Julia Dovgar has always loved good scents. As a child, she would be bathed in her mother’s Chanel and Dior scents before going to school or meeting friends. On her birthday in 2017, she was gifted her first “luxury” fragrance. It was a $165 bottle of Jo Malone’s Wood Sage and Sea Salt. Since then, the 29-year-old’s collection has grown to more than 200 bottles.
Dovgal was initially interested in designer fragrances like the ones her mother owned. “Then I discovered niche perfumery,” she tells me. She is always on the lookout for perfumes with notes of vanilla and sandalwood. Dovgal says she spends about $600 a month on her collection, which she reviews on TikTok. “I want to have it all,” she says.
Now a full-time content creator, Dovgal isn’t the only young person driving a perfume renaissance. Sales of luxury fragrance brands in the U.S. increased by double digits in 2023, according to market research firm Circana. From 2021 to 2023, the size of the so-called prestige fragrance market increased by nearly $2 billion to $8.3 billion. Introducing new scents and brands.
Gen Z is behind the insatiable appetite for new scents. This generation has outgrown Victoria’s Secret body mists and is craving something fancier. Circana found that in 2023, 83% of Gen Z surveyed said they use fragrance, compared to 79% of Gen X and 69% of Boomers. It’s not just women. A recent study on consumer spending by investment bank Piper Sandler found that fragrance spending among teenage boys has increased by 26% since spring 2023. Long-time favorites — Ax, Old Spice, Bath & Body Works — have been supplanted by brands like Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier. Today’s men’s locker room smells more like a saxophone department than a men’s locker room.
Perfume is no longer something you spray on a whim as you run out the door. It’s part of Gen Z’s personal brand. A “clean girl” might wear a replica bubble bath by Maison Margiela, a queen of “quiet luxury” might emit the rich floral scent of Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540, or a “coastal” “Grandma by the Side” may be immersed in the scent of Byredo’s gypsy wood. water. Young people are increasingly cycling through aesthetics rather than choosing one signature scent. For Gen Z, a wardrobe of scents is important.
Once e-commerce took off, the perfume industry smelled trouble. If you can’t spray scents through a screen, how will people know what kind of scent they’re buying? For a long time, the industry has eschewed online shopping and replaced classic scents and in-store sales. I’ve been trying to prioritize. But when everything moved online during the 2020 pandemic, U.S. fragrance sales fell 21%. Marketers used increasingly complex scent descriptions and illustrations, but it remained an uphill battle.
Around 2022, TikTok changed the game. #PerfumeTok creators promoted their favorite scents and drew pictures of them for their followers. The viral post caused the fragrance to sell out. Phlur said its Missing person fragrance, the subject of a TikTok video that has been viewed more than 50 million times, sold out within hours of its launch and had amassed a waiting list of 200,000 people. Are you curious about what it smells like? “When you hug someone you really love, do you ever look at them while snuggling into their chest?” one creator says in a clip that has been viewed 1.7 million times. “That’s what it smells like.”
If there’s one thing Gen Z loves, it’s the name of something.
According to a study by Circana, 45% of people who purchased a perfume in 2022 said they were influenced by TikTok. Young people no longer buy fragrances based on smell, but based on influencer recommendations. “This is the type of fragrance that’s perfect for when you want to make a good impression on a first date or a special event,” Dovgal says in one of her most-viewed TikToks. Under the handle @juliaperfumery, she shares perfume reviews for a primarily Gen Z audience, set against the backdrop of her perfume closet in her New York City apartment. Each month, she chooses five to six fragrances to rotate. “Perfume is seasonal and weather dependent,” she says. Currently, her favorite brand is Juliette Has a Gun. She carries almost all fragrances from French brands.
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To address a problem inherent in online perfume reviews (you can’t see the scent through a screen), the creators of PerfumeTok got creative. Their posts are often miniature personal essays aimed at evoking feelings and memories.
“To try to paint the image of this fragrance for you, I have to communicate with your other senses,” she wrote to her nearly 400,000 followers on TikTok under the handle @professorperfume. says Emelia O’Toole. “We’re very interested in dramatic, often long-winded descriptions of perfumes because that’s what sets the scene. We create images in our heads instead of scents. ” Viewers may not know what roses, lychees, and oud smell like, but what an elegant woman wearing a long evening dress smells like on a New York night. I can imagine, she says. “There is a shift from classic perfume terminology to more creative ways of communicating with the senses,” O’Toole adds.
Part of the change is an increased interest in wearing scents that match a particular aesthetic, mood, or brand. “If there’s one thing Gen Z loves, it’s the name of something,” O’Toole said. Niche identities based on beauty trends have blossomed, especially on TikTok. If you’re a tomato girl, you probably wear a light rosy tint on your lips and cheeks to recreate a Mediterranean tan. Vanilla girls have shiny skin and the scent of expensive hand creams. Meanwhile, the yakuza’s wife wears a fur coat and dark eyeliner. “We’ve gone back and forth from wanting to move away from labels to wanting to put super specific labels on everything,” O’Toole says.
This encouraged what she calls a scented wardrobe. Years ago, someone’s perfume collection might have included a daytime scent and a nighttime scent, or a summer scent and a winter scent. There’s a fragrance here for every occasion, mood and scenario. A back-to-school scent, a scent to win your ex back, a scent like Vanessa Paradis in 90s Paris, and the list goes on. While not every Gen Zer can boast a collection of hundreds of perfumes, it’s clear that they are more inclined towards perfumes. A study by Piper Sandler found that teenagers’ spending on fragrances has increased by 25% since last year.
Katherine Jansson-Boyd, professor of consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, links the shift away from signature scents to a weakening of the sense of identity. “The more time I spend online, the more I want to change the way I express myself,” she says. “You can never establish a proper sense of self.”
You can say, “Who do I want to be today?” Just spray it on.
She also pointed to mass consumer culture, the ease and convenience of buying an exponentially increasing number of cheap products, as a factor. For example, fast fashion retailer Shein, whose clothing rarely costs more than $50, is incredibly popular with Gen Z. “When you have so many choices in terms of consumption, you don’t have a fully internalized idea of who you are,” Jansson-Boyd says. It’s all about who Gen Z wants to be.
That may be why certain companies have made strides recently. Nuuly, a clothing rental subscription service launched by Urban Outfitters in 2019, allows young people to wear new clothes every month and try different styles without worrying too much. Last year, the brand reached profitability, and this year it announced a 50% year-over-year increase in “average active subscribers” in the second quarter.
For O’Toole, experimenting with aesthetics is part of the fun. “I think that’s one of the most beautiful parts of wearing fragrance,” she says. “You can say, ‘Who do I want to be today?’ Just spray it on.”
Perfume has long been used to convey status and wealth. For many, it was a form of affordable wealth and a way to secure one’s position even in bad economic times. You might not be spraying it from a chateau on the Riviera, but with Chanel No. 5 you might at least smell like Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Deneuve, or Nicole Kidman. But for Gen Z, the most coveted scent isn’t necessarily the most expensive.
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With the emergence of niche independent perfumers and the increased availability of affordable fragrances, showing status is more than just having the money to splurge on designer fragrances, it’s about being informed. It means that. Most people recognize Chanel No. 5 on the street, but only a few can put their finger on the cardamom, fig, and black tea scent of BDK’s Gris Charnel. Niche scents give the wearer the opportunity to stand out from the crowd while demonstrating good taste. This is an unavoidable paradox that Jansson Boyd describes as part of being human. Who you signal depends on your priorities. At a bar, you might smell someone with the energy of a fellow horsegirl or rock star girlfriend and experience a fleeting connection.
For Gen Z, it’s not enough for a fragrance to just smell good, it has to make them feel something. Perfumes, by their very nature, utilize this idea. The power of scent on our emotions can be traced back to ancient times. Research shows that smells can evoke emotions and help reduce stress and depression. With the booming wellness industrial complex, fragrances are increasingly being marketed as self-care tools. Take, for example, Bella Hadid’s Ole Bella fragrance, which incorporates “aura-enhancing” essential oils. Or Gabar, a London-based brand whose mission is to “encourage ideas of self-aggrandizement and self-awareness through scent and daily rituals.”
“People are now looking beyond completely utilitarian concepts to beauty products and rituals to cultivate intentionality in their lives,” said Susan, Gabar’s chief operating officer and global director. Wai Ning says. “This convergence of the beauty and health worlds has led to the rise in popularity of mood-uplifting products. People are looking to feel something when they use a product.”
A wellness perspective is especially appealing to younger consumers, as opposed to old-fashioned sex appeal marketing that has fallen out of favor with the “innocent” generation. Through a more holistic approach, fragrances are firmly integrated into Gen Z’s daily health routine.
If their perfume isn’t being chased down the street, uplifting, or exhibiting a unique but not too unique aesthetic, Gen Z will turn up its nose.
Eve Upton-Clark is a features writer covering culture and society.
