Can Designer Perfumes Win Over the Niche Customer?

Fashion houses, long the arbiters of fine perfumes, are stepping up their fragrance game.

Brands like Bottega Veneta, Chanel and Balmain have long been at the top of the food chain in any category they operate in: broadly speaking, fashion houses will make the most expensive and most exclusive option in any category they operate in, be that apparel, eyewear or home goods.

That’s no longer true in fragrance, where many fashion house brands’ offerings have been usurped in desirability, exclusivity and price by niche brands like Xerjoff, D.S & Durga and Amouage. The category’s seemingly unending growth has turned it into a goldmine — customers are happy to pay hundreds for top trending scents like Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540 or Creed Aventus, profit margins are exceptionally high, and thanks to the “wardrobing” trend, a collection of a few perfumes is now de rigueur, rather than owning just one for special occasions.

Niche brands have begun to command more floorspace in top department stores and have reached fragrance-obsessed customers on TikTok, creating a new set of expectations, where smelling different is as cool as smelling good.

“When I was younger, everyone was just happy to wear CK One,” said Thomas Buisson, managing director at investment firm Fable Investments which has backed niche names like Bibbi and Perfumer H. “Now, people really want something differentiated.”

This premiumisation has left many fashion houses behind. Many brands like Prada, Tommy Hilfiger and Armani primarily sell their perfumes in more mass channels, including travel retail, drug stores and high street shops, with a price point under $150. To try and tap into the growing market, many are reintroducing or relaunching new super-premium lines: In July 2024, Puig-owned Rabanne released La Collection Rabanne, a range of eight scents priced at $315, and Balmain launched its first fragrance range in partnership with the Estée Lauder Companies, Les Éternels de Balmain, with prices starting at $300. A few months later, Bottega Veneta launched a line of five scents priced at £350 (around $467).

Of course, not all fashion houses want to also be seen as niche perfumers, and need to be careful not to undercut or uproot their prestige fragrance businesses, which are already huge revenue drivers. “There’s a clear intent not to disrupt [what they have], but to compete in a new tier,” said Ariel Ohana, managing partner at investment advisory firm Ohana & Co, adding that while niche fragrances are experiencing rapid growth, the biggest part of the overall fragrance market is still core prestige or masstige perfumes.

But for many, the opportunity to sit atop a new pyramid, and to generate fresh sales from a new group of customers is too good to resist. The niche perfume playbook requires whimsy, experimentation and embracing more off-the-wall opinion leaders, said Rachel Green, a brand consultant and former Estée Lauder executive.

Those who are driving the fragrance boom are “people these fashion houses would have been ignoring because they’re not what you would consider necessarily ‘luxury’ people,” she said.

Much of the niche market is dictated by equally niche creators on TikTok, where scents can go viral after a shout-out from a smaller creator.

In some cases, Ohana said, a designer brand name could even count against the brand.

“Even if the scents are amazing, in many cases, there will be a perception that they’re not really a fragrance maker,” he said.

Get Weird, Get Sales

The niche conversation and market has largely been created and led by independent brands — or erstwhile independent brands — who offset their eye-popping price points with an originality or quirkiness that is increasingly read as true luxury by younger shoppers. A scent that smells like a “Steamed Rainbow” (DS & Durga) or “balloons and sugar frosting” (Marissa Zappas) is a mark of distinction, of rarefication and of merit.

Fashion houses, with their storied histories, omnipotent creative directors and old-school clienteling, are generally risk-averse, and prefer not to scandalise. According to Green, who closely tracks fragrance trends on TikTok, differentiation and essentially weirdness is often seen as a key value-add. Meanwhile, customers associate fashion houses with status: “A small niche brand might be able to get away with a kind of plain bottle, because they have a genuinely outsider perspective,” said Green. “But with a designer brand, people expect more.”

On top of increased expectations of what a designer brand should look like, there’s a double bind with the expectations of what they can offer, said Ohana. “A lot of consumers just instinctively associate authenticity with the fact that a [niche perfume maker] is not a fashion brand,” he said. As fashion houses have grown their assortments of fragrances primarily through big stores like Sephora, Ulta Beauty and Douglas, they’ve added to their sales, but weakened their niche proposition.

Part of the joy of hunting for a niche perfume, Green said, is a sense of playfulness and levity. Trending brands like D’Annam, Maison Crivelli and Regime des Fleurs have taken inspiration from notes like matcha, marshmallows and cinnamon. “If you’re selling a $300 bottle of perfume, you don’t need to sell a lot of them,” said Green. “But you do need to get them into the hands of people who have an engaged audience, not necessarily a big audience,” she said, adding that staff in department stores have much less sway for the niche customer than online creators.

Some fashion house brands have made meaningful inroads: Jil Sander’s new line, Olfactory Series 1, which launched in February, has been praised for its unusual scent line up, eye-catching bottles and broad influencer strategy which saw smaller creators receive products in PR mailers.

Create a New Signature

Fashion houses can effectively differentiate their fine fragrance offerings, but it will require crafting a new, and somewhat separate brand identity. Successful brands are using new motifs, imagery or other sensory elements to try and create newness and a sense of excitement around their perfumes.

Aside from Jil Sander — which have cloche-shaped lids and the perfume creator Elise Love Smells described as “very cool, but not for everyone” — another fashion house which has elevated its fragrance offering is Loewe, which used unexpected notes like beetroot and tomato to inspire a range of candles and home scents. With distinctive, grooved packaging, which can be customised by engraving, the products have helped boost the brand’s overall fragrance cache, said Véronique Le Bansais, partner and managing director of luxury consulting firm MAD.

Le Bansais said creating what she described as a new “signature” was key, which could be a single or group of hero scents, or a more olfactory note that could become associated with the brand, giving the example of cult brand Byredo’s fresh and modern scents, and Ex Nihilo’s more rich and floral perfumes.

“They’re all unique perfumes, but there’s something very recognisable there,” she said. Guerlain, while best known for cosmetics for a mature audience, has made its perfume range popular with young shoppers by communicating about the perfumers involved in their creation, designing collectable bottles known as flankers and being experimental with its note composition.

Creating physical space for the line is equally important. Fable Investment’s Buisson said a shop space where people can come and be truly immersed in the brand, learn about the perfumers and the notes and engage in the story is valuable. “It’s hard for designer brands to make space for this, but that experience is really important,” he said.

Brands also must remember that the niche fragrance customer is not necessarily the same customer who buys other designer goods, said Green.

“The traditional fashion playbook of inviting VIP clients to the store for a dinner … that’s not going to get you the people you’re actually looking for to come discover your fragrance,” she said.

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