Fragrance is as much about evaporation as it is composition, but consumers are increasingly searching for ways to make their favorite fragrances last longer.
Beauty creators have posted hacks ranging from applying petroleum jelly to pulse points to layering moisturizers and oils beneath perfume. One viral video demonstrating how to melt Vaseline and mix it with fragrance amassed 96.8 million views, while other creators have repurposed grippy face primers—typically used to help makeup adhere—as a base for scent. Interest extends to fragrance combinations: Pinterest reported that searches for “perfume layering” increased 125% in 2025. And now, brands are responding with products specifically designed for layering and longevity, including solid and jelly formats. Solid perfume grew 174.6% year over year in 2025, according to Spate’s 2026 fragrance report.
But the idea of preparing the skin for fragrance isn't entirely new. Maison Margiela's Replica collection, for example, introduced its Filter Blur and Filter Glow products in 2016. The products were sprayable oils designed to texturize and extend the fragrances’ wear, although they may have been too early to the game, as neither is still on the market. And in 2021, the niche and artisanal fragrance brand House of Bō introduced its Nourishing Parfum Primer , an unscented product intended to enhance a perfume’s durability. Chanel also developed fragrance primers for individual scents in 2025, including Coco Mademoiselle and Gabrielle Chanel, which focus more on hydrating the skin, which is said to amplify scent if done before fragrance application.
Now, these ideas are evolving. Rather than simply layering a scented body lotion or using an oil as part of a fragrance ritual, newer products are treating the skin itself as part of the fragrance system. Brands like Obart, which launched in August exclusively at Sephora, and Future Society by Arcaea are approaching fragrance longevity as a problem that can be solved at the skin level, developing primers that alter the environment in which fragrance molecules are deposited and released.
Fragrance primers, an unscented prep-step product designed to lengthen the wear of fragrance without altering the scent itself, are quietly becoming the foundational product of an emerging category of scent care.
“The industry has always attacked longevity from inside the bottle: concentration, fixatives, formula,” Marc-Alexandre Risch, co-founder and CEO of Obart, told BeautyMatter. “Nobody had engineered the other half of the equation, the skin.”
The skin is a major aspect of fragrance, even if it is not necessarily something perfume formulations are able to take into account. Skin is not an inert surface: Its hydration, barrier properties, and physical characteristics can influence how fragrance molecules evaporate. Recent research published in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science has shown that both the physicochemical properties of fragrance molecules and properties of the skin—including hydration, transepidermal water loss, and surface roughness—can affect fragrance evaporation and release over time.
The skin’s pH also varies from person to person and throughout the day, while the skin’s microbiome, the ecosystem of microscopic organisms, including bacteria and fungi, living on the skin, plays a “disproportionate role in fragrance longevity because the microbiome is literally the living part of the ecosystem and the microbes are constantly metabolizing molecules and producing molecules” which interact with fragrance differently, Jasmina Aganovic, founder of perfume brand Future Society by Arcaea told BeautyMatter.
While some primers may simply enhance fragrance notes, amplifying their initial power, others focus on changing the environment from which fragrance evaporates, whether by creating a better physical surface for fragrance to sit on or by changing the condition of the skin beneath it.
Obart’s newly launched Fragrance Primer P3, for example, was developed in Korean labs, which are known for their texture science and film-forming systems, with strict constraints: The primer had to be odorless and inert, dry to the touch and invisible.
According to Obart, the brand’s proprietary Scent Mesh Technology at 10% concentration creates a micro-film on the surface of the stratum corneum designed to “anchor” fragrance molecules on the skin. The formula also uses ingredients like low molecular weight hyaluronic acid, glycerin, niacinamide, and panthenol intended to hydrate and support the skin barrier, creating the surface onto which fragrance is applied. Then, when fragrance is sprayed onto the primer and the alcohol flashes off, instead of depositing aromatic molecules directly onto bare skin, they are deposited onto the primer.
And the language here matters. The fragrance isn't being sealed from the air (because after all, molecules need to be released to be smelled). Instead, anchoring refers to retaining fragrance molecules at the surface while allowing them to continue diffusing into the air. This is related to substantivity, which refers to a fragrance molecule’s tendency to remain associated with a surface rather than evaporating quickly.
“The mesh acts like a reservoir that meters the release,” said Risch. “The molecules keep diffusing into the air, which is precisely what you smell, but at a slower rate over time.”
The idea that the environment surrounding fragrance molecules can affect their release is consistent with broader research into fragrance evaporation. Studies of fragrance evaporation from human skin have shown that the presence of other ingredients, including musk fixatives, can alter the evaporation-rate profiles of a fragrance mixture, underscoring how interactions within a formula can affect the way scent dissipates.
That does not mean any product applied beneath a fragrance will automatically make it last longer. But it provides a scientific framework for the premise behind a fragrance primer: Changing the environment around fragrance molecules can potentially change how they are released.
P3, then, is designed to “even the playing field” across skin types and create a more consistent environment for fragrance performance, according to Obart.
Others who are approaching the same problem include Future Society’s Optimal Habitat, which launched back in 2024, said to create a more optimal skin environment for fragrance. Its ingredients include Aeonome, a marine biotechnology ingredient said to moisturize and hydrate the skin while regulating the microbiota; Ceramide NP for more resilient and hydrated skin; and Sr-Hydrozoan Polypeptide-1, a biomimetic marine ingredient that the brand says supports the skin's protective environment.
While Obart's proposition centers on a physical film, Future Society's approach is more about the condition of the skin itself.
It’s important to note that primers do not necessarily change the intrinsic volatility of a fragrance. In other words, a citrus molecule does not gain the longevity of a base note simply because it has been sprayed over a primer. But changing the environment from which molecules evaporate could potentially affect their rates of release.
In the instrumental and clinical studies run for Optimal Habitat, elongating the evaporation rates of citrus top notes were the bar for measurement as they are known for their relatively short staying time. But it's important to note that “the way a fragrance composition is put together is going to impact how things evaporate,” said Aganovic. “A grapefruit note on its own will evaporate at a different rate than when it's mixed” with other compounds.
There is a growing movement among consumers today who care specifically about the efficacy of their products. According to Spate's 2026 Beauty & Wellness Predictions Report, interest in “long lasting” fragrance grew by 107.5K across Google, TikTok, and Instagram between December 2024 and November 2025, compared to the previous year. The shift suggests that consumers aren't just looking for fragrances they like; they're increasingly searching for products and techniques that can help them get more out of the fragrances they already own. It may not take much convincing to buy yet another product if it makes their favorite fragrance last.
“Skincare has its prep step, makeup has its primer, hair has its heat protectant. Fragrance had nothing between the shower and the spray,” said Risch. “That is the gap we filled.”
But if fragrance primers represent an effort to engineer the surface on which perfume sits, the future of scent care may be less about simply adding products designed for longevity and more about understanding and potentially influencing the biological processes that contribute to the body's natural odor.
Future Society’s newly launched Base Scent is doing exactly that, with an understanding that when the skin’s "ecosystem is out of balance, it makes smelly compounds, but when it's in balance, it's either neutral or fragrant,” said Aganovic. The brand labels it as a personal scent primer rather than a fragrance primer.
Rather than looking at fragrance as something to be added to the skin, Base Scent is designed to help people have a more positive relationship with their natural scent, as opposed to it being something to “erase, remove, hide, or block. It's something that we can actually collaborate with and shape without having to mask,” said Aganovic.
Formulated with less than 10 ingredients, the leave-on treatment was developed by studying how skin microbes respond to different ingredients and conditions, and how those changes affect the odor molecules they produce. The premise is that skin microbes metabolize substances and, in the process, can produce volatile compounds that contribute to body odor. The brand is not advocating for consumers to stop wearing deodorants and fragrances all together, but Base Scent can be worn alone, as it claims to shift one’s scent over time in areas including the chest, underarms, and pulse points.
“If we eat crappy food, we feel crappy and act crappy, but if we eat healthy food, we feel great and act great. And so our question was, how do we make the microbes eat things to make them act the way that we want?” said Aganovic. The product is powered by a proprietary blend of familiar ingredients, including gluconolactone, aspergillus ferment, and arginine that are designed to support a shift in the skin microbiome and its odor profile.
“It has always been weird to me that there are completely different categories to manage the same thing: how we smell,” said Aganovic. “On one side, you have fragrance, which is experiential, imaginative, curious, and nostalgic. And then on the other side, you have deodorants and anti-perspirants, which are about erasing who we are and are rooted in shame.”
The Base Scent primer serves as a starting point to help a person’s natural scent become more stable, neutral, and pleasant over time, according to the brand. But Future Society’s longer-term ambition with this product is to prove to consumers that their skin's ecosystem itself could be influenced in ways that produce different natural odor profiles, whether that's sweeter, warmer, etc., because it works differently on everyone.
A product like Base Scent could also ultimately influence how fragrances wear on people not through longevity, but through the scent environment underneath the perfume itself. Where before, people may not have enjoyed, say, a muskier fragrance on themselves, it could theoretically bloom differently if their natural scent has changed.
So if primers attempt to change the surface beneath a fragrance, the next phase of scent care may attempt to better understand the ecosystem beneath that surface.
“Ultimately, the idea is simple: Fragrance's performance is not fixed. It can be cared for, protected, and extended,” said Risch.
