Ah, the familiar smell of summer: tropical, coconut scent of sunscreen and aftersun lotion. The smoky haze of a burger is as hot as it bakes on a barbecue. A sweet, rustic scent after the late August storm. The biggest fragrance trends of the summer capture the season’s fragrances, some of which are more unexpected than others. “It seems people are craving a big, bold fragrance that makes a statement, even in warm weather,” says Franco Wright, co-founder of retailers Luckyscent.com and Scentbar. “On the other hand, skin scents are still in great demand.”
Unexpected tropical fruits and clear white flowers notebooks dominate the launch of summer’s most talked about fragrances. “It’s going to be a fruit-flowering summer,” says Bee Shapiro, founder of Ellis Brooklyn. “The sun smells nice, but I think the waves of sunscreen-inspired scent have faded.” When it comes to skin scents, the salty taste breathes fresh and mineral ears into categories, but the icy eucalyptus and hot Sichuan pepper spices make things more exciting for those who prefer greens and rustic oaks.
Naturally, gourmet food doesn’t go anywhere. “Social media commentators are predicting moves from Gourmands, but we haven’t seen that yet when it comes to sales and interest in stores,” Wright says. What the brand is doing is adapting food-inspired scents for hot weather and developing perfumes that “have less weight and warmth to associate categories with autumn and winter.”
Perfume perfumes also take inspiration from nostalgic summer snacks such as ice cream and Italian aperitibi. “It’s a really interesting time for fragrances because our customers have this whole world of fragrance at their fingertips, and there’s this hunger for newness and novelty,” says Jeniece Trizzino, Vice President of Innovation and Physics Products at Scentbird. First, discover all the newness and novelty that can smell anywhere this summer.
Be prepared to smell like a banana
Spare the lyrics of Cringeworyory Ate-geds Song and pass them straight. Banana-inspired scents are the biggest perfume trend of summer. According to Spate data, searches across Google and Tiktok have increased by 46.8% from last year. “Bananas are still a relatively new note with fine fragrances, and that’s exciting,” says Nicole Mancini, principal fragrance at DSM-Firemenich. “It’s been rethinked as modern, fresh and unexpectedly elegant.”
Bananas can create great base notes, explains INES Guien, Vice President of Operations at Dossier. “Paired with deeper, spicy notes like rum or inger to transform into perfection day and night.” For example, Nanatopia by Borntostandout has a shockingly seductive aroma that mixes caramel, rum and banana bread cooking.
Don’t forget to smell straight banana-like scents, such as the new Hakuna Matata eau de Parfum from Perfume. The aroma is characterized by sugary honey, which smells similar to hard banana candies from the 90s. However, the white flowers quickly take over and soften the cheerful scent.
The white flowers, combined with the Kayari Maui banana, are sweet bananas for gourmet food with a tropical summer fragrance. And Marc Jacobs’ Daisy Wild Oak is very intense, using banana blossom accord for a less sparkly hoodie approach to this trend.
The perfume adds a pinch of salt
Salt, once reserved for aquatic and marine scents, has been scattered over many olfactory categories this summer, including skin scents (such as Ellis Brooklyn Salt), florals (love love on the beach, shiny fleur), woody blends (Issey Miyake le sel d’issey), and Spicy Parfumne’s California). “Salt has become a very versatile ingredient in the aroma,” says Mancini. “It brings a touch of freshness and mineral quality that can enhance other notes.”
According to the perfume perfume we spoke, salt covers the scent. This means that it infuses any EAU with rustic, airy quality. This is one of the reasons that perfume perfume Dora Bagrice added to Glossier Fleur. “It’s not just flowers,” she says. “You can smell it in the air and in the ground.” Bringing the mineral salt accord into the equation adds its rustic and airy, and the scent of the flower will also soften.
