Smell of success: Sioux Falls TikToker finds following as ‘Professor Perfume’

“It’s like picking favorite children.”

Granted, she’s talking about perfume bottles. But in this case, a little exaggeration – and a lot of love – probably are warranted.

“Of course, I have favorites,” Emelia O’Toole says in her TikTok video. “Here they are.”

She proceeds to show more than a dozen perfume bottles, dropping bits of information about the scents as well as the aesthetics along the way.

@professorperfume Replying to @slimescholar a pretty bottle makes it smell better 🫣 #perfumetok #perfumetiktok #perfume #perfumelover #fragrancetok ♬ original sound – Emelia | Professor Perfume 🫧

“Inside me, I have two wolves,” she says. “One of them doesn’t care what the bottle looks like. As long as it smells good, I’m wearing it. And the other one wants the experience. She wants the pretty bottle.”

O’Toole can be excused for having literally an entire closet filled with perfume bottles – and more arriving each week.

At 26, the Sioux Falls woman has turned her passion for fragrance into a one-woman business, making a full-time living as “Professor Perfume,” complete with a California management agency that handles her marketing deals with brands wanting to reach her more than 300,000 followers.

“It’s insane,” she acknowledged. “It was not what I had planned at all for myself. It just randomly happened.”

O’Toole actually envisioned becoming a real professor – more specifically, “I was going to be an English professor and write my dissertation on Dracula and be the eccentric, crazy English professor at Trinity (College in Ireland). And COVID happened.”

Then a master’s student in Ireland, O’Toole was writing her dissertation for that degree, “and I was really procrastinating, and during that process, I ordered a few perfume sample sets from a couple different brands,” she said.

It vaulted her into “a whole world I know nothing about,” she said, adding she then ordered a few books about perfume, “and I got more into the world of fragrance, and I started my TikTok account, and it took off sort of immediately.”

The appeal for O’Toole is in “just the way a scent captures a memory, a story,” she said. “There’s a whole world inside of a fragrance bottle and so much artistry that goes into it that we just don’t think about when you pick up a perfume and put it on.”

She already followed beauty brands and influencers on social media, and her favorite platform was TikTok, so it made sense to create her own content, she said.

“I think it’s so funny and casual and laid-back, and I think there’s a chance for everyone to be a creator,” she said. “I posted a video sort of roasting the perfumes I used to wear in high school, and that’s the one that really took off.”

From there, she hit 10,000 followers, then 50,000, “kind of in the span of a few months,” she said.

“It was really crazy when I stop to think about it. Essentially, I was living on my student loan money, and every single penny was going into buying perfume samples and sampling more to churn out more and more content.”

@professorperfume a little trick for you 🤍 #perfumetok #perfumetiktok #perfume101 #lifehack #perfumelover #perfume #fragrance #fyp #themoreyouknow ♬ original sound – Emelia | Professor Perfume 🫧

She got a job teaching online for the University of Sioux Falls in late 2020 while still living in Ireland – “they needed help, and I needed a job and money to buy perfume, so I took it on” – and soon connected with a perfume maker who made oils inspired by historical figures and fictional characters.

O’Toole made a video about a fragrance “inspired by the manor that inspired ‘Pride and Prejudice’ … and that went viral and sold out her entire stock of everything, so I sent her an email and ended up running her social media,” she said.

“Just as I built up more of a following, when I hit around 150,000, I was getting good brand deals.”

At the end of one year creating content – late 2021 – she signed with an agency, “and now they run everything for me, and it’s been really easy from there because they handle all the negotiations and contracts,” she said. “It’s really been wild. It feels like a whirlwind.”

Day in the life

What does 24 hours in the life of a full-time TikToker look like?

“It’s pretty chill,” O’Toole said. “Most days, I completely work from my phone and my iPad.”

After coffee, breakfast and a dog walk, “I’ll get ready – and getting ready is kind of content in and of itself,” she said. “What makeup am I using? How am I styling my hair? I post almost every day, and it’s not all perfume. Am I going to post a lifestyle video, makeup, hair care, some things with clothes I’ve been loving?”

Every day is different, and the content isn’t planned or scheduled.

“I set the camera up, and whatever comes out of my mouth is what’s posted that day,” she said. “Every day is different. I get a lot of perfumes sent to me, so if it’s a heavy mail day, we’re going to do a PR unboxing or first impression of a new fragrance coming out or new launch from Sephora — it really depends what’s going on.”

@professorperfume rainy day activities 😮‍💨 #sephora #sephorahaul #sephorasquad #perfumetok #FilmTeyvatIslands #fyp #foryou ♬ original sound – Emelia | Professor Perfume 🫧

Last year, O’Toole was named one of about 70 creators on the Sephora Squad, a yearlong partnership that now makes her part of the alumni program.

She estimates that at any given time she’s working on three to five brand campaigns.

Last year, Dior even sent her to Paris for a promotional shoot.

Fragrance content creators are “still relatively new” on TikTok, she said.

“They tell you when you become a creator to niche down and make content about one particular thing, so you become recognizable for that, that becomes the thing you do, and you can branch out from there.”

Vow Factor

Shortly after she became engaged in 2021, O’Toole launched a series of videos looking for the perfect wedding fragrance.

“I couldn’t find it because I was being so picky,” she said. “And one of the brands I’ve worked with called Snif, a new brand that’s amazing, one of the owners emailed, and he said: ‘We have this crazy idea. What if we make you a custom wedding fragrance?’”

It originally was going to be a single bottle, given as a gift. Snif flew O’Toole and her fiance, Patrick Twomey, to New York to meet the perfumers and help develop the fragrance.

@professorperfume Replying to @user1729578887591 here’s what you missed 🫡💚 #perfumetok #perfumetiktok #snif #vowfactor #fyp ♬ The Four Seasons, Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297 “Winter”: I. Allegro non molto – Antonio Vivaldi

“After about a yearlong process, we launched it, and it’s going to be the scent for my wedding, which is very exciting,” she said. “It’s absolutely perfect. I could not have asked for a better outcome, really. They were so kind for the whole process. I got full creative liberty, they completely let me run it, and it really does feel like me.”

While she and Twomey legally got married recently – he’s relocating to Sioux Falls from Ireland – the celebration will be sometime next June, and Vow Factor now is available for anyone to purchase.

It’s described as “a green, fig-forward scent that raises a glass to the romance of everyday life. Ripe with fruity figs, neroli, rose and cedar wood, this green fragrance bottles that first-love feeling,” according to Snif. “Its modern sophistication is made for everything from the grocery aisle to the wedding aisle.”

Back in her Sioux Falls home, O’Toole gives away much of what she calls “an absolutely absurd and ridiculous amount” of perfume she has accumulated.

“I give it to my mom, sister, friends,” she said. “Basically anyone who walks in the door, they leave with a bottle of perfume.”

She said she enjoys being based in her hometown, near family and long-time friends but with the ability to travel as her business demands.

“There’s a lot of potential,” she said. “Although the suitcases are a lot heavier now.”

Plus, Professor Perfume actually now is a fragrance academic. O’Toole recently completed her graduate certification in advanced perfumery from Pratt Institute, “so I’m now a certified perfume pro,” she said.

A pro who still has an impressive collection of her own.

“I’ve got a whole closet full of perfume,” she said. “I wish I didn’t love half of it as much as I do.”