Perfume, cologne, eau de toilette, parfum – whatever you call it, our culture is obsessed with personal fragrance. Calgary has quite a selection of fantastic shops and boutiques where you can discover unique personal fragrances and find your own signature scent. This list features just 10 of the city’s top scent shops.
This little shop is nestled in historic Inglewood in a brick heritage building right on Ninth Avenue Southeast. Entering this crisp, white space, you’ll first notice its striking living-moss wall. Carrying bath and body-care products as well as linens and home decor items, Fresh Laundry also offers an incredible selection of personal fragrance products. From Calgary to Copenhagen, its array of brands is impressive. A standout is the Blackbird perfume collection. The chic Seattle line features five scents including the explosive Pipe Bomb and woodsy Tinderbox.
L’Occitane is an international personal fragrance and skincare company based in Provence. Its three Calgary locations include Chinook Centre, CORE Shopping Centre and Market Mall. L’Occitane’s first scent was a rosemary essential oil sold in the street markets of its home city. Now the corporation produces hundreds of products in a variety of scents for men and women, as well as home fragrances. The Chinook Centre boutique is incredibly stimulating, featuring bright colours, patterns and scents at every turn.
The Perfume Shoppe is literally a one-stop shop carrying every designer fragrance you can name. It has two stores in Calgary, at Sunridge Mall and Deerfoot Mall. The Perfume Shoppe offers excellent discounts on all of its perfumes, including hard-to-find fragrances. Also of note, the shop offers free in-store pickup of online orders.
A skincare and personal fragrance giant, The Body Shop creates products that are vegetable-based and are not tested on animals. Its multiple Calgary locations include the CORE Shopping Centre, Southcentre Mall, Chinook Centre and Market Mall. Personal fragrance products include eau de toilette, eau de parfum, perfume oils, body sprays, lotions and more, with the soft and velvety White Musk being its hands-down most popular fragrance.
The Apothecary in Inglewood is a gorgeous body and home-care shop located in a redbrick building on the west end of the Ninth Avenue Southwest boutique strip. Everything it carries is Canadian made, if not Calgary made. Each item is paraben-free, and most products are certified organic. Among the boutique’s all-natural products you’ll find the highest quality, pure essential oils. Aromatherapy is the focus, and staff will instruct you on custom mixing essential oils to your preference.
The Aveda Institute is a hairstyling academy located in downtown Calgary. A world-renowned hair care company, its beautiful products are created with pure flower and plant essences. The academy features a retail shop carrying the expansive Aveda product line. This includes the Aveda Pure-Fume collection, which transforms signature Aveda scents into wearable fragrances. The most popular of these is Pure-Fume Absolute, which features jasmine and ylang-ylang essential oils and matches the Shampure hair care collection.
Two Harry Rosen Menswear locations include one in Chinook Centre and a second in the CORE Shopping Centre. Aside from clothing, shoes, fashion accessories and grooming products, the business is a retailer of high-end designer fragrances for men. It carries more than 90 fragrances from brands such as Tom Ford, Creed and Ermenegildo Zegna.
Located in Mount Royal Village just off 17th Avenue Southwest, Modern Duke is an eclectic and luxurious home furnishings shop. The shop’s lifestyle products include jewellery, bath products and personal fragrances by the highly regarded Santa Maria Novella brand. One of the world’s oldest pharmacies, it was founded in Florence in 1221, and Modern Duke is the only shop in Calgary to carry its products.