He was a nominee in the Purchaser Option Vlog classification, for a movie that he had shot the night time of the past year’s ceremony, with his pricey mate and fellow vlogger Steven Gavrielatos.

The awards night time video opens in Mr. Powell’s condominium, in which Claude the cat and a panoply of waving cat collectible figurines continue to keep our hero company. He spritzes on Tom Ford’s Amber Complete, slips on his Brooklyn baseball cap and Men’s Warehouse rental tux, and off he goes.

At the ceremony, Mr. Powell stands to the aspect of the pink carpet. He greets Jeremy Fragrance, a fellow nominee, who seems eager to hold shifting by the crowd. Mr. Powell’s confront lights up when he places the grasp perfumer Olivier Cresp. (Other individuals on hand, like Jane Krakowski and Naomi Campbell, have no these kinds of result.)

We bounce reduce to the second when the winner is announced. Jeremy Fragrance ascends the stage like a dastardly Disney prince. He many thanks the home, then proceeds to reduce to the flooring and do 10 one particular-armed force-ups. The group goes wild.

“We had been both sensation a wide vary of feelings,” Mr. Gavrielatos recalled. “Carlos favored Jeremy, and generally experienced an appreciation for his hustle. But that evening he was upset. He assumed, ‘This is my only opportunity. Jeremy’s subscriber depend was developing 300 per cent more quickly than either of ours were being, and he was like, ‘If we never acquire this calendar year, we’re not winning ever.’”

Mr. Powell’s spirits had recovered by the conclude of the ceremony, when he was handed a bag of fragrances on his way out. His enjoyment got the finest of him. He turned to Mr. Gavrielatos and instructed, “Want to go to your position and shoot some videos?’” It was a late night.

Mr. Powell dreamed of making up to 100,000 subscribers. His other aspiration was to launch his personal scent. He and Mr. Gavrielatos commenced to function on a fragrance line known as Redbrook.

The brew was mixed at the Culture of Scent, an indie company that favors the “slow scent” movement and is in a previous button manufacturing unit in the South Bronx. Overseeing the potions lab is Jean-Claude Delville, the grasp perfumer driving the renowned scents Cabotine de Gres and Clinique Joyful. The firm’s innovative director and founder, Frederic Jacques, put in much more than a 12 months likely again and forth with Mr. Powell and Mr. Gavrielatos, speaking about ingredients and structure features, bottle form and internet marketing duplicate. “It is critical to get not just the notes but the narrative,” he mentioned.

There was a setback final tumble, when Mr. Powell, 56, who had lengthy struggled with diabetes and other health and fitness complications, vlogged about a stay in the clinic for lower potassium stages that had sent his human body into shock.

Then, very last month, just after asking odd inquiries for the duration of a discussion with Mr. Gavrielatos’s wife, he stopped answering phone calls. Police sent to test on Mr. Powell located him unresponsive in his condominium paramedics could not revive him. His stepbrother, Billy Davidson, Jr., claimed the cause of death was thought to be a coronary heart assault.

“It was all extremely sudden,” stated Nina Pelton, a singer, longtime good friend and the voice on the Brooklyn Fragrance Lover jingle. “The early morning I read about it, my initial imagined was: Thank God he was property and with his cats.”

Mr. Gavrielatos is shifting in advance with their genderless potion, which is scheduled to appear out on Sunday, March 21, timed for a holiday getaway named Countrywide Fragrance Working day, and most likely far more meaningfully, Mr. Powell’s birthday, March 19. Redbrook’s debut scent is termed the “Underground” version, just after the two-hour commute amongst their households (and their south-of-the-radar standing in the environment of Big Scent). The 1st operate, of 1,000 bottles, sold out by way of pre-order earlier this 7 days. A new batch is in output.

Figuring out a components that encapsulated their distinct aesthetics and preferences had been a obstacle. “They experienced their variances: Carlos was gay and in Brooklyn, Steven is an English trainer who life in New Jersey with his wife and daughter,” Mr. Jacques said. “Carlos was additional bling, Steven is additional basic.”

What most energized him about the pair, he said, was their shared enthusiasm and groundedness. “Our entire world is not nice — it operates shut to the style earth, and there is an factor of angle far more than kindness,” Mr. Jacques mentioned.

The friends were more fascinated in getting experienced than they ended up in remaining well known. The components Mr. Jacques and his shoppers landed on is significantly less of a center ground among their particular person tastes than some thing new completely. It’s also attractive, brighter and sunnier than what you could imagine if you heard that its main notes are patchouli, pink pepper, ginger and vetiver, kin to fashionable scents from D.S. and Durga and Le Labo.

Finding the Fragheads

Mr. Powell’s 1st enthusiasm was new music. He taught himself how to enjoy the piano, the accordion, and trumpet, according to Mr. Davidson, whose father, a wholesale shoe salesman, married Mr. Powell’s mother, Hilda, a hairdresser, when Mr. Powell was 12.

“He got really into theater as a minor child,” Mr. Davidson stated. “Being a kid in the ’80s, in a heavily Italian neighborhood as a 50 percent-Dominican and 50 %-British-Panamanian child, he had a large amount to deal with.” Mr. Powell attended summer time camp at French Woods Pageant of the Carrying out Arts in Delaware County, N.Y., the place he achieved Ben Stiller, an additional camper, Mr. Davidson explained, and advised of forming a band, with Mr. Stiller actively playing the drums.

After completing his large school diploma at Metropolis As School, Mr. Powell landed a task at Lester’s in Coney Island (later, he moved to the Higher East Side retail store). As a youthful adult in the early 1980s, he was targeted on his band, UBoy, and discovering the club scene. He also dabbled in musical theater, composing music for Off Broadway firms.

Extra not long ago, he arranged the Godspell 2016 Project, a reprise manufacturing showcasing the primary 1978 cast of Edward B. Shallow JHS 227’s staging of “Godspell.”

The GoFundMe page that Mr. Gavrielatos established up to increase cash for funeral arrangements has acquired contributions totaling around $38,000. A surprised-seeking Jeremy Fragrance posted his response on YouTube: “that’s quite, extremely shocking and incredibly, very, quite, rather really hard-main.”

The grasp perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, the creator of Mr. Powell’s beloved Amber Absolute by Tom Ford, shipped an Instagram eulogy to his buddy: “You have been not just a spritzer, you would clearly show up at gatherings, arrange movies with perfumers to get some actual information, and always convey some good temper way too,” and discovered the mystery formula in Mr. Powell’s honor. “That’s a significant no-no, and a incredibly major offer,” Mr. Gavrielatos said.

Donna Quinones, who operates at Lester’s, recalled Mr. Powell as a playful colleague who liked dressing up in Halloween costumes, pulling pranks on his co-workers, and usually attempting on new scents all over the day. “Whenever Carlos walked in, you smelled him,” she claimed. “I’d say, ‘Oooh what are you donning? That smells a small citrusy,’ or, ‘that smells a tiny woodsy.’ Most of all he beloved the feedback.”

Tiff Benson, a fragrance blogger and one particular of Mr. Powell’s best pals, remembered their typical dinners and salsa dancing classes as a supply of joy and guidance for Benson, who is Black. “He recognized who I was as a man or woman, and which is super-scarce primarily in this marketplace which is so white and male and European,” she claimed.

One particular of the factors Mr. Powell championed underdogs, Ms. Benson reasoned, was that he was just one.

“A ton of the individuals he was conversing to on his video clips had been people no person had heard of,” she said. “The business is so small, if you talked about a small manufacturer, it could be existence-transforming, and he knew that.”