“Bottling the Vibes at Phylum Palm Springs: SCIRCLE, AI Perfume, and Smelling Like Your Future Self"

By Ersilia Pompilio

We already let AI be our unpaid therapist, our situationship translator (“what does ‘lol’ really mean?”), and our ghostwriter for the next maybe-bestselling novel.

So honestly? Letting AI help us create a personal fragrance feels like the most unhinged-but-correct next step.

Enter: SCIRCLE.

In December, the vibes were immaculate at Phylum, the Palm Springs modernist mercantile, where SCIRCLE hosted a fragrance-making event that felt less like shopping and more like stepping into your own origin story. Think sun-warmed concrete, design-head energy, and people casually deciding what they want to smell like for the next era of their lives.

Here’s the deal: SCIRCLE uses Aura, its AI perfumer, to help you design a scent that’s deeply personal. Not “this smells nice at Sephora” personal — more like this smells like who I am becoming personal.

Someone at the event asked, “Do you want to smell like Rihanna?”Aura said: say less.

You fill out the SCIRCLE profile, type in your muse (yes, Rihanna counts), and Aura gets to work. In this case, it pulled together a sweet gourmand blend with marshmallow notes and soft florals — the same general vibe as Kilian Love, Don’t Be Shy, a fragrance Rihanna herself is rumored to wear.

The result? A scent that feels like a bass drop, a slow strut, and a Coachella sunset all at once. Coachella 2026, to be exact.

What makes SCIRCLE hit different is that you’re not boxed into one lane.

You can:

• Blend your own scent with Aura

• Explore fragrances created by the SCIRCLE community (because everyone has a story, and apparently, a smell)

  
  

It’s perfect for a bachelorette weekend, a girls’ trip, or that solo travel moment where you dramatically reinvent yourself and delete half your camera roll. It’s also low-key genius for storytellers. Writing a novel? Give your protagonist a scent. Hero, villain, morally gray hot mess — scent is memory, and memory is emotion.

Science backs this up, by the way. The olfactory system is directly connected to the brain’s limbic system, which handles emotions, nostalgia, and longing. Translation: scent goes straight to the feels. One whiff and suddenly you’re remembering a summer that changed you or a person you probably shouldn’t text.

SCIRCLE makes it easy.

Blend it anywhere.Get your custom fragrance delivered to your door, or create it instantly at one of their Design Hubs. Casual.

We loved SCIRCLE — like, genuinely — and we’re hoping to see it popping up in way more U.S. stores soon. Because imagine creating:

• the scent of the person you’re going to marry (manifesting, obviously)

• the fragrance that makes you unforgettable in job interviews

• or that million-dollar smell that becomes your signature before you even realize you’ve entered your power era

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SCIRCLE isn’t just perfume. It’s storytelling, bottled. And honestly? That’s kind of iconic.

About the Author

Ersilia Pompilio is the Editor in Chief of SQUAD Magazine, a Palm Springs guide for bachelorettes and ladies who love to leisure. Ersilia has over two decades of experience in performing, producing live storytelling shows, and hosting a podcast, she has also taught storytelling classes and written professionally for several media outlets. Originally from Los Angeles, Ersilia is also a twenty-year resident of Palm Springs, California.