When Flamingo Estate founder Richard Christiansen launched his Roma Heirloom Tomato candle in 2020, he did not know the polarizing scent would one day become his brand’s best-selling product.
“People loved it, and I think they loved, in some ways, the strangeness of it at the time. But I remember also sitting at a table watching someone smell it who didn’t know that I was related to the brand and turning their nose up like, ‘Who would want to smell a vegetable?’” he said. But 2020’s Covid lockdowns helped it find a large audience. “Tomato and vegetables were like a nice escape for people during the pandemic if they weren’t going outside and they wanted to be closer to nature.”
Since then, Flamingo Estate has sold 75,000 tomato candles and counting. And so too have a lot of other companies.
Malin + Goetz and Loewe also launched tomato candles in 2020, respectively, with the latter’s bright red, $130 candles used in countless “tomato girl summer” thinkpieces and moodboards when the term emerged in 2023. But even though Covid-era lockdowns have lifted and “tomato girl summer” has come and gone, the tomato fragrance trend has only continued to proliferate. By 2025, the scent has trickled down from the niche and luxury sector to mass, and tomato is poised to become not just a trending novelty, but a staple scent.
Niche fragrance brand L’Artisan Parfumeur launched the vegetable-based Le Potager collection, including a tomato leaf-vetiver perfume, in 2022. In 2023, Maison Margiela Replica launched From the Garden, a tomato leaf-based perfume. Nette re-launched its tomato candle in a new red vessel in 2024, while Malin + Goetz expanded its tomato candle to a room spray version that same year. Cleaning and personal care brand Mrs. Meyer’s launched a tomato scent in its limited-edition summer 2024 collection — with the $4.99 hand soap a far cry from Loewe’s $85 version.
But perhaps no one represents critical mass quite like the quintessential mall brand Bath & Body Works. In May, the popular retailer known for its body splashes and three-wick candles launched its Off the Vine collection, an 18-piece launch built around a scent of tomato leaf, geranium and moss.
“The icon of the tomato was everywhere,” said Kristie Lewis, Bath & Body Works svp of merchandising. In developing the Off the Vine scent, the company wanted to strike a balance between capturing the tomato trend without alienating its consumer base.
“We had the start of the fragrance concept, and we put it in front of customers and said, ‘Here’s our tomato-girl-summer lifestyle translated in all of these forms. Tell us what you think,’” said Lewis. “They loved the mindset, they loved the concept, they loved the design. They loved the fragrance, too. But they were surprised. There was so much curiosity. They’re like, ‘I do not want to smell like ketchup. I do not want to smell like a crushed up can of tomatoes.’”
That curiosity is to be expected as the tomato leaf note, which is featured across Flamingo Estate and Bath & Body Works, is still a relatively new concept in perfumery, according to fragrance historian Jessica Murphy.
“Tomato notes in candles and fragrance are very tied into the rise of niche perfumery and niche home fragrance,” said Murphy. “It’s not something that we are reviving from 100 years ago or even 75 years ago.”
Murphy cited Sisley’s Eau de Campagne, an herbaceous perfume made by now-legendary perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena in 1974, as an early example of tomato leaf in perfumery. But the tomato leaf did not break through as a hero note until Demeter’s Tomato perfume, launched in 1996 and created by perfumer Christopher Brosius. And even Bath & Body Works had an early eye on the tomato trend: The company launched a limited-edition Tomato Vine candle in 2017.
While tomato and tomato leaf have been creeping into perfumery for decades, the combination of social media and tomatoes’ innate photogenic quality has helped accelerate their rise in a post-TikTok era.
“Tomato doesn’t just smell amazing, it’s so easy to photograph. You’re spoiled. You can’t photograph it badly. It really has that thumb-stopping value,” said Christiansen. “So much of these trends have been driven by social media as much as the actual fragrance itself. The next tomato, if you follow the same thinking, needs to be something that’s bright and bold and really great to photograph, as well as something that smells really intoxicating.”
Tomato’s popularity in fragrance has also run parallel to a craving for offbeat food ingredients, Murphy noted. Zeitgeist-y ingredients like miso and rhubarb have become de rigueur for many coastal millennial and Gen-Z consumers, while savory cocktails like tomato infusions and dirtier-than-dirty martinis have popped up in bars in major cities across the country. While many 20th-century perfumes were inspired by exotic locations at a time when travel was less accessible, Murphy sees today’s edible scents as reflective of the exaltation of cooking and foodie culture.
“Fragrance trends are often closely aligned with food trends, and I think we’re more educated as a public about ingredients and flavor profiles,” she said. “Are our fantasies more about gardening and baking and making food? Is that more the thing we like to picture ourselves doing, rather than getting on a boat, getting on a plane, going to a beach? Maybe this is a fantasy that has succeeded that [travel] fantasy.”
Sweet, gourmand scents also represent a fantasy of what we wish we could consume. Christiansen draws a connection between an explosion of gourmand scents — including Flamingo Estate’s Prinsesstårta candle, launched in 2025 and inspired by Swedish princess cake — and the widespread adoption of GLP-1s. Anna Mayo, vp of NielsenIQ’s beauty vertical, told the Chamber of Commerce that GLP-1 users are increasing their consumption of perfume by 23%.
“Culturally now, with Ozempic and those sorts of things, what we really want is the gourmand. We want the sweetness, but we can’t have it or won’t have it, and so we’re getting it through a candle instead of eating the cake.”
But Christiansen isn’t giving up the savory side of scents. With tomato reaching critical mass, he’s committed to finding the new tomato, and thinks he may have found it in a green goddess candle slated for release in the summer.
“My reaction was like, ‘OK, guys, we’ve got to work on the new tomato. Because when Bath & Body Works and Mrs. Meyers have it, it’s time for us to move on.’ I think we do have it. I have a new idea.”
