• by Alice Clapp , July 29, 2024

Scents speak volumes. They’re like cultural signposts guiding us through moments and events. They help us make sense of the world around us. They tell us whether it rained recently, if a familiar face is nearby, even what’s on the dinner menu.

Scent is powerful, primal, and timeless -- yet timely, too. The fragrance industry's tremendous growth is a testament to this. What’s most interesting though, is not that people are purchasing more perfume, more often. It’s that their core motivations for doing so are radically evolving.

If perfume used to be a form of generic seduction, crystallized in one iconic version of Marilyn Monroe’s supposed Chanel No. 5 comment (“What do I wear to bed? A few drops of Chanel No. 5 and a smile”), now it’s one of personalized, even polarizing, self-expression.

Today’s perfume enthusiasts aren’t driven by smelling nice as much as they are by smelling distinct -- from each other, but also from themselves. In this way, perfume becomes a fluid expression of identity, changing with the day, the hour, even the mood. It’s a way of making sense of who you are in any given moment and communicating that to noses near and far (thanks, PerfumeTok).

This plays out at a consumer level, with

Perfume wardrobes -- expanding beyond a signature scent, to curating a diverse collection.
Layering -- playing potion master to concoct something genuinely unique.
Gatekeeping -- once you’ve found them, keeping those scents to yourself.

And it also plays out at a product and brand level.

Unconventional, chaos scents --If you want to smell like WD40, a margherita pizza, or musk of macaque, you’re in luck.
Niche artisan brands -- Curating that IYKYK.
Small batch lines -- Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

Despite the strength of these self-expressive signals, and minus a few who are taking steps in this direction (Chance by Chanel, Paradoxe by Prada, Flora by Gucci and never forget Burberry’s Adam Driver centaur moment), the established designer perfume houses are not budging from their archetypical storytelling: Hotties on a yacht. Or in a club. Or the big city. Sex, love, rebellion, strength, freedom. Talent might change, story stays the same.

So how can these brands bridge the gap?

The answer isn’t to erase where they’ve been. They’ve crafted indelible visual and sonic memory structures that serve them well. It’s hard to overestimate the value of that.

Instead, it’s about enriching where they could go -- taking that iconic memory structure and loading it with relevant, resonant meaning. And crafting narratives as intricate as the scents they create.

After all, the themes they cling to -- sex, love, rebellion, strength, freedom -- are as self-expressive as it gets and have the potential to be as dimensional and fluid as any perfume-wearer today.

It's time for established perfume brands to move beyond the simplistic top note and unearth the full depth and nuance of their base.