The New Heirloom: How SIDIA’s Erin Kleinberg Is Rethinking Fragrance and Bodycare

Named after founder Erin Kleinberg’s late grandmother—a Holocaust survivor, formidable matriarch, and embodiment of grace and grit—SIDIA is a body care and fragrance brand that treats self-care not as indulgence, but as a kind of dignity and ritual that preserves what gets passed down.

 

“Nowstalgia,” or nostalgia for the now, has become something of a design principle for Kleinberg, who fuses tradition and modernity through SIDIA. You can sense it starting from the packaging: a heritage, heirloom-feeling logo that deliberately splits from the interchangeable minimalism of social media-forward brands.

In a beauty and fragrance industry that increasingly markets scent as status and opulence, Kleinberg argues for something more intimate. Perfumes, mists, and creams are naturally worn close to the body, and should speak to the wearer in their softer, private moments. “My grandmother stayed luminous until her final day, and she taught me to take care of myself before I take care of the world around me,” she says. When Kleinberg set out to build her own brand, raising two children while her agency was shedding clients through the pandemic, that lesson became the mantra she leaned on to steady herself.

Kleinberg’s path into fragrance was a culmination of her background in styling: an internship at W Magazine working with fashion directors; running an award-winning advertising and branding agency, Métier Creative; and co-founding Coveteur, among other creative ventures. “All the nine lives I’ve lived have just been compounding on top of one another,” she says. “Everything I’ve done since is styling in some way.” Fragrance, to her, is simply the newest playground for the same stylist’s eye; something to layer, assemble, and wear. 

The belief that fragrance belongs to a woman’s private hours shapes the growing SIDIA portfolio, which spans a handful of formats—from a body mist that’s become the brand’s bestseller to candles that invite sloughing off the day and unwinding. The solid perfume is a deliberately old-school format enjoying a revival, and Kleinberg envisions the full day for us: wash and cream in the shower, serum after, body mist on the way out, a solid perfume tucked into a purse or car to reapply on the go. 

While the brand’s name comes from her grandmother, the names of the fragrances emerge from her own mind. “I jumped up at 9:30 one night from lying there brain-rotting and thought: I have to name our first fragrance BRALESS, because being braless is the best feeling in the world,” she reflects. “I thought that was a sentiment that would resonate loudly with women.” 

BRALESS is the comfort skin-scent—a folky, woodsy blend of leather, vanilla, violet, black tea, and cedar, with a light dab of rosemary on top. WIRED is its caffeinated, morning alter ego, a jolt of eucalyptus, matcha, and citrus grounded by tonka bean, tobacco leaf, and ginger. SOAKED is sensual, and NIRVANA is the release its name promises. A fifth line, sandalwood-rich MIDAS, launched recently, named for the transformative touch her friends always swore she had. Currently only in hand serum form, the family will soon expand to a wash and cream to link the shower to the powder room in one fell swoop. 

Body care is one of beauty’s fastest-growing categories, arriving at a moment when many people’s relationship to their own bodies is more fraught than ever. Kleinberg is pointedly uninterested in the fix-you mentality of the industry that profits from that friction. “I never wanted to create products that were going to fix your cellulite or make you look 20 years old. I am not in that business,” she maintains. “I want to be a brand that’s sensorially taking you to a place you need in the moment—to ground yourself, to escape for yourself.” Her own reference point is generational: having watched her mother and grandmother age without apology and Botox, she finds that to be the most compelling version of a life lived. 

As for what’s next, Kleinberg is in no hurry to map it. Growing slow on purpose and resisting the formulaic direct-to-consumer playbook, she’s enjoying the tinkering and experimenting—including the arc of carrying a scene off the skin and into a room. “If it works, and we feel really good about it, and we want to be ensconced in that fragrance in a room setting, we’ll make it a candle,” she says. “Eventually I want SIDIA to create different types of products. I’m a fanatic about jewelry and I’d love to take a stab at creating that too,” she says. “Of course, everything for us is that heirloom feeling of what’s passed down, but I have lots of ambitions.”

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