This week, I checked in on how the demand for high-performing fragrances is driving new technologies and product categories. Additionally, both L’Oréal and The Estée Lauder Companies made global investments, and Hourglass founder Carisa Janes introduced a new beauty line.
From extraits to primers, the demand for long-lasting perfumes is here to stay
When trying her perfumes for the first time, new customers almost always have the same question for Ormonde Jayne founder Linda Pilkington.
“We’ve got our customers we’ve had for 25 years, and they stay true to the brand, but when new customers come in, they say, ‘Does it last?’ That is the first question,” said Pilkington. At her boutique on London’s Old Bond Street, Pilkington offers a customization service that lets consumers pour perfumes at up to 42% concentration. That’s compared to the 15-20% perfume oil concentration typically found in an eau de parfum, which has become a popular option for fragrance lovers seeking a potent formula.
Longevity and performance is far from a new topic in perfume. But an evolving customer base is changing how fragrance makers are tackling the criteria. There’s now a rise in high-concentration perfumes, as well as new fragrance layering products like perfume “primers” and “enhancers.”
“When we first launched in 2018, if anything, we were getting requests for eau de toilettes,” said JJ Vittoria, founder of the custom fragrance lab Olfactory NYC. “Then, recently, we started getting people who wanted something that was longer-lasting and stronger.”
In October, Olfactory NYC introduced an “intense” option allowing customers to increase the concentration of their custom blends from roughly 15-20% concentration of perfume oil to 20-30% perfume oil — the new option promises to offer wear beyond the 6-8 hours of the standard eau de parfum concentration. The brand shared that its sales are on track to reach $15 million in 2025.
With today’s young consumers adopting behaviors like “smellmaxxing” and fragrance layering, more is more for many fragrance shoppers. According to market analysts Circana, U.S. sales of higher-concentration extrait de parfums grew by 43% in 2024.
But while many brands are offering boosted concentrations to meet the demand for high performance, fragrance developers are also looking to maintain the longevity of the first scent customers are hit with when they spray a perfume.
“When we think about longevity, historically, it’s been, ‘How do we keep a scent on our skin?’” said Jaime Ferreira, vp of fragrance research and development at The Estée Lauder Companies. “Now what we’re talking about is, ‘How do we keep the signature scent, the whole experience that the consumer has? The top, the middle and the bottom notes — how do we have that continue throughout the whole day?’”
Perfumes are traditionally designed to go through a “dry down” as volatile top notes like citrus dissipate to give way to middle notes like florals, before the perfume settles down to longer-lasting base notes, like musks. Ferreira said Estée Lauder patented a tri-polymer system in 2023 that maintains a fragrance’s top, middle and bottom notes throughout wear, but the company is continuing to invest in other longevity mechanisms.
In January, ELC announced a partnership with technology startup Exuud to use its patented fragrance delivery system, which claims to offer a more consistent and long-lasting scent experience in commercial products. The company also opened its Global Fragrance Atelier in Paris, where it will continue to research new innovations in fragrance, such as longevity.
Independent brands are also tackling the desire for longer-lasting fragrances. In 2024, Future Society’s Jasmina Aganovic launched the Optimal Habitat fragrance primer, which uses biotech-developed ingredients like aeonome to optimize the skin’s pH and maintain the moisture barrier to increase fragrance longevity.
The trend has also since expanded to the designer and mass fragrance sectors. In July, Chanel launched a perfume primer, while Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty’s expansion into fragrance that same month included an eau de parfum as well as three fragrance layering balms intended to boost scent longevity.
Aganovic said the primer has consistently remained among Future Society’s top three best-selling products since its launch. She believes its success speaks to the norms of a newer fragrance consumer.
“Americans are obsessed with performance, like it is your only way to judge the quality of the fragrance,” she said. “The American fragrance consumer is actually quite young, and I don’t mean by age, but just the market and the olfactive taste and the ability to assess quality. It’s a younger market than Europe. Europe has a long-standing history with fragrance, and so the way that fragrance quality is assessed is not through longevity.”
With new consumers entering the fragrance market, demands have perhaps shifted toward more instant gratification, Aganovic observed. But that also means the scent they fell in love with in-store may not be what they are left with hours later.
“Top notes are the initial thing that people pick up on. And in a retail environment, when people are smelling fragrances, they’re not always waiting for it to dry down. They’re forming their initial impression largely based on the top notes,” Aganovic said. “And so, unfortunately, what I have been hearing is happening is that perfumers are under more and more pressure to optimize for the top notes rather than the dry down. I think that potentially could be contributing to the longevity issue, because it’s really those base notes that give longevity to a fragrance.”
When optimizing for performance, Estée Lauder’s Ferreira believes customers are perhaps chasing something far more primal.
“People have an emotional connection to their fragrance. It drives nostalgia and memory that really help consumers feel a certain way,” said Ferreira. “And to have that feeling [last] longer is absolutely part of the reason [for the demand in longevity].”
Executive moves:
- Anne-Sarah Panhard was named the new managing director of Hermès Perfumes and Beauty. Panhard succeeded Agnès de Villers, who remains at the house as chairwoman of the board of directors of Hermès’s beauty division. Panhard, who has been with the French luxury house since 2011, was previously managing director of Hermès Maison.
News to know:
- L’Oréal invested in Chinese clean beauty brand Lan through its Chinese investment branch Shanghai Meicifang Investment and corporate venture capital arm Bold. The French conglomerate previously invested in Chinese fragrance brands To Summer in 2024 and Documents in 2022 through its Meicifang arm. Lan, founded in 2019, marks its first investment into a Chinese skin-care brand.
- The Estée Lauder Companies invested in Mexican niche fragrance brand Xinú. The cosmetics conglomerate acquired a minority stake in the brand, which was founded in 2017 by Verónica Peña, Ignacio Cadena and Héctor Esrawe. Known for its fragrances inspired by plants native to the Americas, Xinú operates five stores throughout Mexico and is sold in the United States at retailers like Luckyscent.
- Hourglass founder Carisa Janes debuted new beauty brand Outside In. Janes, who remains at Hourglass, launched the brand with a serum foundation and face oil and plans to expand into fragrance in 2026. The brand is already slated to launch a flagship in New York’s Soho neighborhood in the spring.
Stat of the week:
Global rates of surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures rose 43% between 2020 and 2024, according to The Future Laboratory’s 2026 Beauty, Health and Wellness Futures Report. The report also found that exposure to beauty content on social media can increase the desire for cosmetic procedures by 33-57%.
In the headlines:
Dermatologists criticize “dystopian” skin-care products aimed at children. You smell really boring. Sephora’s holiday ad backlash tests customer trust during key sales event. So you want to smell like a cyborg?
Need a Glossy recap?
Credo Beauty rolls out “Credo Qualified” contract manufacturer certification program, “Clean Beauty Council” to guide its standards. Charlotte Tilbury tops the beauty category in Dash Social’s first Total Social Impact leaderboard. Inside Rare Beauty’s big year of collaborations. Google turns search into a personal shopper with new AI checkout and calling features. The grooming boom: Men are finally buying skin care for themselves. With a Rakuten+ partnership, Sephora hopes to buy customer loyalty for 10% cash back.
