Fragrance & The New Beauty of Branding
How scent is becoming the sharpest case study for how emotion, data, and design build modern brands.
This week, I wanted to drill down into a specific vertical. Broad industry themes—like the retail one I shared in the last
newsletter —can feel too sweeping to act on. So today we’re taking a sniff at fragrance: a category that’s fascinating no matter where you work because (I believe) it’s a microcosm of branding. It sells the tangible and the intangible; it bridges the objective (we can all smell it) and the subjective (is it sexy, charming, classic, trad or fad?).Earlier this year I ran a beauty report that surfaced themes of memory and play (free download here), and I was curious to see what our new PSFK Trends Intelligence System would find after ninety days of fresh data. What I found - with the help of the system - is that fragrance is shifting from craft-first to instrumented. Emotion is still the product, but data, computing, and logistics now shape how scent is made, found, and maintained. AI touches the value chain (of course) and in many ways: discovering molecules, optimizing formulas, modelling audiences, and orchestrating sampling, refills, and service flows.
What was opaque is becoming layered: creation informed by generative tools, discovery guided by predictive sampling and spatial interfaces, and retention driven by behavioral signals. Romance doesn’t disappear; it’s designed, measured, and tuned to context — weather, time, place, mood. Science is also moving front-of-pack. Neuroscience claims, ingredient transparency, and safe-synthetic stories are leaving labs and showing up at counters with better verification.
Stores are becoming data-enabled spaces tied to profiles. Samples act like addressable media; refills and pre-orders close the gap between interest and ownership. That power raises the privacy bar: biometric response, skin chemistry, and location triggers can personalize well — if consent, storage standards, and data portability are built in. Distinctiveness also needs protection as similarity engines spread: sensory marks, provenance tech, and licensing that pays for originality.
Here are eight trends that follow show this shift in motion — across provenance and heritage, science and intimacy, retail systems and theatre, everyday extensions and IP-driven storytelling.
- Piers, PSFK
Provenance & Botanical Storytelling in the Attention Economy
Terroir-led narratives and traceable sourcing are redefining niche fragrance as a premium category grounded in authenticity.
In a (super) crowded scent market, independent houses are elevating origin as a key differentiator. By anchoring compositions in specific farms, harvests, and cooperatives, they turn raw materials into stories and justify higher pricing through transparency, specificity, and craft. Provenance gives shoppers a reason to believe, while botanical storytelling transforms ingredients into culture and memory.
Across the niche landscape, terroir and traceability now function as the twin pillars of premiumization. Selvatico, a French heritage label, has built its reputation on natural perfumes that spotlight domestic raw materials and sustainable sourcing. Osmé, launched by Craig and Julia Noik, merges African and Mediterranean botanicals into a line that celebrates traceable regional identity. Meanwhile, Goldfield & Banks continues to position Australian and Kiwi native botanicals—such as amber resins and desert blooms—as markers of place and purity. Even major luxury houses like Gucci, through its Dream Garden pop-up in Nanjing, are transforming botanical narratives into retail theatre, using immersive storytelling to root brand worlds in nature.
The strategy works because it blends scarcity, ethics, and experience. Traceability builds trust, terroir builds uniqueness, and storytelling builds emotional attachment. Together they create a differentiated rationale versus mass fragrance, elevating small-lot botanicals and regenerative sourcing from back-of-house practice to front-of-pack theatre. The global fragrance market is projected to exceed $52.4 billion by 2025, with sustainability-led and provenance-driven brands driving much of that growth—a signal that consumers now associate place with value.
Looking ahead, expect clearer ingredient passports, micro-lot releases that reflect seasonality, and in-store education mapping each note back to its geography (like a wine store, maybe). As transparency becomes table stakes, brands that connect noses to nature through verifiable origin stories will command both attention and margin.
Heritage, Cultural Revivals & Brand Longevity
Fragrance houses are mining archives and staging multisensory exhibitions to position scent as both cultural heritage and living art.
While niche brands might be exploring the provenance of ingredients, legacy brands are rediscovering their roots and reframing them for a contemporary audience. Archival reissues, origin-storytelling, and museum-style curation are turning perfume from a consumable into a collectible — a vessel for memory, artistry, and brand mythology. These activations elevate fragrance beyond the counter, situating it in galleries, films, and anniversary retrospectives that invite audiences to see scent as culture.
The movement spans both luxury houses and experimental ateliers. Balenciaga has revived its fragrance line with Heritage and Exclusive collections that reinterpret its archival compositions, pairing them with campaigns exploring the brand’s lineage in fashion and scent. Designed by Oma, Dior’s “Stories of a Miss” exhibition in Shanghai merged couture, archives, and technology into a multisensory art installation that positioned fragrance as a narrative medium. Meanwhile, New York’s Olfactory Art Keller presented Her Scent of Mystery, a recreation of a 1961 perfume tied to Hollywood’s golden age, demonstrating how reissued formulas can bridge cinema, memory, and olfactory craft. Houbigant Paris, marking its 250th anniversary, launched sustainability-upgraded reissues in collaboration with Perris Monte Carlo—proof that heritage storytelling can modernize as much as memorialize.
The wider revival is also lifting historic names like D’Orsay, Santa Maria Novella, and Creed, as collectors and younger consumers alike rediscover the allure of provenance and craftsmanship. Strategically, this turn toward heritage monetizes existing IP, lowers development risk, and deepens brand equity. Exhibitions, reissues, and archival storytelling extend dwell time and attract museum and tourism partners, while provenance cues naturally support refill, authentication, and circular-economy models.
Writing for Glossy recently, beauty editor Emily Jensen argues:
“Those longstanding names stand in contrast to a stream of new perfume brands like Dedcool, Kayali and Snif, which have found success by tapping into contemporary scent profiles and formats like gourmands and body mists. But while they may not be as zeitgeisty as 21st-century made brands, an existing brand can give founders a head start in developing a compelling story.”
The opportunity for these brands seems to lie in leverageing this cultural capital. Could we see digital item passports for authenticated reissues, touring museum partnerships that travel through retail and galleries, and membership-style collector programs that merge patronage with loyalty? As the global fragrance market heads toward $78 billion by 2032, legacy is becoming a growth engine—transforming brand memory into both trust and traction.
Science-Led Fragrance & Responsive Beauty
Neuroscience, transparency, and personalization are transforming perfumery from an intuitive craft into a measurable sensory discipline.
Fragrance is entering its evidence era. As beauty consumers demand proof, provenance, and personalization, perfumers are turning to technology to quantify emotion, decode chemistry, and validate claims. The result is a category recoded around neuro-beauty, data transparency, and adaptive design—where artistry meets analytics.
Leading this shift, Givaudan’s NeuroLab GB measures brain and biometric responses to scent in real time, using data such as electrical impulses, heart-rate variation, and pupil dilation to understand how olfactory stimuli map to mood. The lab’s research powers platforms like MoodScentz and VivaScentz, which connect fragrance accords to measurable well-being outcomes. Similarly, the O Boticário Group applies neuroscience to its Egeo line: Egeo E.joy uses taurine and ginseng to trigger “Joy Effect” stimulation, while Egeo Choc High blends chocolate and strawberry notes to evoke pleasure through neuroactive ingredients. Gemology Paris extends the science into skin care with neuro-cosmetics that merge touch and scent to moderate stress and improve comfort.
Customization is evolving alongside research. S.S.K. Labs in New York launched data-driven, user-tuned perfumes that adapt compositions through scent-mapping algorithms. Experimental house Candy Bulsara built The Ballet Collection from motion-capture studies that translate dance movement into aromatic form. In Japan, Scentfest’s “Poupon Pure”—a perfume replicating the scent of newborn skin—sold out instantly, showing how emotional recall can be engineered as a product experience.
In her recent email newsletter, beauty industry consultant Colleen Quinn considers the impact of science on beauty:
“The beauty industry has long been a marketplace of hope. For decades, promising claimed radiance, youthfulness, repair, or shine, often substantiated by little more than consumer anecdotes or perception surveys. Yet today, we stand at an inflection point: Discerning consumers, data-driven investors, and ambitious founders now demand more than glossy claims. They want proof. With the competitive race for true innovation truly underway the question is: Does this sought-after proof exist?”
Transparency will not doubt be needed to reinforce credibility. From full ingredient disclosures pioneered by Henry Rose to Europe’s new mandate requiring 56 allergens on labels, regulation and expectation are converging. The digital scent-technology market is forecast to reach $1.3 billion by 2032, as tools like AI formulators, biosignal interfaces, and smart-cap sensors turn fragrance into a responsive system that learns from its wearer.
In the next few years, we might see skin-chemistry mapping, microbiome-aware bases, and wearable-linked personalization to turn perfumery into a live feedback loop. Open-formula ledgers and refillable smart bottles will close the transparency gap and add diagnostic value to beauty routines.
Pleasure, Sexual Wellness & Personal Confidence
Beauty brands are reframing sensuality as self-care, using scent and texture-driven products to normalize intimacy within daily routines.
I guess scent and sex have always been playmates but the data in the trends intelligence system revealed how pleasure and sexual wellness are slipping out from underneath the sheets and are seriously showing up full frontal in the fragrance and personal-care aisle. The latest launches show products explicitly designed and marketed around sensual pleasure, touch, and intimacy - positioning these experiences as part of holistic wellbeing rather than taboo. By pairing multi-sensory cues such as aroma, glide, warmth, and after-feel with inclusive, consent-focused language, brands are transforming intimacy into a conversation about confidence, comfort, and self-knowledge.
Several case studies illustrate this shift. O Boticário introduced Her Code Clímax, a fine-fragrance blend that celebrates women’s pleasure and body confidence, using scent as a tool for empowerment. Promescent’s Go Solo Self-Play Lotion reframes self-touch through a texture-first design that markets “luxury for solo wellness.” In the U.S., LoveShackFancy’s collaboration with Tinder connected dating culture and fragrance through Secret Garden pop-ups, while Amorecco’s Late Night Gelato perfume blurred the line between intimacy and indulgence with a lickable gourmand formula. Even boundary-pushing labels such as Boy Smells continue to reimagine desire with Citrush, a poppers-inspired scent that celebrates queer pleasure aesthetics.
The business logic tracks wider beauty behavior. As self-care routines fragment into micro-moments, sensorial formats that deliver instant mood and body benefits gain traction. Retailers can cross-merchandise these SKUs with bath, sleep, and stress-relief solutions to drive basket expansion, while content strategies emphasize safety, skin compatibility, and transparent usage guidance. The global sexual-wellness market is projected to reach $125 billion by 2032, with the U.S. segment alone expected to rise to $27 billion, signaling broad investor interest and mainstream normalization.
Looking ahead, personalization may move from skin type to mood state, with scent and texture pairings tailored to context. Sampling and education will be critical levers—from in-store discovery zones to privacy-first subscriptions that help shoppers explore and build confidence at home.
Fragrance Retail: Discovery, Refill & Pre-Order Convenience
Sampler-to-full-size, refill-on-the-spot, and pre-order pickup are reshaping fragrance retail into a low-friction loop that lifts trial, speeds replenishment, and grows lifetime value.
Fragrance is shifting from one-off gifting to an ongoing service relationship. The new retail playbook centers on three connected conveniences: discovery through structured sampling systems, in-store refill fountains that reduce packaging waste, and pre-order pickup models that capture intent before it fades. Together, these formats streamline the journey from curiosity to commitment—turning exploration into habit.
Across recent launches, innovation in convenience has become the differentiator. Balenciaga’s Discovery Box invites customers to sample portable mini formats before committing to a full-size bottle, gamifying exploration while minimizing returns. L’Oréal Luxe has installed refill fountains for YSL Beauté, Mugler, and Lancôme, bringing circularity to the counter and reinforcing loyalty through sustainability and savings. Meanwhile, ScentAir’s Build Your Own Sample Pack lets shoppers curate scents and earn credits toward future purchases, a model that personalizes discovery while generating high-intent data. ARRAN Sense of Scotland’s refillable festive collection proves that gifting and eco-design can coexist, while Portugal Duty Free has added pre-order pickup and travel-exclusive refills to streamline replenishment for travelers.
Operationally, the discovery-to-refill loop boosts efficiency and repeat engagement. Sampling drives qualified leads; refills raise visit frequency at a lower cost per milliliter; and pre-order pickup improves inventory flow by locking in demand at peak interest. These formats also align with sustainability mandates, reducing single-use packaging and enabling traceability through refill tracking and digital item passports.
The category is evolving toward interoperability and intelligence. Considering the breadth of brands sold by a handful of fragrance houses, could we see standardized refill fittings across brands, predictive replenishment prompts timed to individual usage, and same-day locker integrations that make replenishment as simple as an app notification? Retailers would merge consultation and convenience—embedding fragrance profiling, sampling subscriptions, and appointment-based refills into a single seamless ecosystem.
Immersive & Experiential Fragrance Retail and Brand Storytelling
Pop-ups, destination stores, and late-night drops are emerging as high-impact discovery funnels that merge storytelling, sampling, and social reach into a single, sensory experience.
Fragrance is uniquely suited to theatre. From projection-mapped pop-ups to multisensory galleries, brands are designing activations that choreograph emotion through scent, sound, and light. These spaces compress awareness, trial, and purchase into a single encounter, turning curiosity into conversion and launches into cultural moments.
Recent case studies show the scope and scale of this shift. Gucci’s Dream Garden pop-up in Nanjing reimagined the store as an immersive botanical universe, combining scent diffusion and digital art to dramatize its fragrance portfolio. Marc Jacobs’ Daisy Wild sensory pop-up in London invited guests into a dreamlike installation of florals, soundscapes, and projection mapping, proving that late-night drops can double as social media events. Elsewhere in London, Dior constructed a fortress-like space to relaunch Sauvage through cinematic VR experiences and personalized sampling rituals, while Christian Louboutin Beauty’s Salon de Parfum staged red-hued sensory chambers where visitors could collect limited editions. Prada’s Paradigme Men’s debut leaned into nightlife culture, with projection mapping and DJ residencies that turned a fragrance launch into a social happening. Even retailers like Boots are entering the arena, with a new fragrance-only store in London designed around sampling zones, refill integrations, and event-driven merchandising.
The model is proving measurable. Pop-up activations can deliver two to three times higher trial-to-purchase conversion than static counters, fueled by longer dwell times and user-generated amplification. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha prioritize experience over ownership, these activations give brands direct storytelling control and an organic content engine that extends reach without relying on paid media.
The trend extends beyond fragrance: Frédéric Malle’s Manhattan flagship and Rituals’ Lisbon store now stage scent as part of holistic wellbeing, while MAC’s piano-themed flagship demonstrates how performance-driven retail is reshaping beauty at large. Writing in a the Substack newsletter Gingergeist, the industry expert authors recently discussed the broader impact of fragrance across retail:
”Just as grocers have turned private labels into cult favorites — think Trader Joe’s seasonal drops or Whole Foods 365’s halo of “better-for-you” credibility, fashion retailers are now making a similar play in fragrance and beauty. The strategy is no longer about filling shelves with cheaper alternatives. Instead, private-label beauty has evolved into a design-led, loyalty-building engine that stands as a credible alternative to prestige brands, while creating new reasons for consumers to shop across categories.”
Looking ahead, maybe we could imagine touring scent shows that rotate through nightlife venues and airports, permanent micro-theatres within flagships, and digital layers—QR-linked AR try-ons, data-rich sampler codes, and refill credits—that connect real-world events to ongoing loyalty programs.
Embedded Scented Experiences & Ecosystems of Moments
Fragrance is expanding far beyond the bottle. From wearables and spirits to hotel keys and edible collaborations, brands are embedding scent into everyday objects and experiences to create multisensory touchpoints that extend reach and deepen loyalty.
The category’s new frontier lies in making scent repeatable and ambient—something worn, shared, or lived with rather than merely applied. As competition intensifies and consumers seek new emotional and physical connections with brands, fragrance houses are exploring accessories, travel retail, and cross-industry collaborations that transform aroma into ongoing ritual.
Recent launches highlight the creative scope. Ôrəbella’s partnership with Wildflower Cases turns phone accessories into miniature scent diffusers, positioning fragrance as a wearable expression of mood and identity. Jo Malone’s Jo Vodka extends the brand into hospitality and mixology, translating fragrance accords into a luxury spirits line that fuses aroma, flavor, and lifestyle. Aftelier’s Biblioscents bookmarks bring scent to literature, blending olfactory storytelling with the tactile intimacy of reading. Meanwhile, Prose’s collaboration with Funny Face Bakery transforms a signature perfume note into edible cookies—a playful intersection of beauty, flavor, and nostalgia. Even hospitality players are joining in: GCS Times’ carbon-neutral wooden hotel key cards infuse rooms with subtle fragrance, combining sustainability, design, and sensory branding in a single gesture.
The opportunity is twofold. These activations create low-capex distribution moments—through travel retail, collectible accessories, and co-branded products—while building a brand world that consumers can carry or gift. Scent becomes an always-on interface, capable of bridging digital and physical worlds through ambient diffusion, refillable formats, and even subscription-based “scent playlists.”
Market data underscores the momentum. The global home fragrance market is forecast to reach 44.77 billion by 2034. As scent permeates new categories—from hospitality and spirits to fashion tech—fragrance is evolving into a platform rather than a product.
Looking ahead, expect programmable wearables, refillable accessories, and vehicle or hotel-based scent partnerships to scale this behavior. Brands will treat scent as media, crafting serialized experiences that shift with context and mood.
Fragrance IP - the new signature of fandom
Fragrance becomes a storytelling platform—expanding through entertainment, character IP, and cultural collaborations that turn scent into a collectible narrative medium.
Fragrance is becoming the new frontier of licensed storytelling. Once confined to fashion spin-offs, scent now provides brands with emotional IP—an expressive format that allows fans to smell their favorite characters, stories, and cultural worlds.
Recent collaborations illustrate how entertainment and beauty are fusing. Scentbird’s partnership with Sony Pictures for “I Know What You Did Last Summer” delivered a discovery set tied to the film’s sequel, promoted through a New York screening where scents diffused during key scenes. Xyrena’s deal with Universal Products & Experiences debuted with a Jaws 50th Anniversary perfume, packaged in VHS-style boxes and featuring oceanic notes inspired by the film’s setting—a tactile blend of nostalgia and novelty.
Pop culture IP is also energizing beauty retail. Boy Smells’ collaboration with Bratz launched Doll Skin, a Y2K-inspired body mist that merges Gen Z fashion nostalgia with fragrance storytelling. Squishmallows’ national rollout at Ulta Beauty brought character-driven scents to a younger demo, while Bath & Body Works’ Disney Villains collection leverages seasonal fandom to refresh its Halloween lineup. Lifestyle and home categories are joining in too: Houseplant’s collaboration with Ripple+ Home has turned Seth Rogen’s cannabis aesthetic into scented home droplets, blending humor and sophistication.
IP extensions deliver instant recognition, social shareability, and collectible value—without the costs of new brand creation. Licensing experts forecast double-digit growth in scent-based partnerships through 2026, with the global licensing economy estimated to be a $165.5 billion industry. For entertainment and beauty alike, fragrance has become a sensory vehicle for storytelling equity.
Looking ahead, could brands experiment with episodic scent drops, streaming-linked launches, and fan memberships that unlock refill or remix options tied to new seasons, films, and artists? As scent collides with culture, fragrance becomes not just a product—but a platform for serialized storytelling and emotional ownership.
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The themes, trends, patterns and ideas in this email were surfaced by PSFK’s trend intelligence system.
Piers Fawkes
Founder, PSFK