DIY beauty boutique on Roosevelt Row helps customers create personalized scents

While name-brand products may never go out of style, one recent trend might present some healthy competition: the opportunity to make your own.

Revera Beauty is a boutique located on Roosevelt Row near Sixth Street that allows you to create your own custom perfume alongside owners Violet Brand and Susan Kerr.

“A custom perfume is really unique,” Brand said. “Different scents smell different on different people. The same perfume will smell different on Susan than on me, and it will smell different on me than it does on you.”

The perfumes made at Revera are made with all-natural essential oils and products, and ingredients are farmed, not harvested in the wild.

“It makes you feel good,” Brand said. “You wouldn’t feel good after playing in a chemical plant, but you would after playing in a field of flowers.”

Making customized perfume at Revera is done by appointment only and takes about an hour and a half.

“It’s a lot more work, but the product people go home with is so much better, and the overall experience is so much better,” Kerr said.

Kerr attributes the enhanced experience to customers’ desire to participate in creative expression. It is this creative expression that is driving more and more do-it-yourself shops to open in Arizona.

In addition to Revera, Harold Studio is another DIY shop in Phoenix. Located on McDowell Road and First Avenue, Harold Studio provides equipment and supplies for customers to make custom jewelry.

“It’s more about the experience,” owner Johanna Ingram said. “There’s a sentiment behind it. It’s pretty therapeutic, and there’s the social aspect, as well.”

Harold Studio offers rental space to serious jewelry makers and classes for those seeking to learn the trade. Above all, it provides an opportunity for customers to take creativity into their own hands.

“We’ve lost this so much,” Brand said of the DIY experience. “People swing by and pick up a microwave dinner on the way home. We give people an opportunity to get away from that.”

The DIY trend isn’t limited to Phoenix. Several shops are cropping up elsewhere, including the U-Fix-It Center in Tempe, which offers customers the tools to repair their own cars, and the Brush Bar in Scottsdale, which provides materials (and wine) for customers to come in and create their own art. Dippity Do Dog in Chandler provides the facilities for a self-service dog wash, and almost everyone is familiar with self-serve yogurt, where customers can assemble their own desserts.

“Everyone is so saturated with whatever media culture is, and they want to get into being who they want to be, rather than who corporations tell them to be,” Kerr said. “Humans, since we were cavemen, receive pleasure and happiness when we do something ourselves.”

Revera charges $150 for a 50 mL bottle of custom perfume that can be personally engraved for no additional charge.

“It’s expensive to buy (essential) oils at the store, so if you want to make a perfume with 30 different constituents, then ‘Oh crap!’ All of a sudden you’re spending a lot for one perfume and you better hope it smells good,” Brand said.

Revera also offers classes on perfume making for larger groups.

If DIY is not for you, Revera sells premade perfumes that start at $65. The shop also sells bath milk, lip balms, scented candles and other products.

Contact the reporter at kendra.worsnup@asu.edu