Key Takeaways:
Until recently, the US smelled mostly of Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret scents, said Laurent Le Guernec, Senior Perfumer at International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF). That has changed. Fragrance is now beauty’s fastest-growing category, drawing in multiple players and, in an unexpected turn, driven by men.
At a younger age in Paris, Le Guernec could map trends just by taking the subway to school. Meanwhile, in America, he could barely smell perfume at all. Three years after relocating to New York, he’s smelling something different: a full-blown fragrance surge, with men suddenly among its most enthusiastic customers.
“I think the biggest shift in the past five years is that men have fallen in love with perfume,” said Le Guernec, who has crafted fragrances for Ralph Lauren, MAC, Calvin Klein, and Clinique, among many others. “If I go way, way back—and New York City is its own bubble—when you asked men, ‘What are you wearing?’ many would answer, ‘nothing,’ or maybe just ‘deodorant.’ Today it’s completely different: Men wear fragrance, and they love wearing it. That's huge.”
The broader picture supports his view. For the first time, the men’s fragrance market is the winner of the category in the US, with Dior Sauvage ranking as the top-selling perfume globally, according to research firm Circana. Even at Bath & Body Works where “they didn’t have men’s fragrances maybe 15 years ago,” the men’s section is now “a big, big, big part of the store,” Le Guernec added.
Men didn’t just start wearing fragrance—they started driving the category, pulling younger consumers along with them. The shift isn’t a fad; it’s reshaping billion-dollar strategies.
Beauty Giants Race to Capture Men’s Fragrance Boom
Conglomerates are responding accordingly. Estée Lauder, as an example, has leaned deeper into fragrance with genderless labels like Le Labo and Tom Ford. And, this past summer, it relaunched Intuition by Aramis, referred to by the beauty conglomerate as the first prestige men’s fragrance in the US.
Overall, the world’s largest players are aligned on the same message. L’Oréal’s Chief Executive Nicolas Hieronimus recently said the company expects sustained growth in perfume sales, noting that men’s fragrances are now “growing faster” than women’s. He added that the entry in the market of multiple younger men and boys into the category is fueling momentum, pointing to Prada’s Paradigme Eau de Parfum as an example.
Overall, Hieronimus said the acceleration reflects a broader evolution toward what he called a “wardrobe strategy”—consumers owning several scents for different occasions rather than relying on a single signature.
Another way to put it is that men once received fragrances as gifts and wore the same scent for decades. Now they actively choose fragrances as part of their identity, said Margaux Bosquillon de Jenlis, Senior Marketing Manager of Fine Fragrance at IFF.
Interparfums co-founder and CEO Jean Madar is positioning his company to capitalize on the shift.
Using the same language as Hieronimus, the executive said in an interview with BeautyMatter that men are adopting a “wardrobe” approach to scent, just as women have for decades. “Some years ago, a woman had only one or two fragrances. Today they have a wardrobe of fragrances. Now this is happening with men too,” Madar said.
Men who once owned a single bottle are currently rotating several depending on mood and moment. The turn is global, “a worldwide trend,” he added, with Central and South America and the Middle East growing particularly fast beyond the US.
Interparfums is adjusting its pipeline to match that reality. “We are emphasizing launches of men’s fragrances,” Madar said. Brands traditionally anchored in female consumption are also pivoting: Guess will lean heavily toward men’s fragrance over the next 24 months, and Cavalli, “typically a women’s fashion house,” will introduce more men’s launches than ever before. “So yes, we are pushing men.”
Beyond identity, fragrance taps into a larger macro trend: indulgence and feel-good comfort at a time when people want small moments of escape. While growth is slowing from pandemic highs, fragrance remains one of the strongest parts of global beauty, Madar added.
When Men Discovered Niche—and Niche Discovered Unisex
The boom may look sudden, yet it was years in the making. Much of the change is cultural.
Luxury consultant Yves Hanania believes the stigma around beauty and care for men has disappeared.
“Fragrance is no longer seen either as grooming or seduction but as a way to say who you are,” Hanania said. The idea that a man who cared about his appearance might be judged is “not a recent trend,” he added, noting that the business is simply catching up to what was already happening in real life. Men no longer approach fragrance defensively but as self-expression.
Social media accelerated the transition. Male celebrities, actors, and athletes sharing their scent routines made fragrance visible and normal. Hanania described it as a sounding board effect. Once men saw other men talking openly about perfume, it created momentum.
Visibility soon turned into taste. As more men became invested in fragrance, they became more selective—and more critical of mass-market scents. “That’s why there’s been a rise in niche fragrances, because fragrances even for male or for female have become too commercial,” Hanania said. Over the past decade, that appetite for difference has powered a new wave of strong niche perfume houses, from Byredo to Parfums de Marly, Astier de Villatte, and Maison de Rivoli, which he cited as examples.
There’s also a generational redefinition of luxury, said Edouard Dorize, General Manager of South East Asia beauty distributor Aura Prestige.
For many consumers, fragrance has become something to build and curate, like sneakers or vinyl, as well as a mood-setter or a way to match a specific event.
Commercial labels are watching niche closely. Jérôme Epinette—the Robertet perfumer behind Byredo’s Bal d’Afrique perfume among many others—said mainstream clients are increasingly turning to niche players for inspiration when planning launches or commissioning fragrances.
Epinette added that men are buying more perfume because they finally have more options in the market.
What appeals to him most is that the ingredients themselves are not gendered. “Where do you put the limit between ‘woody feminine’ and ‘woody masculine’?” Epinette said. “That’s why we see more and more genderless.”
“Niche is more appealing for perfumers—and for consumers, too—because it can take more risks and be more creative,” Epinette continued, adding that he is now receiving more requests for genderless perfumes from the houses he works with, on a niche and more commercial level.
The New Power Customer in Fragrance: Young Men
Male consumers across Gen X, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha are now driving the premium end of the fragrance market.
They are buying more sophisticated, higher-priced scents than women, with 35% of Gen Z men saying they spend over $200 annually on fragrance from 18% of Gen Z women, according to Scentbird. That dynamic is echoed in broader consumer data. In a recent teen survey conducted by Piper Sandler, 74% of male teens reported wearing fragrance every day, compared with 66% of female teens, underscoring the strength and consistency of male fragrance adoption.
Asia Pacific, the world’s fastest-growing fragrance region, shows the trend at its most advanced stage.
Consumers there don’t really differentiate men’s fragrances from women’s fragrances, said Guilhem Souche, an industry veteran most recently with Coty as Vice President of Travel Retail in the region. They’re influenced by the so-called “Little Fresh Meat”—younger male content creators with a “huge follower base in Asia,” especially among women—together with popular actors and celebrities. But they’re mostly drawn to the originality behind the storytelling and the ingredients behind the products.
Souche is seeing it play out in real time. Men who once stuck to light eau de toilette are now gravitating toward far more intense formulas and branching into adjacent categories like car and home fragrance.
“The men’s market is smaller than the women’s market, but when men are number one, they can be quite close to number one in the women’s market,” he said. “So it’s accumulating, and a big opportunity.”
Sensing men’s rising appetite for niche fragrances in Asia Pacific, Aura Prestige moved swiftly to seize the opportunity as a beauty distributor in South East Asia.
Five to six years ago, the company began noticing a new pattern: customers asking for brands they had never heard of, its General Manager Dorize said. “So we researched what was going on around the world; what was happening in New York and Europe.”
However, when they presented those brands to their retail partners, it wasn’t well received. “They did not really understand what it was, and they didn’t believe that the storytelling and the price point would work.” Aura Prestige then opened its own stores in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, called Amaris, and built a curated niche environment supported by education and coaching to help consumers understand the category.
From the start, their customers were around 30 to 35 years old, but over the past two years, they have had a lot of teenagers as clients, too. “When it comes to niche customers —teenagers or adults—men have historically been the ones who buy most of the niche fragrance brands.”
The spending reflects the intensity of their interest. On average, shoppers spend around 400 Singapore dollars ($308) per visit, Dorize said, highlighting Creed, Xerjoff, Ex Nihilo and BDK—with the latter two having recently sealed minority-stake deals with L Catterton and LVMH, respectively—as some of the strongest performers at the moment.
As brands gain traction, it’s natural that they eventually catch the attention of bigger players, Dorize said. Yet not all rising labels make it that far. “Some of them come up with a concept, some of them disappear … you have to stand out,” he said. And consumers aren’t easy to please. “People are looking for new stories, new products, but they also want value for money.”
Niche represents around 15% of the market globally, he estimates. However, on the company’s end, it is growing by roughly 50% per year. “Niche will never be as big as legacy brands because of its limited distribution, but it’s becoming a significant portion of the market.”
New York Smells Different Now Because Men Do
Back in New York, French perfumer Le Guernec no longer walks through a perfumeless city, especially when passing close to men. He can catch gourmand notes like vanilla and chocolate—the sweet, addictive accords he spent 15 years trying to get into men’s perfumes—and florals, once reserved for women, worn without hesitation. He can pick up the long-lasting “beast mode” (or bolder) formulas people now explicitly ask for.
From a business standpoint, the shift in men’s interest in perfumes is impossible to ignore.
“Men used to look at fragrance as an unnecessary thing," Interparfums’ Madar said. "Today, it's becoming part of a ritual: going out, taking care of your face, and grooming. It’s an underpenetrated market and a huge trend."
