Calvin Klein Bets on Body Sprays to Be Gen-Z’s Obsession

Since its launch of Obsession and Eternity perfumes in the ‘80s, Calvin Klein created the modern fragrance playbook. Now, it’s playing catch-up.

Its iconic campaigns for Obsession, featuring a then-fresh-faced Kate Moss, was an instant and much-referenced hit. The same was true of Eternity, which propelled supermodel Christy Turlington beyond the runway into every major department store and magazine. The scents also tied back to its core fashion business, underscoring an equally sexy and raw style of luxury.

While the brand is one that has historically been steeped in culture — and youth culture no less — the current zeitgeist has taken a sharp turn towards lighter, sweeter and more playful scents and styles.

No longer content to sit on the sidelines, the Coty-produced line will unveil a new product: Hair & Body Perfume Mists, a selection of four spritzes priced at $38 on July 1. The line includes Cotton Musk, Nude Vanilla, Sheer Peach and Silky Coconut, with a formula enhanced with glycerin, a moisturising ingredient, as a nod to the body boom in beauty. In the US, the line will debut on Calvin Klein’s e-commerce website and Amazon, and at retailers including Boots, Douglas, Myer and Sephora in markets like India, Europe and Australia.

The collection joins a glut of such sprays on the market. Since the smash success of Sol de Janiero’s body sprays amongst teens and twentysomethings, fragrance mists, or other kinds of lightweight, lower-priced perfume offerings have become catnip for the under-25 crowd, with labels like Phlur, Rare Beauty and Saltaire all debuting their own iterations. But body mists are not new – brands like Bath & Body Works have seen a resurgence in their sales thanks to updating and reissuing their scents from the 1990s and 2000s. In Piper Sandler’s biannual Taking Stock With Teens report, Bath & Body Works has ranked as the favourite brand for female teens for four consecutive quarters.

Creating a range that resonates with young shoppers isn’t new for Calvin Klein. The launch of CK One in 1994 was one of the first “genderless” perfumes and thus worn by every tween or tween in America. Making the brand stand out on shelves in stores could be trickier today — the brand excels at minimalism, edginess and grit for its hero scents, but the body mist category is led by sweeter, more gourmand and often girlier scents. Sol de Janiero’s are redolent with salted caramel, exotic fruits and sweet vanilla and featured in pastel translucent packaging.

“We wanted to create something very simple, very accessible, kind of like the underwear,” said Javier Zotes Ciancas, senior vice president of Calvin Klein Fragrances at Coty, describing the scents as “fresh and effortless”.

The brand’s point of difference will be framing the offering around the idea of the body, referencing the product’s skin-moisturising benefits and the brand’s long associations with the undressed talent, thanks to blockbuster ad campaigns featuring the likes of Jeremy Allen White and Bad Bunny more recently, and Brooke Shields in various states of dishabille (PVH Corp, the American fashion firm manufactures Calvin Klein’s clothing line) This launch has no famous face — initial adverts feature four models — and bottles are monochrome in shades of orange, pink, blue and green, with the Calvin Klein name embossed on the cap, a nod to the waistband of its boxers, said Zotes Ciancas.

Tynan Sinks, a beauty editor and co-host of the fragrance podcast Smell Ya Later, said Calvin Klein’s original perfume offerings still hold weight with serious collectors, but that youth appeal is needed. “I’m always looking forward to the next iteration of a Calvin Klein flanker, and they’re probably still moving units in on perfume counters,” he said.

“But that’s not the way we shop anymore.”

A Spritz Ahead

Prestige fragrance licenses are the bulk of Coty’s revenue — the American giant also makes scents for the likes of Chloé, Gucci and Burberry. While fragrance has been a consistent bright spot in an otherwise cooling beauty market, rumours began to swirl in June that Coty was considering selling off its prestige and consumer divisions (the latter of which includes cosmetics brands like CoverGirl and Bourjois). The company declined to comment, but in its third-quarter earnings in May, highlighted its commitment to innovating in the fragrance space. It said it would co-create scents with retailers, prioritise more affordable lines in emerging markets, and invest in new formats like pen sprays for Marc Jacobs and mists for the likes of Adidas.

Sinks noted that newer formats like body mists aren’t just typically cheaper than a standard eau de parfum or eau de toilette, they’re also more durable and robust in their construction. “You can throw one of these in your backpack and it’ll be fine,” he said.

Bringing younger shoppers into the fold is key for any brand’s development, but for a brand like Calvin Klein with such historical associations with youth culture, it’s more of an imperative,

“A lot of brands are going to launch [body mists] and a lot of those other brands are booming,” he said. “We need to find a statement.”

Mot all efforts to modernise have been successful: a new scent, called Women, created by then-creative director Raf Simons, was launched in 2018 and discontinued a few years later.

In traditional perfume, Calvin Klein offers five key fragrance franchises (with some offshoot lines), a far smaller number than other fashion houses like Rabanne or Gucci. Phlur and Sol de Janeiro both offer more than double that, with new launches regularly dropping, a key to their success, said Sinks.

“Those [young] shoppers are just like, ‘I want the newest thing,’” said Sinks. “It’s not even the newness of the fragrance itself, it’s just a new product,” he said,

Body Work

To stand out on shelf, Zotes Ciancas said the brand will be using associations around body care. Though the line does not currently offer any body lotions, the brand is hoping that the fragrances will be viewed as a first layer of scent, and that customers will mix and match them.

That’s partly communicated through the addition of glycerin, the scents themselves and a typically Calvin Klein ad campaign featuring soaking wet bright young things with bottles tucked into their waistbands, but also through the scents themselves, which Zotes Ciancas said were being framed almost like a base layer when getting dressed, given the brand’s long associations with undergarments.

“It felt natural to create the same layer, like you have with underwear, with the fragrance,” he said.

Ultimately, the launch has both short and long term goals: increase the brand’s visibility with Gen Alpha and Gen-Z shoppers now, and perhaps recruit them with higher-priced prodcuts in the future.

“Obviously [the mists] bring an opportunity to rediscovering Calvin Klein by entering the brand from a lower price and new perspective… and then maybe with go on to complete [the collection] with CK One, or with Eternity or with Euphoria,” said Zotes Ciancas.

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