Designer fragrances are leading beauty’s hottest category. Why aren’t more designers cashing in?

While several legacy brands like Carolina Herrera, Dior and Chanel have long had fragrances and thus benefited from the current boom, designers who have gained notoriety in the past decade have been slower to jump on the trend.

Industry sources suggested that the likes of Khaite, Willy Chavarria, Area and Christopher John Rogers could be ripe for a fragrance launch, but potential hurdles include costs and an increasingly competitive landscape.

“The category is doing extremely well, and designer fragrances are so viewed as aspirational and associated with prestige,” said Robin Burns-McNeill, cofounder of Batallure Beauty. “The Chanels and Diors have history on their side, but you have newer and very appealing fashion brands that have all the developed elements of the brand narrative.”

Meanwhile, fragrance is the fastest category in the U.S. prestige market, per first-quarter data from the NPD Group, driven by all variants of prices and juice concentrations. Burns-McNeill reasoned that there’s not a right or wrong way to enter the market, whether it be with small batches à la The Row or Gabriela Hearst, or casting a much broader net with augmented distribution.

“The objective is to have a great product for your first purchase, but you’ve got to be able to contain that customer,” Burns-McNeill said. “The packaging, the narrative, the fragrance itself. It all has to be great, but then you have to create the awareness and demand, which there are many ways to do.”

She doesn’t think there’s a sweet spot in terms of a fashion business’ sales volume before entering fragrance, but she did reason it varies by business.

“You first have to separate if it’s a U.S. fashion brand or a global one, where the growth levers are and where it’s coming from, because beauty will follow suit,” Burns-McNeill said. “A big mistake people make is the effort to create awareness and buzz and demand for launch and then thinking they’re done, because that is how apparel is. But in beauty, you have to keep building and building.”

Other executives agreed that the upside in the category is there, but competition is only fiercening.

“Designer fragrances in the U.S. market are 70 percent of sales,” said Agnes Landau, chief marketing officer of Shiseido Americas, which holds licenses for Tory Burch and Narciso Rodriguez among others. “The top 10 are almost 40 percent of the market. There’s incredible dominance at the top. You don’t see that in skin care and makeup.”

Landau pointed to a few dynamics for the category’s growth, including Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s exploding interest in the segment, largely driven by TikTok. “They’re also getting under the hood. It’s not only about knowing the fragrance notes, but knowing about the construction of a fragrance is social currency for them,” she said.

With the lion’s share of sales coming from incumbent legacy players, like Chanel and Dior, Landau reasoned that the category can be prohibitively expensive.

“If you want to be in the top 20, you better show up with at least $20 million,” Landau said, “if not more in this category. It’s an expensive category to play in — sampling is super important, how you play on social. And you can’t miss on either end.”

There are a few new players — LoveShackFancy debuted its fragrance collection in 2023, as did Victoria Beckham Beauty — and in February, Jacquemus signed a long-term license with L’Oréal and took a minority investment from the conglomerate.

“You need the right partner to invest in you,” said Lori Singer, president of Parlux. “Alignment is key. These brands that want to break into the category that are smaller really need someone who’s aligned with their value — shared value and creative ambition are both necessary. And not every fashion designer loves fragrance or wants to understand it.”

Designers agreed on a simple tenet: consistency is key.

“We have a very strong vision that we stay true to,” said Rebecca Hessel Cohen, founder and creative director of LoveShackFancy. “We launched with three floral fragrances at first. So much of our brand DNA is florals, and this very beautiful, romantic, effortless, timeless femininity.”

Her range has since expanded to entail body sprays and Cohen said she is eyeing new olfactive territories for expansion, too.

“It starts with the brand codes and the brand DNA,” Cohen continued. “There are so many new customers to the brand [from fragrance]. All of them have been introduced to the brand and love the energy. The beauty, fashion, fragrance — it’s such a feel-good, happy, fun world.”

Narciso Rodriguez agreed that the starting point should be a singular vision and point of view on the category.

“Fragrance was always something I was so passionate about, even before I even went to school for fashion,” said Rodriguez. “I did it from a place of passion and then learned over the last 20-plus years about the fragrance world. But I always thought that a fragrance can convey the message of a designer.”

Though his namesake fragrances are enduring on the market, he acknowledged that the fragrance landscape has shifted dramatically since he first debuted in 2003.

“There are people like Aurélien Guichard, Francis Kurkdjian — they’ve gone off and done their own things. There are amazing fragrances and people creating new and interesting things,” he said of the boom in niche perfumery.

“It’s true that many are taking the path with more established designers, and those are taking more selective paths to distribution,” said Jean Madar, chief executive officer of Interparfums Inc. “It seems new designers want to take their time and the business model is quite different. They either don’t have the European recognition or U.S. recognition, so that’s why they have to go slower.”

Madar, who said he was evaluating a handful of new licenses to join the portfolio that entails Donna Karan, Jimmy Choo and Off-White, contended that brand recognition isn’t enough to create a viable business. “The most important thing is attractivity and the emotions the brands create,” he said. “There is nothing more well-known than Coca-Cola in the world. Does it mean I’m going to wear a Coca-Cola fragrance? I don’t think so.”