TODD NICKEY - SCENT, MEMORY & BERNARD
Image courtesy of Bernard
Notes from our conversation with Todd Nickey at Wiseman & Gale during the Spring ‘26 Edition of Desert Design Week. You can listen to the audio file here.
Todd Nickey’s fascination with scent started with smells most people would rather avoid. He remembers finding a rotten potato in a grocery bag and being both disgusted and completely drawn to it. The smell of a dog sprayed by a skunk or gasoline coming from the tank had the same effect. They were strange, sometimes gross, but still compelling.
“I hate that smell, but I love that smell, and I can’t get enough of that smell,” he recalled.
That attraction to strange and unexpected smells became part of the process behind building Bernard. Todd was connected with Jean-Claude, the perfumer, or “nose,” he worked with to develop the fragrances. When Jean-Claude asked which scents he loved and what he was naturally drawn to, Todd recalled, “I told him the potato story, and I was like, ‘I love the smell of gasoline when it’s coming out of the tank.’ Just these weird things.”
Jean-Claude explained that this was an important part of building a fragrance: “You have to have something putrid to balance something beautiful.”
The perfumer developed 35 small vials for Todd and gave him a collection of scent strips, encouraging him to make whatever combinations he wanted and take copious notes. He spent a weekend at a friend’s house working on four fragrances, which changed very little afterward. He described it as an experiment in combining the things he loved and finding the balance between the repellent, the beautiful, and the earthy.
“I think I’ve just always loved scent almost of any kind,” he said.
Todd remembers visiting Diptyque in Paris during the mid-1990s, when scented candles and interior fragrance were still relatively unusual. Inside the shop, the candle was turned upside down and struck against a velvet pillow, releasing it from the vessel so the fragrance could be experienced through the empty container.
“It was just this whole ritual where, ‘Oh, my God, this is amazing.’”
Todd did not know then that he would eventually create a fragrance collection of his own. He describes experiences like that as small moments that stayed with him.
“It was just all of those little things along the way, kind of logged in.”
Bernard is named for Todd’s grandfather, whom he never met. While developing the line, Todd connected with an aunt from his father’s family and saw photographs of Bernard for the first time. He appeared in top hats and carefully chosen clothing, a man who paid attention to the way he presented himself.
“He was this total dandy,” Todd said. “He just cared so much about his aesthetic.”
In the photographs and stories, Todd recognized an attachment to beauty that he had always felt himself.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m definitely related to this person.’”
The physical identity of Bernard became an homage to him, built around the idea of what a dandy might want to receive and open. The candles are wrapped in fabric using the Japanese tradition of furoshiki, making the packaging part of the experience and allowing it to hold the fragrance after it is opened.
Image: Ashley Guice
The perfume oils were designed to be worn alone, layered with one another, or combined with other fragrances. Because the oils respond directly to the skin, Todd believes they become more personal than a traditional eau de parfum or eau de toilette.
“They become a little more distinctively you,” he said. “It’s retraining people to think differently about how you apply a fragrance.”
He also rejected the idea that scent needs to belong to a masculine or feminine category.
“I think scent is just unisex,” he said. “I don’t smell it as something that is necessarily masculine or feminine.”
That belief in atmosphere, ritual, and physical experience reaches back to Todd’s earliest interest in design. Growing up on the East Coast as an only child, he spent much of his time moving furniture, rearranging rooms, and thinking about how a space could feel different.
“I loved design. I loved space from a very early age,” he said.
When he stayed home from school, Todd would move the furniture around the house. His parents would return to find the dining room in the living room and the living room in the dining room. When they left him home alone for a week at 16 or 17, he skipped the expected teenage party and wallpapered the kitchen instead.
“I actually did a really good job,” he said, although his parents were not thrilled when they returned.
Todd later moved to New York and worked in video and film before finding his way to Ralph Lauren, where he began designing window displays.
He described the experience at Ralph Lauren as extraordinary. It brought together interiors, clothing, objects, display, and storytelling, giving him a way to think about a room as more than a collection of individual pieces.
After leaving Ralph Lauren, Todd began taking on projects of his own. He completed an apartment; it was published, and the work continued to grow from there. Years of travel and exposure to antiques, interiors, fragrance, and finely made objects helped shape his eye and gave him the foundation to build something of his own. Nickey Kehoe was influenced by these experiences, bringing interiors, furniture, antiques, textiles, and collected pieces into one layered world.
That interest in the full experience also shapes his view of retail. Todd agrees that creativity is no longer centered only in places like New York and Los Angeles. Designers and makers are working in smaller cities and communities, while digital access has made it possible to discover and purchase work from almost anywhere.
Still, he believes some things cannot be understood through a screen.
“I firmly believe there’s a touching and feeling that is really essential and really crucial,” he said.
For Todd, the physical experience of a showroom or shop remains important, especially at the higher end of design. The weight of an object, the texture of a material, the scale of a piece, and the atmosphere of a room all reveal themselves differently in person.
“I think it’s exciting to see this return to brick and mortar, and people really having a physical experience again,” he said.
It is the same idea that runs through Bernard. The fragrance is only one part of the experience. The vessel, the fabric wrapping, the feel of the oil on the skin, and the scent it leaves behind all work together.
Image courtesy of Todd Nickey
Todd’s next chapter brings many of those ideas into a different kind of space. He recently purchased a house in Connecticut that is 275 years old and is now working through the restoration process.
“I love the idea of really exploring this side of preservation, of historic preservation, of restoration,” he said.
The property is becoming a place where the values represented through his work can also be practiced. Todd spoke about gardening, beekeeping, kitchenware, education, and creating a more sustainable way of living.
He wants it to become a place where those ideas are not simply displayed or sold, but experienced as part of everyday life.
Bernard is available in Arizona at the Wiseman & Gale showroom in Old Town Scottsdale.
WISEMAN & GALE SHOWROOM
Wisemanandgale.com
@Wisemanandgale
4015 N Marshall Way, Scottsdale, AZ 85251