Fragrance is big business. The global personal care fragrance market size was $58.9 billion in 2025. Conglomerates like Unilever, which recently announced a global €100 million ($113,986,500) investment to advance scent innovation, are looking to get in on the action. Touchland, the brand that reinvigorated the scent experience of hand sanitizers, was acquired for $880 million in May 2025.
Brands outside of the traditional fragrance house structure have been tapping into that opportunity as well: from haircare (Amika, Oribe) to sunscreen (Vacation) and cleaning products/ laundry care (Homecourt, L’Avant Collective). This scent-forward approach is influencing not only product launches but also brand building overall. Categories that once treated scent as a commodity are now building entire brand identities around it, with a unique advantage in premium pricing in some cases, organic category expansion, and unique press coverage opportunities for all.
Forget the hero product; 2026 is about the hero scent and the many forms it can take. These aromatic signatures are chasing a whole different beast: that elusive unicorn of brand loyalty.
Outside of eau de parfums and other more traditional fragrance formats, the scent of a beauty product was more of a side act than the main show. Sure, there was the allegedly orgasm-inducing smell of Herbal Essences shampoo in the 1990s or the French Riviera nods of Bain de Soleil Orange Gelée sunscreen (a cult product that Vacation revived in March 2023), but high-caliber perfumery has been historically relegated to the realms of eau de parfums and extraits. But as consumers became more scent savvy, so did their desire for their entire lifestyle to be scented with the same level of craftsmanship.
Vacation partnered with award-winning fragrance developer Carlos Huber of Arquiste Parfumeur and renowned perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux of Givaudan when developing their SPF products. The brand’s signature Vacation scent contains notes of coconut, banana, and orange blossom; its Chardonnay Oil SPF has a Grand Cuvée scent with amber, peach, and vanilla bean; and After Sun products contain facets of gin, linen, aloe vera, and green tea. As for the aforementioned Orange Gelée, which contains clove, saffron, and patchouli, Vacation recently released a five-scent set to commemorate the original product’s centennial.
Vacation markets itself as “The World’s Best-Smelling Sunscreen,” and the adoration for its scents is so strong that it has released eau de toilette and body spray versions. These originally started as limited-edition products but became so popular that their founders decided to make them mainstays. “We knew the fragrance was resonating pretty quickly because it was one of the first things people would mention when they talked about the product,” Vacation co-founder Dakota Green told BeautyMatter.
“Of course, we built Vacation around high-performance sun protection, but we also wanted people to actually look forward to wearing it, and scent became one of the clearest ways we could deliver on that.”
Chelsea Riggs, CEO and founding member of Amika, explained that the brand was built around a signature scent (a fruit floral blend of apricot, lily of the valley, and vanilla) from day one. “But what surprised us was the intensity of the customer obsession that built over time. That validated everything, and we chose to keep it completely consistent across the entire portfolio,” she told BeautyMatter.
The luxury haircare brand Oribe worked with a perfumer at a French fragrance house to create its own stand-alone scent, Côte d'Azur (a citrus-floral fragrance with bergamot, jasmine, and sandalwood), to complement each hair product. “When conceptualizing the brand, we knew that every detail mattered. Our goal was to create a fine fragrance, not just a scent that would mask the base of the products,” Daniel Kaner, Oribe Hair Care co-founder and President, explained to BeautyMatter. The scent was launched as a stand-alone fragrance six years after its initial launch.
Similar to Vacation’s desire to breathe new life into sunscreen formulations through scent, L’Avant Collective and Homecourt add an element of luxury and sensory delight to a previously overlooked category: cleaning and laundry care.
L’Avant Collective’s three scent options are Fresh Linen, Blushed Bergamot, and Ambre Santal, while Homecourt offers six fragrance options: Cece, Cocomoi, Cipres Mint, Mandarin Basile, Neroli Leaf, and Steeped Rose. Through the power of scent, both brands emphasize creating a ritual around wiping down countertops or taking clean clothes out of the laundry machine—while also keeping a conscious eye on the ingredient list.
“What we noticed was that while people were investing tremendous care into every other sensory aspect of their homes—the candles they burned, the linens they slept on, the fragrances they wore—the products they used most often were treated as purely functional. Cleaning products were expected to perform, but not to contribute to the feeling of a space,” founders Kristi Lord and Lindsay Droz told BeautyMatter.
Sarah Jahnke, CEO and co-founder of Homecourt, said to BeautyMatter that for decades, the cleaning aisle was utilitarian and commoditized. “Fragrance was often treated as an afterthought, reduced to generic cues like 'lavender' or ‘lemon.’ That gap between utility and emotion felt incredibly ripe for disruption. Not to mention, we were able to innovate and deliver all of this in nontoxic formulas and 100% post-consumer recycled packaging.”
With the magical potion in hand, how exactly does one give the hero scent its metaphorical cape and uniform? Word-of-mouth, multisensory in-person activations, and online marketing are some tools of the trade, but not being afraid to expand into more unconventional formats like air freshener (as Vacation did) or luxury oral care brand Selahatin’s mouth perfumes are additional routes. Selahatin takes a perfumery approach to the mouthwash genre with Eau d’Extrait “mouth perfumes” and notes like verbena, Madagascar vanilla, and Sichuan pepper in its toothpaste formulations. The benefit of opting for less traditional beauty products and more everyday accents is a broader brand reach.
“A distinctive scent can certainly act as a strong marketing tool through word-of-mouth and its presence in various product formats. While it didn’t originally set out as such, it [scent] now exists alongside our broader brand identity and has attracted new customers and fueled wider interest in the brand,” Green said.
Haircare brand Crown Affair developed a yuzu, lemongrass, and bergamot scent across its products, which was later released as a hair fragrance. The brand also collaborated with D.S. & Durga, scenting Crown Affair’s best-selling leave-in conditioner with D.S. & Durga’s I Don't Know What fragrance. Initially launched as a limited-edition product, it was brought back as a permanent offering due to high demand.
“I think of the olfactive signature of a brand as a structure: having a foundation, a core, and lastly the topmost layer, with the ornamental or decorative notes that you experience first,” Huber said. “That means you can expand on the layers and the experiences provided you add on to the structural core of your olfactive signature.” Context, like packaging, product names, and language, is also integral to a scent’s success: “People love a complete picture.”
That picture can become a gallery’s worth of snapshots, rather than a one-and-done moment. L’Avant Collective initially launched with a hand soap and a dish soap, followed by a multipurpose spray. Laundry care followed in March 2023. Homecourt began with candles, surface cleaners, dish soap, hand wash, and lotions, before expanding into laundry care in March 2025. A Cece Body Collection hit stores in October 2025, including a body wash, body mist, body butter, and perfume oil, all with the popular cedarwood smoke, sweet cardamom, cinnamon, and white leather scent.
Oribe launched a lifestyle collection and introduced two new scents, Desertland and Valley of Flowers, in 2021. Amika launched a body and hair mist in August 2025 and a bodycare line in March 2026, following a brand survey showing that 97% of the brand's customers wanted a bodycare line.
Lord and Droz described scent consistency as one of the most challenging aspects of formulating across different product formats, as it fights the base chemistry at every turn. “The way to protect the signature is to work upstream with your fragrance partners to fine-tune each expression of the scent to its format, rather than treating it as a copy-paste.”
Jahnke highlighted extensive testing, refinement, and a commitment to maintaining the integrity of the original scent profile as the key to working through these obstacles.
Listening to the demands of your customer audience when deciding on new categories is paramount. Riggs noted a “significant amount” of inbound requests for bodycare, room spray, and hair fragrance. “That told us customers didn't just like the smell; they wanted to experience it across their entire lives. It changed how we thought about expansion. We stopped thinking about individual products and started thinking about world-building.”
Jahnke noticed customers talking about Homecourt beyond the cleaning experience, ranking their favorite scents and fragrance profiles, and requesting new formats. “That was a pivotal moment because it confirmed what we had believed from the beginning: Fragrance wasn't simply enhancing the product; it was driving the emotional connection to the brand.”
Lord and Droz described customer feedback on the product scents as “instantaneous.” “What surprised us wasn’t that customers noticed the fragrances, but how emotionally connected they became to them. It reinforced our belief that we weren’t simply creating cleaning products; we were creating an aspirational atmosphere that people wanted to live with.”
Brands like Homecourt and L’Avant Collective are going up against the tidy titans on aisle 3: products that push value first, product experience second. But it is precisely their artistic approach that gains them the loyalty edge.
Lord and Droz stated: “You can’t retrofit a perfume-grade fragrance experience onto a product that has trained its customer to expect $3.99. The price-to-value contract is already set. The brand equity works against the upgrade. What we’ve done is the opposite.” They describe their product-making approach as a relationship built over time, with a deep understanding of the customer audience’s emotional needs. “Fragrance at this level creates an almost irrational loyalty—people repurchase not just because the product works but because of how it makes them feel in their home.”
Riggs described scent as an emotional expansion rather than a marketing hook. “They weren't just coming to Amika for hair anymore; they wanted head-to-toe solutions that brought the same performance standard and emotional experience into their daily routines. Efficacy builds trust, but emotional expansion builds love. When someone experiences that with our haircare, they want it across their entire ritual.”
Amika’s customers are now requesting candles, diffusers, car fresheners, more body products, and fragrances, Riggs reported. “They’re building more intentional, multisensorial rituals—what some call the ‘everything shower’ or elevated daily routines. We're evaluating all of it through the same lens: Does this authentically extend the Amika ritual? Can we deliver Amika-level efficacy and emotional resonance in these new spaces? And can we do it in a way that feels grounded in professional expertise, not just trend chasing? That's what keeps us intentional about expansion.”
Scent isn’t just a nice-to-have. It can become the brand itself. Tide isn’t a laundry detergent; it’s the invisible sidewalk sign for your local laundromat. Pine-Sol is a floor cleaner second, a siren call of a clean home first. Dove soap is the ultimate clean, soft bar of escape, a daily moment of rinsing off the day’s troubles, leaving behind a trail of baby-powder freshness. A moment of rebirth, one might say.
“When scent is foundational, it informs every decision you make. It shapes product development, customer experience, packaging, storytelling, and ultimately, how people feel when they interact with the brand,” Jahnke added.
For brands entering the fragrance space from an unconventional background, marketing these products also takes on a different meaning. It’s not just product shots but also IRL activations, video campaigns, and even merch. “When scent is at the heart of a brand, PR moves away from just highlighting product benefits and instead builds a sensory and cultural world around the brand," said Charlie-James Taylor, co-founder at 1996Comms. “You create recognition around a feeling, a ritual, or a perspective that people can connect with in many different ways.”
Taylor’s clients include fragrance brands like Jouissance, Iggywoo, and Eauso Vert, but also Selahatin, which recently collaborated with Rick Owens. “Editors were less interested in how well the toothpaste worked and more focused on how Rick Owens’ style and ideas could be turned into taste and scent. That’s the main difference from a PR point of view: you’re not just promoting products; you’re building a cultural identity that can move across different partnerships, product types, and conversations,” Taylor remarked.
Taylor emphasized the sensory journey of products and the emotional impact of scent, citing Officine Universelle Buly as another successful example. “That’s the strength of scent as a brand’s core: it creates emotional and cultural connections that go far beyond function.”
Shannon Travis, Beauty & Fashion Director at 1996Comms, added: “It’s no longer enough to treat a fragrance launch as simply a product innovation moment, especially when you’re competing against established fragrance houses with deep expertise, heritage, and resources.” She sees a brand-world rather than a product-launch story as the most effective route for any brand extending into fragrance. “When fragrance is framed as an expansion of the brand world, it strengthens existing equity, deepens emotional engagement, and allows the brand to evolve beyond a single product category into a more culturally relevant, lifestyle-led proposition.”
She cited Merit building its core community in the makeup world before launching its first fragrance (Retrospect) as one example, giving loyal followers a chance to find an additional level of engagement with a brand they already love. The brand also collaborated with London-based jewelry brand Completedworks on a limited-edition collection of earrings and a compact mirror inspired by the fragrance bottle’s fluid sculptural shape.
“The biggest advantage of fragrance as a platform is that it gives brands access to conversations beyond their category. Scent is inherently emotional, sensory, and cultural, creating relevance across fashion, design, luxury, wellness, and lifestyle media in a way that a conventional personal care brand often can’t,” Taylor explained. “That kind of curiosity creates earned media opportunities that sit far outside traditional beauty coverage and allow brands to participate in broader cultural conversations.”
As for brands looking to capture that commercial magic of scented storytelling, intention is paramount. “I try to explain to clients that fragrances are functional works of art, created by artisans. They’re hard to rush and hard to force,” Huber said.
Jahnke emphasized a lens of authenticity rather than pure opportunity alone. "Consumers are incredibly sophisticated—they can tell the difference between a fragrance-led brand and a product-led brand that's incorporating fragrance. That's where our advantage lies."
With not just the entire personal fragrance industry to contend with, but also blockbuster bodycare brands, the world of all things scent is a booming market and one of intense competition. So what ensures longevity?
Rich Gersten, co-founder and Managing Partner at True Beauty Ventures, one of Vacation’s early investors and a backer of Crown Affair, said to BeautyMatter that he seeks out brands that have established a hero scent that consumers immediately associate with the brand and that consistently bring in new consumers. Personal anecdotes like being asked for one’s fragrance on the street become validated by data over time, with repeat purchase behaviors and multiple product offerings for the same scent. “Consumers are increasingly seeking fragrance experiences across every category, not just traditional fine fragrance. As consumers look to ‘scent their world,’ scent becomes an increasingly important component of sensory brand equity across many categories,” Gersten explained.
That category is growing by the day. Scent may seem like anyone’s game, but much like a counterfeit product versus the real thing, you can’t fake authenticity. That’s where the brands that listen to their customer audience, meticulously comb through countless lab samples, and seek out unexpected cross-industry collaborations come out a spritz above the rest.
