Teens and tweens have been the talk of the beauty landscape in 2024. But while the girls have made headlines for stocking up on high-end skin care from the likes of Drunk Elephant and Glow Recipe, the boys are dominating another side of the beauty aisle: fragrance.
“These young girls have started to get more into skin care at a younger and younger age, and skin care seems to be their entry point into the beauty world, even before some of them are wearing makeup,” said Sarah Gerrish, senior director of creator and influencers at Movers + Shakers. “And I think fragrance is the entry point for young men into the beauty space.”
Young male influencers like Noel Thomas and Elijah Yeroushalmi have introduced teen boys to the power of “beast mode” fragrances or “smellmaxxing,” with many fragrance collectors displaying the same obsessive qualities previously seen in sneakerheads or watch enthusiasts. According to Piper Sandler’s most recent Taking Stock With Teens Survey, fall 2024 was the first quarter that teen boys’ spending on fragrance exceeded that of teen girls.
“Fragrance is a category we’re very bullish on. We don’t think it’s going anywhere. I would expect it to continue to have a lot of really good traction,” said Korinne Wolfmeyer, vp and sr. researcher at Piper Sandler.
How they are spending their dollars is different, as well. The top three fragrance brands for teen girls are all brands known for affordable body splashes: Bath and Body Works, Sol de Janeiro and Victoria’s Secret. The top brands for boys, meanwhile, are designer names such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Dior and Versace.
And while some social media viewers — and certainly, some parents — may balk at the idea of teens owning multiple $150 bottles of perfumes, the fragrance boom reflects an age-old teenage anxiety that crosses gender lines: the desire to look and feel better about oneself.
“[Fragrance] is an easy way to immediately transform. If you want to clear your skin up, it could take months, weeks, years. To grow your hair out, adopt a new style, that takes wardrobe and all that stuff,” said Amy Cotteleer, partner and chief experience officer at Duncan Channon. “Finding a personal scent that makes you feel confident, sexy, whatever it is, is a five-minute experience.”
Fragrance can offer a safe beauty outlet for young men who don’t feel comfortable experimenting with other parts of their look. But some of the most attention-grabbing male influencers of 2024 are building followings for playing with a far more traditional side of beauty: makeup.
French influencer Bach Buquen has shot to close to 8 million followers on TikTok, where he shows himself applying concealer on the Paris Metro platform or playing with makeup with Charlotte Tilbury and Kate Moss. And Matteo Sinet has acquired more than 4 million followers on TikTok, where he posts himself applying makeup and styling his hair from his bedroom.
“[Buquen] is sort of walking through a door that was opened by these queer content creators who went before him,” said Cotteleer. “What’s different about what he’s doing is he’s taking it to a more accessible level for a straight male.”
Cotteleer doesn’t believe the popularity of influencers like Buquen is enough to completely normalize beauty routines for a straight male audience, however — at least not yet. While some brands — like Good Weird, which counts Evan Mock as a creative director — have emerged in recent years, boys are not flocking to the makeup counter the way they are to fragrance. Piper Sandler’s survey found makeup to represent 0% of teen boys’ wallet share in fall 2024.
But the boys who are spending on cosmetics may be changing their habits. That same survey found that, in the fall of 2024, 74% of teen boys were willing to pay a premium for “clean” or “natural” beauty formulations. That’s compared to 48% in spring 2021 when Piper Sandler began posing the question to teen male respondents.
The increasingly open attitudes around straight men like Bach Buquen partaking in beauty are somewhat at odds with other cultural shifts among certain young men, however. The 2024 U.S. presidential election showed more young men voting Republican than in previous years. Young men in beauty may still be a polarizing — or at least a buzzy — issue for years to come.
“With every trend, there’s a counter-trend, and that will always be the case,” said Gerrish. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re ever going to be more in the middle.”
