Ojai Wild Awakes the Senses with Nature’s Pure Essence
In 2017, Janna Sheehan was invited to design a scent that embodied the spiritual essence of Ojai Valley for the “We Are Spiritual Machines” exhibit at the Porch Gallery in Ojai. At the time Janna had been working on her first line of products, called Trance Essence, which used a more traditional way of formulating fragrances using aroma chemicals and essential oils. The exhibit inspired her to formulate a scent that was derived straight from nature; this was the birth of Ojai Wild.
Janna describes herself as an artist, fragrance formulator and alchemist first, and brand founder second. “What inspires me daily is the act of creation, from growing plants to breaking them down in my lab and distillery and starting it all over again. Ojai Wild is 100% natural and functional—no chemicals. They don’t just mimic nature, they are nature.”
The botanicals used by Ojai Wild are harvested seasonally, crushed, pressed and soaked to render the unadulterated essence of the plant.
“This essence is then enshrined by highlighting it in a harmonious blend of other natural raw materials: essential oils, resins and roots, giving it the context of a sophisticated, complex fragrance composition. Ojai Wild delivers the sublime, vibrant harmonies of nature to your skin with the aromatherapeutic qualities of plant medicine—supporting energy and promoting balance,” says Janna.
Ojai Wild is a literal breath of fresh air in the world of colognes and body care products. Janna describes it as a “complete departure from the industrial complex of the fragrance world as we’ve known it since the 1920s.”
Fragranced products that are “industrial complex” have been associated with a range of adverse health effects. An individual fragrance in a product can be a mixture of several dozen to several hundred chemicals, most of which are synthetic compounds.
“Ojai Wild is a kind of Qi changer in that it has aromatherapeutic qualities that can give one an energetic ‘reset’ to the senses,” says Janna.
The colognes and body care products harmonize with one’s own body odor instead of masking it. According to Janna, this integration of body odor and natural scent from her products is very sexy.
“We are interested in accentuating the instinctual animal qualities that humans possess and how scent can empower this. This is why we are expanding the product line in late 2020 from fragrance to include aromatic skin care and intimate wellness products that connect mind, body and spirit,” says Janna. “Our definition of wellness is steeped in intimacy. Wellness is about connection to one’s innate essence or ‘animal spirituality,’ which happens in a profound way when you sync up with your partner’s physical being. That’s the next stage of scent-uality.”
