Dedcool Founder Carina Chaz Wants to Redefine Fragrance
Long gone are the days of perfume being synonymous with expensive department store bottles that you rationed and only dared to spritz on special occasions. Today, perfume is considered an everyday beauty item that's completely part of one's identity. And we have Dedcool to thank for it.
The clean, genderless fragrance line is a Sephora favorite and was founded on the belief that scent is a key part of your personal expression. Carina Chaz, the founder of Dedcool, has been living by this mantra and shaping her brand by this scent narrative for years. 'Dedcool is really about intermingling fragrance and scent across your daily life,' says Chaz.
Dedcool doesn't just offer cute bottles and long-lasting perfumes. The scents are unique, complex, and layerable—and they extend beyond perfume into hand soap, body wash, laundry detergent, and other daily essentials, letting you curate a fully personal and continuous scent wardrobe. Dedcool is all about the belief that your scent is how you're recognized before you walk into a room, and how you're remembered after you leave it. Your clothes, home, and skin all carry that complexity, and it lingers long after a spritz or pump of a Dedcool product.
Since I've been a Dedcool stan for years, and it's won a Cosmo Holy Grail Award, I caught up with Chaz to chat about all things beauty, fragrance, and of course, the inspiration behind the cult-favorite brand. Keep reading for our full convo.
I always say Dedcool started as a fever dream that I never expected to become reality. I grew up in the beauty world—my mom is a formulator, and in the '80s, my immigrant parents ran a small manufacturing facility in LA that made products for hotels and spas. It was one of the first spaces where green beauty and organic products were talked about. I spent all my summers and after-school hours there, and scent was always what drew me into the beauty space.
I've been obsessed with fragrance, even as a kid. I wanted to wear scents that felt specific and out-of-the-box—but there wasn't much out there, especially for someone young or interested in clean ingredients. I wore essential oils because that was the only option, and eventually started blending my own little scents to wear and share with friends. I'd call myself a self-taught nose. Then I started Dedcool as an Instagram page. I've done trade shows, pop-ups, and knocked on the doors of mom and pop shops. Now we're a much bigger brand.
From the start, I wanted to redefine how people experience fragrance. And aside from that, I'm a consumer and a lover of fragrance, so I wanted to see something different within the world of scent. My goal was to figure out how to make fragrance more of an expression and individualistic play, something other than wearing a perfume on your skin. I wanted to change how we see fragrance and how scent interacts in our daily lives. And that's kind of where the whole concept of Dedcool came from.
I was 21 when I first started Dedcool, and I've been doing it for about a decade now. It wasn't a real company until 2020. We didn't have employees until 2022, so it's pretty amazing to see how far we've come in a short time. But it was a one-woman show for a long time. I created all the scents myself, and I still do, but now I work with a fine fragrance house to help bring those ideas to life. Since the brand has grown so much, I want to ensure that I'm working with experts in the space.
So Milk was the first scent I ever composed, but it wasn't released in the collection until 2021. It was the secret ingredient that made Dedcool fragrances all in unison between the scent compositions. As we grew a consumer base, people started asking—What's that scent? I can recognize a Dedcool scent anywhere!—and it was because of that common note of Milk. This allowed me to gain some confidence and launch it as a standalone scent, which created different conversations around layering as a whole.
Milk is clean, warm, and definitely a showstopper. When it launched, the scent took off, and it led us to Extra Milk and now Mochi Milk. There's a lot more to come from this very versatile scent.
For me, fragrance is an expression of myself. You're not seeing it physically, you're only experiencing it. No matter the occasion, my scent is definitely reflective of a combination of my mood, what outfit I'm putting on, and the time of day.
People are very loyal to their scent, and I also like to wear what the consumers are wearing at the time. So any newness, any launch, I wear for a good six to twelve months. But the fun that comes with this, and kind of this self-expression moment, is the layering aspect. If I want to feel sexy, if I want to feel playful, there's a scent combination for anything, and it's a fun way to play on this part of your identity that's silent but so loud at the same time.
Whenever a new launch is coming, I wear it beforehand in testing mode. We try to have a fragrance launch once a year, so I'm in testing mode a lot of the time, which is really fun.
If I'm going Dedcool current collection right now, it's Mochi Milk. I also always love Extra Milk, that's kind of like the universal. And recently, I'm finding myself wearing Taunt a lot, which I haven't worn in a long time. It's fun to revisit scents, because they hold a moment in time, and to come back and have that feeling and association to when I was wearing it previously, and how I'm experiencing wearing it now, is definitely a great way to play with scent—it doesn't have to be so serious.
I say that it means nothing but everything at the same time. Again, when I started Dedcool, I had zero anticipation of it being a real company. It was the mood board. It was my Instagram page, and it was supposed to be representative of an opposition of all things traditional and legacy fragrance. And it's kind of like, here we are. This is the new way to experience scent.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Jasmine Hyman is the Assistant Beauty Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she writes about the latest beauty trends and must-have products. Her most prized beauty possessions are a meticulous skincare routine and salon blowouts. You'll also likely find her in bed reading a good book or endlessly scrolling TikTok (spoiler: it's usually the latter) while listening to Harry Styles' entire discography on repeat. Follow her on Insta to be inundated with pictures of her meals.
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