Sidia Is Entering the Fine Fragrance World With a “True Modern Heirloom”

Some things are so meant to be that, when they eventually happen, you aren’t even a little bit surprised. All you can do in these situations is breathe a sigh of relief—you’ve been waiting for this!—and offer up a knowing smile.

Then maybe breathe in again? If only because this reveal is particularly sweet smelling. On Tuesday, September 1, Sidia’s first parfums are making their grand entrance, stepping into a destination the brand was bound to end up in since the very beginning.

“Fragrance was always hiding in plain sight for us. We started Sidia through the lens of body care and ritual, but when we launched our Body Mists, the response completely changed the trajectory of the business,” founder Erin Kleinberg tells Byrdie. “Fine fragrance felt like the natural next chapter: taking these worlds our community already loved and giving them more depth, concentration, and permanence.”

This is fine fragrance the Sidia way, though. While the new launch obviously includes your already-favorite body mist scents in a new format, it centers around The Strike, a refillable, heavy-weighted gold vessel that was inspired by the jewelry of the brand’s matriarch: Kleinberg’s grandma, Sidia.

Keep reading to discover everything there is to know about the launch, including insight from the founder herself.

The Inspiration

As mentioned, Sidia’s body mists are already the daily scent of so many tastemakers.

“People weren’t just wearing them—they were identifying with them. They’d tell us, ‘I’m a Braless girl’ or layer two scents together depending on how they wanted to feel that day. I became obsessed with that idea of fragrance as an extension of identity,” shares Kleinberg.

She never wanted Sidia to simply make a perfume “because beauty brands are supposed to make perfume.” Instead, this was a journey in understanding how consumers responded to the brand and figuring out how to make their experience even more meaningful.

“I wanted to build a fragrance house where scent could function almost like a wardrobe—you reach for something different depending on who you want to be that day,” Kleinberg explains.

However, we know that no matter how you choose to show up, you’re still you to your core. The Strike—which was inspired by the gold earrings Kleinberg’s grandmother never left the left the house without—will hold whichever fragrance you decide to indulge in that day.

The Process

While I’m sure whatever standalone perfume bottle Sidia designed would’ve been equally precious, there’s a good reason the brand decided to take the Strike-plus-refillable-fragrance route.

“We’re a bootstrapped company. There were probably a hundred moments where making a normal fragrance bottle would have been faster, cheaper, and infinitely less complicated. Instead, we spent an almost unreasonable amount of time obsessing over weight, metal, fluting, the way The Strike feels in your hand, even the sound of the click,” explains Kleinberg. “But that’s also what Sidia is about for me. My grandmother kept beautiful things her entire life, and now I have some of them. We’re living in a moment where we’re surrounded by so much stuff, and I wanted to make the opposite of that.”

Now, the founder is proud to say the brand made something that feels “unmistakably” their own.

“The Strike isn’t just packaging for the fragrance; it’s the first object of Sidia Parfums,” she shares. “And I love the idea that someone might buy it today, refill it for years, engrave it, beat it up a little, make it theirs—and maybe one day someone else finds it on their vanity. That’s when an object becomes an heirloom.”

The Fragrances

If you haven’t already gone through multiple bottles of Braless (couldn’t be me!), I suppose it’s time to meet the scents. Let’s start with Midas, the house’s hero fragrance. If it were an outfit, Kleinberg says it’d be head-to-toe cream or ivory topped off with an “absurd piece of gold jewelry.”

“It’s warm skin, golden amber, sandalwood, black pepper, this unexpected flash of coconut water. Jérôme Epinette created Midas with us, and to me it smells like arrival,” she notes. “Not flashy wealth—the confidence of someone who already knows she belongs in the room.”

Next up is the raw and sensual Braless: “the vintage leather jacket you stole from someone years ago and never gave back.” And underneath that? “Maybe nothing but a worn in sheer perfect white tank.”

“It’s smoky, leather-y, musky, a little vanilla - sexy without remotely trying to be sexy,” says Kleinberg. “Braless is that feeling when you get home, take everything off, and finally become yourself again.”

And then there’s Soaked.

“Soaked is an immaculate oversized white shirt with nothing unnecessary. Crisp tailoring, bare skin, great watch. It’s juniper and lemon, incredibly clean but not ‘clean girl,’” notes the founder. “There’s tension to it. She’s composed, powerful, probably running five minutes late, and doesn’t need to explain herself.”

There you have it—the Sidia wardrobe. “I don’t believe you have to be one woman every day,” says Kleinberg. “Some days I’m Braless, some days I’m Midas, some days I need Soaked. Fragrance lets you decide.”

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The Vessel

Some of Kleinberg’s strongest memories of Sidia the matriarch involve her sitting at her vanity, where she was surrounded by an array of “incredibly intentional” objects: perfume, jewelry, and other “beautiful things she’d collected and kept forever.”

“Nothing felt disposable,” Kleinberg explains.

The Strike began with one of these very objects: a pair of architectural statement earrings that were passed from grandmother to granddaughter.

“I kept thinking, why can’t fragrance feel like that? Why does something so personal have to live in a bottle that eventually gets thrown away?” the founder explains. “So we built the entire fragrance around this idea, from the exterior packaging, inspired by a jewelry box with the Strike and Fragrance nestled in velvet, to the substantial weight of the product in your hand.”

As Kleinberg says, every detail was designed to feel special.

“The gold-finished object that houses the 10 mL fragrance has an incredibly satisfying click, and when the fragrance is finished, you refill it rather than replace it. I wanted something you’d pull out of your bag the way you’d pull out a great compact or lighter—something people notice and ask you about,” she shares. “The permanence was the point. I wanted to make something you would keep.”

You can shop The Strike & The Parfum ($120) and The Parfum ($54) beginning Tuesday, September 1 on sidiathebrand.com.