Perfume is having a moment. This could be a Mad Lib, because there’s always a [noun] that’s having a moment. But something is changing on the pulse points of our citizenry, and it just might be a mirror to everything else that’s happening in this crazy and unsettling world.
We have, in the span of five years, traveled from the desire to smell expensive—with the opulent Baccarat Rouge 540—to wanting to smell like a toothachingly sweet dessert. Witness Kayali Boujee Kitty Caramel Milk (yes, that’s a real name) and the Sol de Janeiro body mists—part of an entire genre of cotton-candy, cookie-dough, caramel, coconut, and vanilla spritzes that wafted into the air and invaded our olfactory receptors whether we wanted them to or not. Before that, the goal, essentially, was to smell French with everything that implies—sophistication, style, taste, worldliness, romance, mystery, and Catherine Deneuve.
