If you’ve been sniffing department store counters lately and feeling like every bottle smells vaguely the same—vanilla, sugar, the whisper of something warm—you’re not imagining it. The foodie wave has flooded the shelves, and people who make perfume for a living are quietly turning to something weirder. What happens next isn’t about smelling polished. It’s about smelling like you have a point of view.
Let’s take a look at the shift below: what sets it off, the notes that lead the charge, and where the perfumers shaping this moment say it will go from here.
The Move Away From Pure Sweetness Is Already Beginning
Gourmand scents, perfumes built around edible, dessert-like notes, are still everywhere. But the perfumer Alberto Morillas predicts the trend is moving towards something more complex. “These notes are pretty simple,” Morillas tells Refinery 29, “but a perfume with real depth has a slight bitterness.”
The short list of this bitter: herbs like artichoke, thyme, herbs like vetiver, and herbs like cypriol. These aren’t notes designed to make you smell delicious. They’re designed to make you smell remarkable.
Contrast is the New Signature
Once you accept that sweetness alone is not the goal, the next move is tension. Consumers are increasingly attracted to scents that combine opposing ideas in the same bottle: sweet plus smoky, green plus floral, earthy plus clean, savory plus sweet, mineral plus woody.
The attraction doesn’t traditionally smell good. It smells unforgettable. A contrasting scent gives the nose something to work with, which is why these scents tend to linger in other people’s memories the way a plain sugary scent doesn’t.
Notes Currently Doing the Heavy Lifting
If you want to understand where Perfumery is heading, look at the ingredients that appear again and again in the summaries:
- tomato leaf
- Wet soil and petrichor
- matcha
- Ink
- Smoke
- Salt
- fig leaf
- Mushroom and other earthy notes
- Tea
- herbs and vegetables
Notice what’s missing. No sugar, no caramel, no cotton candy. The list is more like a walk through a damp garden than a trip to the bakery, and that’s the point.
Perfume Is Asked to Transport You to a Specific Place
Beyond individual notes, there is a shift in what a fragrance should be To do. Jasmina Aganovic“People are increasingly attracted to scents that capture a temporal environment rather than smelling like a single ingredient or traditional scent family: clouds, fresh air after a storm, moisture-laden forests and more. There’s a growing appetite for scents that transport you somewhere or make you feel immersed in a different place,” Future Society’s founder tells New Beauty.
This reframes the entire project. A perfume is no longer a flavor profile, it is a position. Weather after the storm. A foggy forest floor. It’s not about the accessories, it’s about the atmosphere.
Salt is the Exit Note That Builds a Bridge Between the Old and the New
One ingredient captures the change better than others: sea salt. Familiar enough to feel wearable, quirky enough to show you’re paying attention. Mary Testa-Gough“Over the last few years, we’ve seen sea salt become a more fashion-oriented fragrance trend. It creates a more directional sensory contrast,” Bath & Body Works vice president of product and fragrance development tells PureWow.
His reading of how it stratifies is an almost perfect map of where mainstream perfumery is drifting. Salt “pairs beautifully with blue aquatic notes, musk, creamy vertical woods, and sunflowers like amber, sandalwood, cedar, oud, orange blossom,” he says. When combined with tropical fruits such as mango, passion fruit [and] pineapple enhances juiciness while sea salt adds a delicious mineral quality that’s both unexpected and addictive.
Translation: the sweet notes don’t disappear. They are being roughed up on purpose.
What Does This Mean for the Bottle on Your Dresser?
When you put the pieces together the direction becomes clear. Perfumery is moving away from flattery and towards difference. The stronger notes (bitter herbs, wet earth, ink, smoke, salt) do not try to impress anyone at the first smell. They’re trying to hold on. If in the last decade fragrance rewarded the person who smelled the richest, the next decade is likely to reward the person who smells most like himself. Watch for launches through 2026 and you can expect less dessert and more air.