Talking Shop is our series where we talk to interesting people about their most interesting buys.
Leah Kateb has made it her job to smell incredible — literally. Just a few weeks after the Love Island USA star left the villa, her now-famous shower routine went viral on TikTok, a video she ended by hinting at a perfume she loved so much that she was tempted to keep it a secret. At the time, she couldn’t have imagined that eventually revealing her obsession with Skylar’s Vanilla Sky fragrance could have led to joining the brand as its re-founder and chief creative officer. But looking back, it makes perfect sense.
“Skylar had all the DNA I wanted in my own brand, so now I’m excited to help shape its future,” she tells NBC Selected. “Re-founder isn’t your typical title, but it really is like I’m the founder. We re-founded the brand and we’re rebuilding it back up from the ground. It’s not a partnership, and it’s not just me putting my name on something — it’s my brand.”
Kateb says she’s involved with all parts of the company, including developing new products, making creative decisions and meeting stakeholders at Sephora’s headquarters. She also constantly engages with Skylar’s customers and takes their feedback seriously, using it as inspiration to evolve. “I was a consumer of the brand before I was anything else, so I have such a unique experience and POV,” says Kateb. “I try to take note of what people look for and what I would want.”
I caught up with Kateb, who was recently named one of Forbes’ Top Creators of 2026, to talk about all things Skylar. She also shared updates to her shower routine, her tried-and-true skin care favorites and fashion trends she predicted way before they became mainstream.
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Kateb doesn’t have just one go-to shower routine anymore. “I make a routine for every single one of the Skylar fragrances we drop, and I call them my ‘Smell Good Routines,’” she says. Each one includes a handful of products that complement a specific perfume when you layer them, and she pins them on her TikTok profile so you can always find them. They’re wildly popular — each one has between 1.5 and 14.9 million views.
One standout product that’s part of two of Kateb’s Smell Good Routines is Nivea’s Almond Milk and Coconut Body Wash. “It makes you feel so soft, and I layer it with our True Love’s Cake and Boardwalk Delight fragrances,” she says.
“I’ve been saying this for years: Thong sandals are so back,” says Kateb. “I’m so happy about it because I have so many pairs of Havaianas, it’s ridiculous. They’re the best and I live in them year-round, but I really love them for the summer because they give that tropical, islandy kind of energy. I remember I wore them on Love Island too, and I was like, ‘these need to be brought back’ — now they are.”
Beyond “smelling edible,” as she often says in her social media videos, Kateb makes sure her home has fragrance wafting through it, too. “We are fragrance obsessed at home,” says Kateb. She lives with her boyfriend, Miguel Harichi, who she met on her season of Love Island USA, and lots of pets. “We love diffusers, we love incense — we’re always burning something around the house. Right now, we’re obsessed with Lulu Candles’ Jasmine Candle.”
“There’s two things I don’t skimp out on: SPF and retinol,” says Kateb. “I’m especially picky about my retinol because I have sensitive skin, and this one from Hydrinity is amazing.”
She uses it a few nights a week to help improve her skin tone and texture, and before applying it, she often cleanses with the brand’s Prelude Cleanser. Laneige’s Vanilla Lip Sleeping Mask is also a key part of her nighttime skin care routine.
“This moisturizer is amazing — it’s probably the best moisturizer I’ve ever used, and I’ve fully converted over to her,” says Kateb. She uses it in the morning and at night, and also occasionally applies Avéne’s Cicalfate+ Restorative Protective Cream, which she originally discovered while she was on Accutane and needed something to restore her skin barrier (she previously partnered with the brand). In the morning, Kateb always puts on Colorescience’s mineral face sunscreen as her last step, which she’s been loyal to for about a year.
Skylar’s newest fragrance, True Love’s Cake, is the most personal one Kateb has helped develop, and after it launched in June, it quickly became the brand’s no. 1 bestseller.
“I’m Persian, and there’s a Persian story where if you bake a cake for someone, they’ll fall in love with you,” says Kateb. “I really wanted to bottle that up in a fragrance and I feel like we hit it right on the head. We went through so many months of development because this is a cake that my family and I would always bake together, so I knew exactly how I wanted it to smell.”
So far, it’s worked exactly how she intended it to: “Two of my friends just went on dates, and they literally both said that the first thing the guy mentioned was how good they smell,” says Kateb.
Why trust NBC Selected?
I’m a reporter at NBC Selected who writes our Talking Shop series, interviewing people like Paris Hilton, Maureen Kelly, Lindsay Hubbard and Chace Crawford. To write this article, I interviewed Leah Kateb, Love Island USA star and the re-founder and COO of Skylar, about her favorite products.
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