The brick-and-mortar fragrance business is booming

Posted by Robin on 25 October 2025 4 Comments

While sniffing via a screen is a technology yet to be cracked, the brick-and-mortar fragrance business is booming: 75 percent of fragrance sales in the U.S. happen in stores. And over the past year, it’s seemed as if every other boutique opening in the city is a perfumer or a home-fragrance shop. [...] Naked Ghosts (66 Greenwich Ave.), which opened in the summer, offers a tight selection of niche eaux (such as Annindriya and Chester Gibs’s Walk With Me) chosen by store co-founder Christophe Laudamiel, a perfumer whose own fragrances are for sale.

— Read more in What’s That Smell? 11 New Fragrance Stores Open in New York magazine.

Edit a little more tightly

Posted by Robin on 27 August 2025 5 Comments

[Our own Dr. Jessica] Murphy likened Printemps New York’s fragrance section to that of the since-closed Henri Bendel, which offered a sensorial escape from the busy New York streets on the second floor. But many Gen-Z and younger shoppers, who have largely driven the post-Covid fragrance boom, never experienced the department store heyday.

“Department stores — the ones that still exist — are going to have to edit a little more tightly. They are going to have to have events, and they are going to have to distinguish themselves in ways that resonate with Generation Z and Xennial and millennial shoppers,” said Murphy.

Wading through department store kiosks

Posted by Robin on 16 July 2024 4 Comments

In the past, shopping for a new cologne meant wading through department store kiosks with salespeople trying to sell you the latest “sport” iteration of an established classic. The groundwork for something different began bubbling 15 to 20 years ago with a surge in the prominence of niche fragrance houses, a stark departure from the mass-produced fumes that once dominated the market.

— Read more in The 9 Coolest Cologne Stores in N.Y.C. at Robb Report.

They didn’t want anyone to feel assaulted

Posted by Robin on 10 May 2024 2 Comments

Apparently the smells made the museum very nervous! They didn’t want anyone to feel assaulted by having to endure the scent of human hair from a hat, and so on. Personally, I very much enjoyed the pat-’n-sniff wall in the “Specter of the Rose” gallery, which allows a visitor to release the smells that have been lifted from a Paul Poiret dress and pair of House of Drecoll gowns and embedded in the paint.

— The New York Times reviews The Costume Institute’s spring 2024 exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion (for which Sissel Tolaas did the interactive fragrances). Read more in At the Met, Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up in the Chemistry Lab.

To reawaken these clothes through smell

Posted by Robin on 7 May 2024 2 Comments

To reawaken these clothes through smell, the team from Sissel Tolaas Studio extracted scent molecules from the fabrics, then used a microfilter to trap the air and moisture. Eventually, they analyzed the molecules to identify and replicate the smells. Some of the smells you’ll find include odors found in tobacco, bitter drinks, high-end skin products, roses, polluted environments, and toothpaste. The technology is so advanced, that it even determined aromas associated with human hair and human skin that had been in contact with a dog.

— Smell artist Sissel Tolaas created the fragrances for The Costume Institute’s spring 2024 exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, which runs May 10–September 2 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Read more in The Met Museum’s new ‘Sleeping Beauties’ fashion exhibit is a wonderland for the senses at TimeOut, and see also Sissel Tolaas: The Certified Expert Of All Things Smell Is On A Quest To Sharpen Your Fifth Sense at Pin-Up.

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

The brick-and-mortar fragrance business is booming

Edit a little more tightly

Wading through department store kiosks

They didn’t want anyone to feel assaulted

To reawaken these clothes through smell