The fragrance industry is booming. In 2024, fragrance was the fastest-growing beauty segment, per Circana, sales for which have picked up in recent years alongside RTO mandates and increased IRL socializing.
And keeping the momentum up is a group of unassuming new customers: notoriously smelly, drugstore aftershave-loving teen boys.
Out with the Old Spice, in with high-end scents
While the category is popular among Gen Z at large — according to Circana, 83% of all zoomers use fragrances — a Piper Sandler survey of 13.5k teens found that Gen Z men upped their spending on fragrances last year by 26% year over year.
And not on locker room classics like Axe — these young men have a nose for the expensive stuff: 60% prefer prestige fragrances to mass ones, per WWD.
What’s influencing them? TikTok, of course, where #PerfumeTok tastemakers are breathing life into trends like “fragrance wardrobes,” fragrance layering, and “smellmaxxing.”
While cocktailing multiple scents sounds headache-inducing to us, for businesses it means consumers spending on not just one signature scent but all their various moods and activities (see: bedtime perfume).
But Gen Z aren’t the only new fans of fragrance…
People using weight loss drugs — the number of which jumped ~600% between 2019 and 2024 — have also given fragrance sales a boost.
Perfume use among GLP-1 users is up 23%, according to Anna Mayo, VP of NielsenIQ’s Beauty Vertical, who told CO— that many are “seeking sensory inputs that they are no longer getting from food.”
So it makes sense that gourmand scents (fragrances that smell like food) are also having a moment. The trend has gained traction in recent years, with niche perfumeries and mass retailers alike indulging people’s sensory appetites with scents like croissants, tomato, marshmallow, bananas, and more.
And it doesn’t seem to be expiring any time soon: Searches for gourmand fragrances are expected to increase by ~34% this year, per Forbes, and seemingly every expert is predicting 2025 fragrance trends to include smells good enough to eat.
