isn’t boring.” As marketers with experience in the importance of brand identity, the founders had a clear vision in mind for what LeNose would look like, too. “In addition to our fragrances, the clearest expression of [the brand’s tagline], ‘Ooh la wow!’ is our packaging — rich, sophisticated color palettes with classic, geometric shapes are contrasted with silly illustrations like a cinnamon roll at a disco or a snake in a cowboy hat — each bottle designed to encapsulate the attitude of diva-esque names,” St. Clair shares. She and Zee created every part of the brand themselves (with the exception of photography), meaning they could have maximum control over its visual identity. Photo: Courtesy of Le Nose The founders’ tastes can be seen in just about every aspect of the brand. “We came up with the name LeNose as a cheeky little joke teasing the snooty world of luxury fragrance, and from there, we built the world around [the idea of] our invented combination of high and low, luxe and silly, pleasurable and playful,” St. Clair says. At launch, the brand will sell DTC at lenose.com and via TikTok Shop, and on Amazon in October. LeNose also plans to expand with additional retailers in the future, especially as it moves beyond hand soap into other home fragrance categories. Occasionally, we use affiliate links on our site. This in no way affects our editorial decision-making.