VIVA girl group: Scent often tells the truth more honestly than memory, quietly sealing moments, emotions, and even a persons growth between skin and time; perfume is a small bottle that keeps those scent memories, each spray like a private rewind.
For VIVA members Carina and Ada, different smells mark different stages of maturation: the tentative ideas about the future that resemble a raw top note waiting to be discovered, the bold middle notes that followed after they entered the industry, and the calm base notes that eventually settled into their gentle steadiness.
Top notes for the VIVA girl group: glucose and wood floor
On a literal level, the first spray of any fragrance is the most immediate and vivid, the way a first step into this industry arrived with impact and innocence.
Carina (Lei Hei-tung, 李晞彤) and Ada (Goeng Wing-sam, 姜咏鑫) met on the reality series King Maker IV, a Hong Kong talent competition produced by ViuTV, but their paths into performing were different. Carina said she had never imagined becoming part of a girl group or a star until she tried the show. “On King Maker I realized I loved the version of myself who worked so hard, and I wanted to find what makes me passionate,” she said. Ada described an earlier musical start, “My father loved to sing and later became a vocal teacher, so our karaoke machine was my first stage.”
At first they did not expect to become VIVA or lifelong collaborators. Asked about first impressions, Ada laughed and named the TV show Gossip Girl, recalling how Carina stood out in a crowd, polished and a little distant. Carina said she was a fan of the show, but her first impression of Ada was quieter and steadier. “I thought she would be the one who stayed until the end,” Carina said.
Those first impressions followed them to training in South Korea, where the four members rehearsed for hours each day and gradually moved from strangers to close teammates. Carina still remembers the smell that met her when she walked in: glucose. “I am a sweeter person, so I really liked that sweet scent,” she said.
But as the sweet glucose faded under long, mechanical practice, the clean, tired smell of real wood from studio floors and boxes took over. Ada recalled, “At the rehearsal rooms and backstage you see a lot of wooden boxes and floors. When we were exhausted and lay down to rest, you could smell the wood.” That scent evokes the image of sweating performers collapsing on the floor, tired yet grounded.
One scent is sugar, one is wood, one is light, one is weighty. In some ways they reflect VIVA itself, like a top note that is vivid but unstable.
Heart notes: leather versus stillness
If the rehearsal room glucose and wood are the top notes, the stage is where a fragrance truly blooms. But the stage is not only light, and youth is not only sweet.
The most compelling thing about forming a group is four independent souls growing together and completing each other, especially after two years of living and working so closely. Carina described how members revealed surprising contrasts: ValC has a spicy energy but a girlish side, and Macy appears sweet but can be bold and blunt. Adas careful softness softened Carina over time.
Today the pair said their familiarity has risen to almost 95 percent to 99.9 percent. That closeness has produced unexpected creative chemistry. Ada offered a metaphor: “If we were a perfume, we would start from floral or fruity notes but include a little spiciness. After we know each other and even fight, the sparks make us closer.”
Fans who watched the groups documentary can see the differences. At our shoot the two tried to match themselves to scents from Maison Margielas Scentsorium Collection. Ada picked Chapter 5: Delight in Despair, a fragrance with a leather edge that she said conveys personality and a certain distance that invites curiosity. “It smells of leather, which shows attitude and keeps a strong presence while also making people want to get closer,” she said.
Carina chose Chapter 1: Blaze of Stillness, a scent she said reflected a calmer, more balanced stage. “After two years I no longer have that reckless fire to throw myself in without thinking. I have learned to pause, and I feel very balanced now,” she said.
For Carina the stillness is not stagnation but the calm center found after noise fades away. Going solo recently to release a separate project marked a major personal change and risk. Once someone she called largely carefree and without big ambition, Carina said she was inspired by teammates competitive drive to consider an identity beyond the group.
That small spicy edge is like growth itself, she said: it adds friction to sweetness and a prick to gentleness. Those tensions make the VIVA girl groups development feel authentic, because a true group is not born with perfect chemistry but chooses to stay after conflicts.
Base notes: sweet and spicy together
When lights and applause fall away, the base notes remain, the longest lasting and most composed scents. Offstage, Carina and Ada are still women in their early twenties who get tired, doubt themselves, and carry pressure under constant scrutiny.
Ada said living in the moment means “the moment you wake up without worries, without plans, feeling absolute freedom and ease”. Carina urged action over waiting: “People always hesitate and think they are not ready. The truth is there is never a perfect moment. Use your youth and energy now.”
Their name, VIVA, draws from the phrase Viva la Vida, meaning to live in the present and celebrate life. Though each member projects a different color, they share the same goal. Asked how they hope the world remembers them, Ada said she wants people to remember her voice, a voice that evolved through competitions and group life into many versions of herself. Carina said she hopes people remember her character, the toughness and grit she has learned to summon despite self doubt, and she wants to pass that resilience to every VIVA fan.
They are not born dazzling; they found their scent through friction, collisions, and repeated recovery. The Scentsorium bottle design, with an intentional crack across the glass, felt apt to them, a visual for an old shell that is reborn with soul.
That imperfection becomes the truest mark, and after time and refinement, the best parts remain.
Executive Producer: Angus Mok
Photographer: Olivia Tsang
Art Direction: Olivia Tsang and Mimi Kong
Styling: Mimi Kong assisted by Yoanah Chan
Set Design: Athena
Videographer: Alvin Kong and Che
Video Edit: Alvin Kong
Interview and Text: Louyi Wong
Makeup: Deep Choi and Lika Leung
Hair: Jeremy Wong @myos_hair
Wardrobes: Emporio Armani
Perfume: Maison Margiela Fragrances
