What does your pores and skin scent like proper now? Does it scent like vanilla, sheer musk, or cleaning soap? Is it powdery and recent or creamy and welcoming? Do you detect gentle woody notes, a touch of rose, or maybe a little bit of iris and pink pepper?
Should you answered “sure” to the final one, chances are high you’re in all probability sporting Glossier You, the sweetness model’s mega-successful hero perfume, a bottle of which is offered about each 20 seconds. It promised to be the “final private perfume,” mingling along with your physique chemistry to scent like, properly, you. Since its 2017 arrival, You has arguably turn into the twenty first century equal to Chanel No. 5 or Thierry Mugler Angel: a scent so ubiquitous, so beloved, so well-liked that it shakes up all the business.
And shake up the perfume business it definitely did. Following Glossier’s go well with, dozens of perfume manufacturers starting from tiny indies to division retailer mainstays have developed skin-inspired scents, that are typically composed of light amber, musk, and wooden notes. They revitalized an already-existing (assume Kiehl’s Musk, which launched in 1963, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely from 2005) however comparatively dormant perfume class that now doesn’t appear to be fading any time quickly.
We’re deep on this perfume period, my buddies. As Allure reported in late 2024, the ever-popular gourmand perfume class is shifting even additional away from its conventional vanilla-forward codecs and are as an alternative leaning into milky and rice notes—which simply so occur to mix proper in with skin-centric notes like musk and ambroxan. Does this imply we’ve reached peak pores and skin scent? I’m gonna go forward and say sure—and beg everybody to attempt one thing new.
I’m totally conscious of why it looks as if each new perfume has the phrase “pores and skin” in its title or its advertising and marketing copy. If it’s promoting, why change it? Perfume tendencies are cyclical; simply as the recognition of sure denim silhouettes wax and wane, so too do the buying public’s fragrance preferences. We noticed an analogous motion again within the early ‘90s, when ethereal, recent scents (Calvin Klein’s CK One, Issey Miyake’s L’Eau de Issey) grew to become well-liked as a response to the opulent, clear-the-room scents of the ‘80s (Giorgio Beverly Hills, Dior Poison). It is smart that we’d be so keen to return to fundamentals after syrupy fruitchoulis, spicy ouds, and Santal 33s dominated the 2010s. Our noses have been drained! The cultural local weather was altering!
