What does your skin smell like right now? Does it smell like vanilla, sheer musk, or soap? Is it powdery and fresh or creamy and inviting? Do you detect soft woody notes, a hint of rose, or perhaps a bit of iris and pink pepper?
If you answered “yes” to the last one, chances are you’re probably wearing Glossier You, the beauty brand’s mega-successful hero fragrance, a bottle of which is sold about every 20 seconds. It promised to be the “ultimate personal fragrance,” mingling with your body chemistry to smell like, well, you. Since its 2017 arrival, You has arguably become the 21st century equivalent to Chanel No. 5 or Thierry Mugler Angel: a scent so ubiquitous, so beloved, so popular that it shakes up the entire industry.
And shake up the fragrance industry it certainly did. Following Glossier’s suit, dozens of fragrance brands ranging from tiny indies to department store mainstays have developed skin-inspired scents, which are generally composed of gentle amber, musk, and wood notes. They revitalized an already-existing (think Kiehl’s Musk, which launched in 1963, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely from 2005) but relatively dormant fragrance category that now doesn’t seem to be fading any time soon.
We are deep in this fragrance era, my friends. As Allure reported in late 2024, the ever-popular gourmand fragrance category is shifting even further away from its traditional vanilla-forward formats and are instead leaning into milky and rice notes—which just so happen to blend right in with skin-centric notes like musk and ambroxan. Does this mean we’ve reached peak skin scent? I’m gonna go ahead and say yes—and beg everyone to try something new.
I’m fully aware of why it seems like every new fragrance has the word “skin” in its name or its marketing copy. If it’s selling, why change it? Fragrance trends are cyclical; just as the popularity of certain denim silhouettes wax and wane, so too do the purchasing public’s perfume preferences. We saw a similar movement back in the early ‘90s, when airy, fresh scents (Calvin Klein’s CK One, Issey Miyake’s L’Eau de Issey) became popular as a response to the opulent, clear-the-room scents of the ‘80s (Giorgio Beverly Hills, Dior Poison). It makes sense that we’d be so eager to go back to basics after syrupy fruitchoulis, spicy ouds, and Santal 33s dominated the 2010s. Our noses were tired! The cultural climate was changing!
