Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Welcome to Haul of Fame, your weekly roundup tracking the new products and ideas driving the beauty industry forward.
Included in this week’s issue: Aora, Credo Beauty, Elemis, Future Society, Huda Beauty, Ipsy, Kosas, Galia Lahav, La Roche-Posay, Rhode, Sephora, The Nue Co. and Vyrao.
But first…
What is the function of a fragrance? Beyond smelling good, a great one should stir the soul — a spritz of your grandmother’s signature scent eliciting a rush of nostalgia, an unfortunate whiff of your ex’s beloved Sauvage conjuring up something else. But what happens when, instead of a byproduct, triggering that emotional response becomes the point?
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For a new guard of perfumers, its a new, measurable goal. Founded in 2015, premium scent house Initio Parfums Privés was an early entrant to the “functional fragrance” category — selling perfumes with claims about emotional benefits — and has seen “exponential success” in the last two years, said Patrice Béliard, chief executive of Initio and fellow brand Parfums de Marly, which were purchased by PE firm General Atlantic in 2023. April is a particularly active month for the brand: last week, Initio opened its first standalone store in London’s Covent Garden, and will also unveil Supercharged, a brand new duo of scents made in collaboration with dsm-Firmenich, The Business of Beauty can exclusively reveal.
A truly premium offering at $420 for 90ml, the new Supercharged collection consists of two fragrances, Wild Rush and Sugar Blast, designed to spark joy. Like all of the brand’s scents, they come with mood claims: Wearers of Wild Rush experience “an emotional activation associated with confidence,” while Sugar Blast imparts a “measurable trace of joy within the brain.”
“We had some amazing functional fragrances, but we didn’t have the function of joy,” said Béliard, citing a survey conducted with dsm-Firmenich showing 45 percent of people haven’t felt “genuine joy” in over two years. Second to makeup, fragrance was the second largest prestige segment in beauty overall at the end of 2025, per Circana. But as consumer demand intensifies, so does their desire for performance, and for even rarer formulations. “Niche is the segment of fragrance that is growing the most, and more people are looking for fragrances that are bringing different elements in the mix,” said Olivier Viejo, VP of fine fragrance in for dsm-Firmenich in India, the Middle East, Africa and Turkey.
Functional fragrance has opened a new subcategory of niche perfumery. Searches for the term hit an all time peak in March 2026 according to Google Trends, a 25 percent increase from November, with 100 percent growth year-on-year. But to win consumers over to this nascent category, the science behind the scent is central to the claims of leading functional fragrance brands such as The Nue Co, Initio and Vyrao, which launched combination neck-and-hand creams this week with IFF-backed neuroscience claims.
Dsm-Firmenich’s patented technology is called functional magnetic resonance imaging, made in partnership with the University of Geneva. Over the past 15 years, the company has tested more than 14,000 fragrances on over a million consumers to get their reactions, said Viejo. Claims such as the fragrance’s ability to produce emotional, joyful benefits are derived from these reactions, and verified through an external neuroscientific agency, he added.
While brands cannot change the certified accords, they can modify the fragrance around them. For its Supercharged collection, Initio wanted scents that captured the two sides of joy. “Wild Rush radiates in a very big way, while Sugar Blast shows calm joy,” said Béliard. To educate consumers on the difference, the brand intends to utilise its highly trained beauty consultants, versed in both the science and the storytelling, at outlets like its flagships and high-end beauty department stores.
But for wellness label The Nue Co., who launched its functional fragrances in 2018 when the brand was primarily direct-to-consumer, this sort of hands-on salesmanship wasn’t an option. “We leaned on the function, and called them ‘fragrance supplements’ to begin with,” said Jules Miller, the brand’s founder and chief executive. “It meant that we had success online, because people were buying paid ads on Facebook and on Instagram, and it was all based on the benefit.” The success has been overwhelming: in 2025, fragrance had thoroughly taken over the ingestibles brand, accounting for 65 percent of its business.
For Miller, it suggests that beauty and wellness — and by extension fragrance and supplements — have become interchangeable. It also solves some of the issues users have with supplement compliance: the impact of a spritz is felt, and smelled, immediately.
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To Béliard, consumer understanding of functional fragrance is developing as the the final delineation of fragrance wardrobing. “Fragrance has shifted, especially in the niche, from a luxury thing to a more fashionable approach,” he said. “People want to come up with a little more originality.”
What else is new…
Makeup
Who: Aora Makeup
What: Credo rollout (from $22)
When: April 7
Why: Luxury Mexican colour cosmetics brand Aora Makeup has arrived at Credo Beauty. The brand brings a selection of its bestsellers — including its Acaríciame Lip Serum and Mírame Eye Shadow Palette — to all 15 of the retailer’s doors. A first for Credo, Aora will appear on a 100 percent aluminium dedicated display, highlighting brand and retailer’s commitment to removing plastic at every possible touchpoint.
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Who: Huda Beauty
What: Matcha Milk Cake Loose Setting Powder and Strawberry Latte Collection ($39, from $21)
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When: April 9
Why: Huda Beauty has added new “strawberry latte” shade extensions to its Blush Filter Palette, Blush Filter Liquid Blushes and Faux Filler Glosses, along with a matcha milk cake-hued edition of its bestselling Easy Bake Loose Powder. Accounting for fellow launches from the likes of Bubble and Phlur, shoppers are thirstier for beverage-themed beauty than ever.
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Who: Urban Decay
What: Lip Toy Stained Glossing Oil ($24)
When: April 7
Why: Urban Decay’s new lip offering is a gloss and a stain two-fer, arriving in seven shades that react with pH to deliver a shade unique to each user’s lips. I understand that today’s beauty shoppers want fewer steps…now if I could only understand what the brand means by “toy”…
Skincare
Who: La Roche-Posay
What: Walmart rollout
When: March 31
Why: Walmart is making strides into dermatological skincare: in late March, it rolled-out beloved French skincare brand La Roche-Posay across 1460 of its doors, along with a specialised training initiative to help its pharmacists simulate a French pharmacy experience on the shop floor.
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Who: Rhode x the Biebers set
What: Limited-edition Spotwear, Peptide Lip Treatment in Caramelised Banana and Peptide Eye Prep in Banana Peel ($56 for the set)
When: April 13
Why: Just in time for Bieber-chella, Hailey Bieber has enlisted husband Justin for a Rhode collab, featuring limited-edition flavours of her bestsellers, as well as a collection of Spotwear hydrocolloid patches. (Beliebers will have the sure-to-sell-out patches on Depop for triple price before weekend two.)
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Who: Clark’s Botanicals
What: DNA-42 Clinicalift Serum ($150)
When: 8 April
Why: For its first new product in over two years, US luxury skincare label Clark’s Botanicals introduced a serum that blends vegan PDRN with the brand’s proprietary marine biotechnology. It launched into Credo and DTC, but will roll into other stockists like Space NK and Nordstrom soon.
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Who: Kosas
Who: Rob Rausch campaign
When: April 6
Why: This week, Kosas borrowed a page from Lancöme’s hunk marketing playbook, further proving the theory that no one sells lip gloss like the white boy of the month. Following in the footsteps of Ed Westwick and Chad Michael Murray, the “Traitors” breakout star posed with the brand’s recently launched Lip Pulse ($25) just weeks after doing a similar promo for MAC’s Sephora rollout.
Fragrance
Who: Galia Lahav x A. N. Other
What: Citrine Veil ($160)
When: April 7
Why: Luxury bridal couture brand Galia Lahav has partnered with A. N. Other for its first ever fragrance. Citrine Veil is designed to emulate the house’s experience “beyond the veil” and blends soft florals with a base of woods, musk and skin.
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Who: Future Society
What: Cloud Reverie ($98)
When: April 8
Why: Future Society’s latest eau de parfum is also romantic: The brand used incubated cloud microbes plucked from the Boston sky as Cloud Reverie’s blueprint, which perfumer Daniela Andrier then mixed with a haze of vanilla, iris accord and musk.
Body Care
Who: Elemis
What: Pro-Collagen Body Cleansing Balm and Pro-Collagen Marine Body Cream ($60, $94)
When: April 8
Why: 23 years after its debut, Elemis’ is bringing its pro-collagen line below the neck with a marine body cream, as the “skinification” of body care forges on. It’s also rounded the collection with a collagen-infused cleansing balm, for those after the whole set.
Other
Who: Athena Club x Charlie Beads
What: Wardrobe sets ($89)
When: April 7
Why: Athena Club took “fragrance wardrobing” rather literally this week. Its new collaboration pairs custom-dyed Charlie Beads bloomers with a matching Athena Club scent layering trio.
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Who: Ipsy
What: Brand investment, official jersey sponsor of Las Vegas Aces
When: April 8
Why: Beauty membership and subscription service Ipsy has announced a brand investment into WNBA champions the Las Vegas Aces in a three-year multimillion dollar deal that sees the brand become the official team jersey sponsor, as beauty brands move deeper into women’s sports.
And finally…
After the world saw her reach for a Rare Beauty Lip Oil before ascending the winner’s podium, it was only a matter of time before the beauty industry began to snap up Olympian Alysa Liu. Sephora’s approach — celebrating the duo’s shared love of stripes by combining Liu’s halo hair dye job with the retailer’s iconic shopping bags — is both genius and charming, an example of marketing that truly seizes the moment. Boots!
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