I’ve eaten my feelings on more occasions than we need to get into, but this is the first time I’ve found myself being asked to smell them.
“What do you think?” Anahita Mekanik cocks her head and waits for me to compose my thoughts. I have already zapped a QR code on my phone and submitted to the elaborate—but also nosy and weirdly witty—questionnaire she came up with pertaining to my general scent predilections, as well as the state of my current mood (which, let s be honest, is far from A+). I have stood by and, heart in throat, watched the gleaming and more than vaguely steampunk contraption behind her take in my answers and come up with three formulations. Each one is executed via somersaulting vials, accompanied by cuckoo-clock sound effects. The contraption uses AI to come up with bespoke formulations from 52 scented building blocks, but there s some very old-school technology as well: The conversation that Mekanik and I had as we went through her raft of questions was far more like talk therapy than any sales pitch. And now I have a trio of fragrances tailor-made to my state of mind on this not-terribly-great Wednesday morning.
Born in Tehran, Mekanik started out as a linguistics major and ended up discovering that fragrance is her love language. She went on to train under master perfumers and spent the bulk of her career as a scent designer working for a variety of brands before cofounding ScenTronix, an out-there multidisciplinary firm that uses technology and a little bit of poetry to concoct bespoke fragrances meant to stir up our creative and emotional juices. We are at 113 Spring, the new experience-based wellness funhouse in the heart of Soho.
The current trend of turning everything into an “event” or an “activation” can be a bit tiresome, but the team at this multidisciplinary clubhouse, which is more art gallery than any health club or fancy spa, has stuck the landing. The experiences on offer are clever and wildly creative. It’s the Museum of Ice Cream for the thinking woman, if you will.
At 113 Spring, you won’t find any of the regular trappings of fancy schmancy spas. No finely coiffed attendants clicking about in high heels and white smocks, no eucalyptus mists, no purple orchids sitting rigid and pretty. The space, located in a historic cast iron building with vaulted ceilings, is the result of a band of rock-star collaborators. It even has its own curator: Vogue’s former beauty editor Celia Ellenberg, whose mission here is to bring science-backed solutions and experimentation to life. Rather than capitalize on the wellness fad du jour until the clientele moves on, 113 Spring is in a constant state of evolution. Every four to six months, it will shift to a new theme, with new experiences executed and vetted by a cast of visiting experts and a board of advisers. The latter crew includes Azza Gadir, PhD, MSc, molecular immunologist; Dr. Uma Naidoo, MD, the psychiatrist and nutrition expert who designed the menu at the space’s cafe (butterfly pea tea and celeriac mille-feuille, anyone?); Robyn Landau, MSc, cofounder of Kinda, a London firm that comes up with neuroscience-based experiences; and Anne-Rachel Schiffmann, a buoyant architect who designed the space to be taken apart in the name of sustainability.
The inaugural theme is Presence is the Present, a fancy way of saying “mindfulness.” The team here has gone far beyond the rote meditation pillows and soft gongs. The first two experiences, the result of a year of cross-continental development, are playful and fun. Mekanik’s scent bar, the fulcrum of her Mind-Scent experience, sits out in the open, located just past the tiny and beautifully curated shop of board-approved products. Walk a little deeper into the loft-like space and you’ll find a lounge area, awash in a mauve light and with 3D printed chairs in the most glorious hunter green. The wall projections featuring silhouettes of trees sway in response to people’s movements. “The idea was to give the visitor the sensation of walking into a forest,” says Ellenberg. Off to the side of the lounge is the next-level meditation room that Landau designed for private and practically psychedelic Emergence sessions.
The experience I am currently focused on is finding the fragrance that has my id as its muse. In order to arrive at it, Mekanik and I will go through a Goldilocks-like examination of the three scents her machine whipped up for me. Once I pick my favorite of the trio, we will work together to tweak it to my even more precise specifications. To be perfectly honest, I would not wish the scent version of myself on anyone. My responses to the sliding-scale questions about how sensual, jittery, interested, distracted, and worried I feel are not the stuff of a blockbuster scent. Look, I’ve had better days. I am running on too little sleep, and I am stressing out about the cake I volunteered to bake for my family’s Rosh Hashanah celebration.
And yet, the second of three scents that Mekanik’s whirligig contraption has pulled together is rather nice. “Lauren Mechling 02” is made with bright citrus notes and, as Makanik tells me, shades of Mediterranean, whatever that means. Mekanik gives it her nod of approval, and then we get to work on adjusting the formula. More bergamot and grapefruit, less jasmine and lily of the valley. We even give it a new name, one that I feel represents this exact, and exactly imperfect, moment in time: “Wednesday.” She sends me off with a suite of palm-sized vials as keepsakes: the three original formulations as well as our final draft. “Scent is such a powerful tool for self-expression, but so few of us get a chance to be creators,” she tells me. “We’re all cooks and writers and photographers in some form or another, but scent is something that we can all engage with, too.”
The other experience, Emergence, is just as beautiful. Landau’s out-there meditation room has more in common with sitting at the planetarium than a session on a stinky cushion at a random meditation center. A slender C-shaped EEG headset that wraps over a guest’s forehead and ends behind the ears reads a visitor’s neural activity, and serves up video and audio that helps her reach a super-relaxed altered state—or “drop in,” as Landau likes to put it.
I do not wish to be locked in a windowless room stuck with wall projections of my emotions, but Emergence is weirdly inviting, with a reclining armchair and footstool that vibrate in time with the projections and sounds. I am given a super-soft blanket to curl under. On a side table sits a key fob with a red button, should I need anyone to scurry in and save me. I slide this tiny item a bit closer to me and exhale. Landau gives my headset a final adjustment and closes the door behind her. It’s showtime, and I have no choice but to lean back and give in to the programming. Undulating before me is a procession of swirling pinks and oranges and soft-focus jellyfish and desert landscapes, while a disembodied British voice guides my breathing. I feel myself doing something utterly foreign to me and giving myself over to a state of transcendence and calm. This must be the “dropping in” thing that Landau likes to talk about.
At the end of this very strange and surprisingly charming Wednesday morning, I step onto Spring Street, feeling something I’m not used to: unburdened, at ease. Happy, even. My head feels less agitated, and something that Mekanik said when she examined our final scent formulation rings through it: “I really like your ‘Wednesday.’”