This week, I checked in on luxury fragrance brand Floraïku’s newest launch ahead of the holidays, and whether its U.S. consumers will blind-buy a $500-plus bottle of perfume. Additionally, Jennifer Lawrence teases a biotech-backed beauty brand, and Galderma adds ZO Skin to its portfolio.
Floraïku is ringing in the holiday shopping season with ultra-luxury fragrance
Ahead of the holiday season, the French perfume brand Floraïku will expand its Edition 3776 collection with four new scents. According to Floraïku co-founder John Molloy, the collection, named after Mount Fuji’s 3,776-meter elevation, gives noses free rein to use perfumery’s most premium ingredients. The resulting perfumes have the price tags to match: Each costs $775 a bottle.
“There’s no barrier. The ingredients cost a fortune, and I just wanted to let [our perfumers] play with whatever they want,” said Molloy. “It was really us saying, ‘We want to do something the best possible way, using the best possible ingredients.’ We’re using obviously the most expensive irises when we’re using an oud.”
The expansion includes the new scents Make My Heart Sing by Symrise perfumer Aliénor Massenet; Many Different Stories by IFF perfumer Shinichiro Oba; and Lost For Words and Bows And Arrows, both created by Givaudan perfumer Gaël Montero. Those launches join the existing 3776 scent I Am Not A Flower, first launched in 2018.
The only hook? For Floraïku’s U.S. consumers, they’ll have to make what fragheads typically call a “blind buy” — purchasing a full bottle online before trying the scent in person, as Floraïku is currently only available online in the United States. But Molloy is confident the brand can give consumers in the market for a $775 perfume the kind of white-glove experience they may get in-store.
“We’ve got quite a few really good customers on our online store in the U.S. who buy an awful lot per year,” said Molloy. “All of those clients, they’ll be sent what’s happening, and the ones that had the appetite for the 3776 collection, who were looking for something a little different, we’ll kind of show how it could be gifted, who it could be for.”
Clara and John Molloy launched Floraïku as its own brand in 2017, after initially conceiving of it as a subset of their existing travel-inspired fragrance line, Memo Paris. In addition to its own boutique in Paris, the brand is carried at department stores like Harrods in London and Harvey Nichols in Doha, with plans to open a standalone boutique in Tokyo in 2027. Floraïku’s standard perfumes retail for $395 a bottle.
Floraïku is not the only fragrance brand launching higher-priced collections going into the crucial holiday season. Both BDK Parfums and Victoria Beckham Beauty have expanded their lines with higher-priced extrait de parfum versions of their best-selling scents, which retail for upward of $300. Acqua di Parma launched an Advent calendar that retails for $1,022 and includes a mix of travel-sized fragrances, candles and body care. Maison Francis Kurkdjian also launched a countdown calendar retailing for $1,200, with an emphasis on full-sized bottles like a 200-milliliter Grand Soir eau de parfum.
Fragrance remains a growing category, but some of those gains may be due to rising prices and a trend toward more premium offerings, like higher-concentration scents. According to Circana, average prices in prestige fragrances in the U.S. market grew 5% in the first half of 2026, while unit sales remained flat. However, both dollar and unit sales increased in the luxury fragrance sector during that period.
One challenge to selling luxury scents in the U.S. market is the growing lack of high-end department store counters. Neiman Marcus closed its historic downtown Dallas flagship in September. Its parent company, Saks Global, which also owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, has been embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings throughout the year.
“We’d love to work with a department store partner who has got the time and the space,” said Molloy. “The thing we don’t want to do is go into a department store, which is under a lot of financial pressure, and then within one year, you’re watching this turnover.”
But in the future, Molloy said he would love to open a Floraïku boutique in New York City, where neighborhoods like SoHo, Nolita and Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side have become perfume retail hotbeds. With enough sales of the Edition 3776 collection, the brand may be able to do so.
Executive moves:
- The Estée Lauder Companies names Krista Lee Berger svp, global marketing, of Clinique. She will lead the beauty brand’s global marketing strategy as it attempts to reach a new generation of consumers. She joins from Mattel, where she served as svp, global head of Barbie & Dolls.
- Robin Mason has been appointed Give Back Beauty’s president of lifestyle brands USA as the global beauty company continues to invest in its U.S. presence with a new headquarters at 530 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.
- Andrea Lisbona will step down as CEO of Touchland. Lisbona, who founded the hand sanitizer brand in 2017, will remain on in an advisory role. Consumer goods company Church & Dwight acquired the brand in 2025 in an $880 million deal.
- Jean-Marc Bellaiche is named CEO of Douglas Group, effective November 1. He succeeds Sander van der Laan in the top role at the European beauty retail company. Bellaiche was previously CEO of French department store Printemps and svp of Tiffany & Co.
News to know:
- Amouage relaunches its body-care line. The Omani fragrance brand launched a new body care collection on Monday featuring lotion, shower gel and hair mist versions of some of its best-selling scents like Guidance and Decision. Prices range from $64 for hand cream to $130 for body lotion.
- Jennifer Lawrence teases a new beauty brand. The actress, who joined Instagram for the first time in September, posted a link to her Instagram account announcing a new hair-care brand made in partnership with biotech company Arcaea. The brand is slated to debut in October.
- Galderma is slated to buy ZO Skin Health in a $1.5 billion deal. The Swiss pharmaceutical company and Dysport manufacturer will add the Irvine, California-based skin-care brand to its portfolio, which already includes the likes of Cetaphil and Alastin.
Stat of the week:
E.l.f. is the No. 1 cosmetics brand among teenage girls by mindshare, according to Piper Sandler’s Taking Stock with Teens Fall 2026 survey. The mass market brand occupied 33% mindshare among survey participants. Rare Beauty and Rhode occupied the second and third positions, respectively.
In the headlines:
Meet Zaiie, a makeup veteran’s vision for Palestinian-rooted beauty. “Do you smell like a bi millennial?”: Everyone is talking about gay perfume. Is it time for yes-makeup makeup? Mary Phillips and Patrick Ta predict what’s next.
Listen in:
In the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sits down with Ritual founder and CEO Kat Schneider to discuss the strategy behind the brand’s first new category launch in six years.
Need a Glossy recap?
Victoria’s Secret leverages fashion show to promote beauty expansion and first-ever skin-care partnership. Amid an executive shakeup, Gap Beauty expands with its first gourmand fragrance. Bath & Body Works is testing smaller-batch fragrances through Hype Lab. Why brands are turning your favorite beauty products into fashion accessories.
