Everyone wants to smell like dessert. Vanilla, pistachio, sugar, heavy cream — in the world of perfume, the sweeter the notes the better it sells. “Gourmand” scents have been a growing trend over the past couple of years.
Obviously, the best desserts smell appetizing and people put on perfume with the intention of smelling good, so there’s a natural explanation behind why people hope to emit the aroma of waffle cones. And as a frequent subway rider, I’d rather be hit with a whiff of birthday cake than a lot of the ways human bodies can smell.
But as my colleague Kyndall Cunningham explains, the downside to the domination of gourmand scents is that they’ve taken the personality away from the perfume industry. The art of colognes and perfumes is finding beauty in all the kinds of scents that exist. There’s no such thing as a personal scent if everyone wants to smell the same.
—Alex Abad-Santos, senior correspondent |
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Everyone wants to smell like a doughnut |
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It all seemed to start last summer, when Love Island USA contestant Leah Kateb shared a TikTok video of her fragrance collection, which included Lush’s kettle corn-scented body spray, called Let the Good Times Roll. “You just smell like caramel cake and like you’re ready to be served on a decorated plate,” she told her 4 million followers. Influencers began evangelizing about the sweet, buttery fragrance, noting its ability to attract compliments from strangers.
Only this wasn’t just the case of a cult product going viral. For several months now, my TikTok “For You” page has been flooded with regular consumers wanting to smell delicious. It still seems like there’s only one desirable way to smell — edible, delectable, like you can literally be eaten. Whether it’s sweet vanilla fragrances, Arabian perfumes featuring tonka beans, or a growing number of pistachio scents, Gen Z’s most visible beauty obsession at the moment is smelling like a bakery.
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