Summer 2026: Where Is Niche Perfume Heading? — The Summer GrassAccord Read in the Spring's News

On the morning of March 1, 2026, a drone struck Dubai International Airport. The war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, which had begun two days earlier, had spread to the Gulf. The airport evacuated passengers, and over the following weeks flights were halted several times. One of the world's busiest crossroads for luxury perfume fell silent in an instant.

In the three months that followed, major news kept coming in the fragrance industry. L'Oréal completed its acquisition of Kering's beauty business, home to Creed, while Estée Lauder and Puig began talks to combine the two companies and then ended them on May 21. Over the same period, Korea's perfume exports recorded their highest month since statistics began, and on May 29 the Korean beauty retailer Olive Young opened its first store in the United States.

Then, on June 3, the art perfumery exhibition Esxence opens in Milan. According to the organizers, houses from more than 40 countries are taking part, and 108 of them are stepping onto the international stage for the first time this year.

In January, GrassAccord sketched the big picture of the year in its "2026 Niche Perfume Outlook Report". This piece follows what actually happened afterwards. In turn, it sets down what the spring's news confirmed, what it changed, and what all of this leaves on the perfumer's bench this summer.

Before you read — what this piece is based on

This piece is based on material published up to the end of May 2026. Company results follow each company's official announcements, and market figures follow the official releases of research firms. Where a figure comes from industry reporting, we say so.

The note trends are different in nature. They are not sales figures but tendencies that recur across spring launches and industry trend reports, so rather than stating them as certainties, we wrote "this is the current we see". Summer has only just begun, and which scents claimed it will only be known in the autumn.

At the end of each section we place "At the bench": one line each for those who have just begun mixing materials, those who have begun building their own accords, and those who have been designing scents for many years.

The January outlook, confirmed in spring

First, let us set what we wrote in the January report side by side with what actually happened in spring.

• The great boom ends, growth normalizes — Fragrance remains the strongest category in beauty, but growth is concentrated in high-end and niche
• Big capital knocks at the door of niche — L'Oréal completes its acquisition of Creed (March 31); Estée Lauder and Puig merger talks collapse (May 21)
• The centre of scent widens toward the Middle East — The war that began at the end of February badly shakes airport and mall sales in the Gulf
• Asian niche awakens — Korean perfume exports record their highest month ever; Chinese prestige perfume grows at double digits; an old Japanese incense house launches a perfume brand
• (Not covered separately in January) The United States — Prestige and mass fragrance grow together, and niche is widening its doors
• (Not covered separately in January) Southeast Asia — With the Gulf skies closed, transit traffic shifts to Singapore and Bangkok
• Material prices swing, tariffs weigh heavily — The US Supreme Court rules on tariffs; fragrance houses raise prices as costs rise
• July 31, 2026, the regulatory clock — The date stands, and it falls in the middle of this summer

Most of the currents we expected were confirmed, and one thing we did not expect shook the whole spring. Below, we follow them one by one.

1. The spring report card — fragrance was still the strongest category

Let us start with the numbers. The first-quarter results released in April and May pointed in a strikingly similar direction.

On May 11, the US market research firm Circana released its results for the US beauty market in the first quarter of 2026. Prestige sales rose 6% year on year to 8.1 billion dollars, and mass sales rose 7% to 18.1 billion dollars. Circana named fragrance one of the strongest categories in both channels. On the prestige side, growth was driven by higher-priced formats, luxury products and mini sizes, which grew at double digits; on the mass side, women's fragrance rose at double digits.

The companies told the same story. In its quarterly results announced on May 1, Estée Lauder reported that organic fragrance sales rose 10%. While other categories largely stood still, fragrance alone stood out, and the names driving that growth were Le Labo, KILIAN PARIS and TOM FORD — all high-priced niche and luxury fragrance.

Puig reported that its first-quarter sales rose 4.7% on a like-for-like basis. With currency effects fully reflected, growth was only 0.8%, but niche was unmistakable: Byredo, Penhaligon's and L'Artisan Parfumeur all grew at double digits. L'Oréal, too, named fragrance a main driver of its first-quarter growth.

The figures from the side that makes the scents are even more direct. On April 14, Givaudan, the world's largest fragrance company, announced that first-quarter sales of fine fragrance (fragrance compounds for prestige perfume) rose 9.6% on a like-for-like basis. That growth came on top of 16.7% a year earlier. It means perfume companies are ordering that many new scents.

Of course, not everyone was smiling. LVMH's perfumes and cosmetics division saw first-quarter sales fall 6%, and on an organic basis, excluding currency and changes in scope, it was flat. Interparfums, which mainly makes licensed fragrances for fashion brands, saw sales fall about 2% excluding currency effects.

Set these figures side by side and one picture emerges. Even within the fragrance market, money is flowing toward what people choose for the scent itself, not for the name. Fragrances that borrow a fashion name are faltering, while niche houses that speak through scent keep growing. The market we described in January as "coming down from a fever and finding its normal temperature" showed, as spring went by, where that temperature is gathering.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — Double-digit growth in mini sizes means people want to smell many scents before finishing a single bottle. The same holds for the one who makes them. Rather than making a large batch at once, mixing small amounts many times to train your hand is the faster way to improve.
• If you are building your own accords — A scent first met in a small bottle has to be remembered from its first few sprays. Check whether your scent's character comes through clearly in the first impression, and whether the moment it passes from top to heart is smooth.
• If you have been designing for years — Rising orders for fine fragrance also mean that competition is growing that much denser. The more new scents pour out, the more it is the scents with a solid structure that last.

2. The calculations of the big companies — the acquisition closed, the merger stopped

The spring's second story is the movement of the big companies.

The deal we noted in January as "targeted for completion in the first half of 2026" closed as planned. On March 31, L'Oréal announced that it had completed its acquisition of Kering Beauté, including Creed. The exclusive rights to make Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga fragrance and beauty for 50 years passed along with it. It is the largest acquisition in L'Oréal's history.

Shortly afterwards, in April, Creed released a new scent, "Wild Vetiver". A rereading of the 2004 "Original Vetiver", it opens with pink pepper, bergamot and Nepalese Sichuan pepper (timur pepper), passes through rose, geranium and blackcurrant bud, and settles into vetiver and woods. It is interesting that, at a time of changing ownership, the house chose to reread its own heritage rather than reach for something new.

The bigger news came from the deal that never happened. On March 23, Estée Lauder confirmed that it was in talks with Puig about a business combination. Had it gone through, it would have created a giant beauty group with annual sales of around 20 billion dollars. But on May 21 the two companies announced that the talks had ended, and Estée Lauder said it would continue with its own restructuring strategy. Earlier, on May 1, in announcing its results, the company had already said it was widening its restructuring plan to cut up to 10,000 jobs. Fragrance is growing while the company as a whole is shrinking: a scene that captures exactly where the big beauty companies stand today.

Elsewhere, a clean-up is under way. Since September last year, Coty has been reviewing whether to sell its consumer beauty business, and since January this year its board chair has served as interim CEO, leading that review. In February it presented a plan to narrow the focus of its mass fragrance brands: to concentrate on the scents that sell well and wind down its small fragrance businesses.

To sum up: the big companies buy niche names, try to merge and stop, and wind down what sells less. All of these calculations share one thing. Everyone wants fragrance, and above all, niche. In Puig's first-quarter results presentation, its CEO said the company's niche brands are in only about 150 doors in the United States, compared with about 600 for competitors, leaving plenty of room to expand.

At the bench

A name can be bought and sold, but the hand that designs a scent is hard to buy or sell. While the big companies do their sums over names, the finish of the scent itself is still decided at the perfumer's bench.

• If you are mixing for the first time — As with Creed's Wild Vetiver, rereading a scent that already exists is good practice. Take out a blend you made before and write down, "What would I change, as I am now?"
• If you are building your own accords — Depending on origin and extraction method, vetiver varies widely in its balance of earthiness, smokiness and green rawness. Smell two or three materials of the same name side by side and find the texture that suits your accord.
• If you have been designing for years — Recomposing a signature work is harder than composing a new scent, because you must protect the memory of those who loved the original while meeting today's materials and regulations. Before you change anything, write down first what you will keep and what you will change.

3. The Middle East — the spring when the heart of scent was shaken

What cast the largest shadow over the fragrance industry this spring was not a number but a war.

The war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, which began on February 28, soon spread to the Gulf. Iranian missiles and drones targeted the United Arab Emirates, and on March 1 Dubai International Airport was hit by a drone attack. In late March a major fire also broke out at Kuwait International Airport. A ceasefire began on April 8, but attacks have continued to be exchanged since, and the situation remains unstable.

The Gulf is a special place for perfume. It has a culture of wearing scent richly, for long hours and in many layers; many people there cherish oud, rose and amber; and it is home to the airport duty-free shops and malls where more luxury perfume is sold than almost anywhere else in the world. When that crossroads was blocked, the impact showed up in the numbers immediately.

According to industry reporting, sales at large malls in Dubai and Abu Dhabi fell 30–50% in March. LVMH said the conflict cut about 1 percentage point from the group's first-quarter organic growth, and Interparfums also named the Middle East conflict as a headwind of about 1%. The fragrance company Symrise said that transport and logistics costs were rising and that it would respond with price increases and surcharges.

Yet the traces the Middle East has left on the fragrance industry are not only numbers. As we noted in January, over the past few years Middle Eastern scent culture — rich oud and amber, high concentrations, layering — has changed the world's taste. That culture does not vanish with war. Only the crossroads where that scent was bought has been blocked for a while.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — The easiest way to understand Middle Eastern scent is to distinguish "rich" from "long-lasting". A rich scent resounds loudly from the start; a long-lasting scent does not collapse as time passes. The two are not the same thing.
• If you are building your own accords — If you want to use oud and amber in summer, rather than reducing the amount, try placing clear materials on top to give the scent room to breathe. Leave the weighty base as it is and brighten the top with materials such as citrus or tea, and the scent will not feel stifling even in the heat.
• If you have been designing for years — When supply chains waver, materials that depend on a particular origin become a risk. Testing substitute candidates in advance for the resins and woody materials in your signature works is the lesson this spring leaves behind.

4. The United States — spring in the largest market

The United States is the country where more perfume is sold than anywhere else in the world. For niche houses, it is the market they must reach one day; for the big companies, it is where most of their growth comes from. This spring, three stories ran through the US market at once.

The numbers — expensive and sensibly priced perfume grow together

In its release on last year's results on February 10, Circana judged that the US prestige fragrance market, after several years of rapid growth, was showing signs of normalizing. In its first-quarter results released on May 11, the shape of that normalization became a little clearer. Prestige grew 6% and mass 7%, and fragrance was one of the strongest categories in both channels.

What deserves attention is the direction of growth. In the first quarter, mass outpaced prestige in almost every category except hair styling products, and fragrance was among them. In mass, women's fragrance rose at double digits; in prestige, growth was driven by higher-priced formats, luxury products and mini sizes, which grew at double digits. American consumers are moving up, on one side, toward more expensive and richer scents, and widening out, on the other, toward more sensibly priced ones. The fragrance in the middle, with a name but a blurred character of scent, has been left in the most uncertain position.

Niche — still plenty of room to grow

The signs that niche is growing in the United States were clear in company announcements. Le Labo, KILIAN PARIS and TOM FORD, which drove Estée Lauder's fragrance growth, are all high-priced fragrances for which the United States is a core market. In Puig's first-quarter results presentation, its CEO said the company's niche brands are in only about 150 doors in the United States, compared with about 600 for competitors, and that it would expand selectively this year. Japan's Shiseido, too, said that while its total first-quarter sales fell, its US sales rose 5.1%.

Asian scent is also making its way into the United States. According to data from the Korea International Trade Association, in January this year Korea posted its first surplus in perfume trade with the United States in 28 years. On May 29, the Korean beauty retailer Olive Young opened its first US store in Pasadena, California. About 400 brands are stocked, and on opening day the queue reportedly stretched 400 metres. The company plans to expand to five stores in Los Angeles by the end of the year.

Tariffs — the ruling came, but the sums are not settled

For houses shipping perfume to the United States, this spring was confusing.

On February 20, the US Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the tariffs the government had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were unlawful. A large part of the tariffs imposed on countries last year lost their legal basis. Three days later, on February 23, thousands of companies — including L'Oréal's Americas travel retail division and Sol de Janeiro, the Brazilian-inspired fragrance and body brand — filed suits at the US Court of International Trade seeking refunds of tariffs already paid. The budget model at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School estimated that the tariffs to be refunded could reach as much as 175 billion dollars. The refund process began in stages from April 20.

But the ruling did not end the tariffs. On the day of the ruling, the US government imposed a new 150-day temporary tariff under a different provision of law, set to run until July 24. Reports also differ on how the tariff agreed between the United States and the European Union last year applies. Right after the ruling, the European Parliament postponed its vote on ratifying that agreement.

For a small house, this kind of uncertainty weighs more than the tariff rate itself. To decide whether to raise prices, cut margins or delay US sales, you need to see the sums ahead — and those sums are shifting every few months.

Labelling rules — the direction is set; only the timing remains

The United States does not yet have a rule requiring fragrance allergens to be named one by one on the label. The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA), enacted in 2022, requires the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue that rule, but the statutory deadline for the proposed rule (June 2024) has passed and no proposed rule has appeared to this day. The direction is the same as Europe's: the ingredients that have stood behind the single word "fragrance" will one day have to reveal their names.

At the bench

A bottle that crosses a border meets tariffs; a blueprint that crosses a border does not. That is why being able to compose the same scent in many countries, and to produce the same impression even when materials are swapped, is becoming an ever more important skill.

• If you are mixing for the first time — Practise composing the same scent with different materials — for example, creating brightness with another citrus material instead of lemon essential oil. This is where the sense of keeping an impression even as materials change begins to grow.
• If you are building your own accords — American consumers are widening out toward both rich and light scents. Build your accord in a rich version and a light version, and you will hear how the same structure sounds in two markets.
• If you have been designing for years — If you are planning to sell, separate out the share of tariffs and freight in your cost calculation. The larger that share, the more composing locally and selling locally becomes a realistic choice. Putting your ingredients in order to European standards before the US labelling rules arrive saves you from revising twice.

5. Materials and costs — fragrance companies raise prices

The price of a bottle of perfume ultimately starts with its materials. This spring, the signal from the materials side was clear: costs are rising.

Announcing its first-quarter results, Givaudan said that costs were rising this year and that it was raising prices together with its customers. Symrise, too, said it would raise prices and apply surcharges to offset higher transport, logistics and raw material costs. Much of this is because the Middle East conflict has unsettled sea routes and freight costs.

Interestingly, there was a divergence even within Givaudan. Fine fragrance grew 9.6%, but the business that sells fragrance ingredients separately and the active beauty business fell 5.9%. Orders for finished scents are rising, while the side that sells individual ingredients is faltering.

Among natural materials, vanilla is moving the other way. As we wrote in January, Madagascar vanilla has been oversupplied since last year as production rose across several origins, and prices have come down sharply; industry forecasts largely expect prices to stay low this year. Not every material moves in the same direction — that is the old nature of the raw material market.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — When material prices rise, the first blends to waver are those that lean heavily on a single material. Check once which material makes up the largest share of your blend, and how the scent collapses if that material is taken out.
• If you are building your own accords — Materials whose prices have come down, like vanilla, are worth exploring now across several grades. Even the same vanilla differs in creaminess, woodiness and smokiness depending on origin and extraction method.
• If you have been designing for years — If you hold out against rising costs by reducing amounts, the scent grows thin. Instead, finding materials that make a large effect in small amounts and rebuilding the structure around them is the way to protect the scent.

6. Asia — Korea, China and Japan

Of all the spring's news, the most welcome to us came from Asia. In the January report we wrote that "Asian niche awakens", and spring was the season when that sentence was confirmed in numbers and events. Yet the three countries are awakening in different ways.

Korea — scent heading outward

According to data from the Korea International Trade Association, Korea's perfume exports in January this year reached 6.52 million dollars, the highest month since statistics began in 1988. In February they reached 6.24 million dollars, exceeding 6 million dollars for two months in a row. In January, Korea also posted its first surplus in perfume trade with the United States in 28 years. A country that long imported perfume is turning into one that exports it. Olive Young's first US store at the end of May was that current taking the shape of a shop.

China — a young generation choosing its own taste

According to a fragrance industry report published jointly this year with Tmall, China's largest online marketplace, prestige perfume is growing at double digits, and home-grown brands carrying a Chinese aesthetic are widening their place in the prestige market. Some 56.3% of young consumers said they now choose perfume by their own taste rather than by what others think, up more than 16 percentage points from a year earlier. More also said they use scent as a way to manage their emotions, to keep memories and to express their own culture.

Japan — the land of quiet scent begins to move

Of the three, the country to watch longest this summer is Japan. Japan has long been seen as a country where perfume does not sell well. Yet precisely because of that, the change now under way in Japan carries more weight.

According to Euromonitor estimates reported last September by the trade publication Premium Beauty News, Japan's niche perfume market is worth about 585 million dollars, around 2% of the total beauty market. It is still small next to skincare, but the fragrance market grew 7.7% in 2024. A representative of the Japan Fragrance Association said that niche perfume had taken root over the past decade and that the trend had accelerated since the pandemic.

A small perfume market does not mean a shallow culture of scent. In Japan, the tradition of kōdō (香道), in which fragrant wood is heated and its scent is "listened to", has continued for centuries. And the sense that one should wear scent subtly, so as not to intrude on other people's space, is strong enough that there is even a word, "sumehara" (smell harassment), for causing others discomfort through odour. Japanese scent has chosen to be heard quietly up close rather than to resound loudly.

According to the same report, Japanese consumers' tastes are shifting from soft florals and citrus toward amber, musk and leather, and more scents are using Japanese materials such as yuzu, hinoki (Japanese cypress), tea and kinmokusei (osmanthus). Bottles are getting smaller too, with 30–50 ml now at the centre and small bottles of 8–12 ml on the rise. Dedicated fragrance spaces have appeared at places in Tokyo such as the Isetan Shinjuku department store, @cosme Harajuku and NOSE SHOP, and big groups are opening standalone stores in Japan for niche brands such as Byredo and Maison Margiela.

This year, the wind in Japan's perfume market blew from two directions.

One was a cold wind from outside. After the Japanese prime minister's remarks on Taiwan last November, the Chinese government advised its citizens to refrain from travelling to Japan, and the number of Chinese tourists fell sharply. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), Chinese visitors in April this year numbered 330,000, down 56.8% from a year earlier. Duty-free sales of the cosmetics and perfume that tourists used to buy were shaken as well. Duty-free sales at Japanese department stores fell sharply last December, and Shiseido cited tensions between the two countries as the reason its first-quarter sales fell 3%. Yet in the same April, Korean visitors rose 21.7% and Taiwanese visitors 19.7%, and duty-free sales at the Takashimaya department stores rose again by 6.9% in March. Travellers from other countries had begun to fill the gap.

The other was a wind from within. Japan's old incense houses are stepping out toward perfume. On February 13, Nippon Kodo (日本香堂), an incense company with a 450-year history, launched a new perfume brand, "nowas". It comprises four eaux de parfum layering Western fragrance materials over the fragrant woods of the East; a team led by employees in their twenties designed them with the company's perfumers, and they are made in a newly built perfume factory. The name means linking "now" and "was" through the Japanese "wa (和)". From April 18 to May 17, together with Kyoto's Kyukyodo and Shoeido, the company also held a festival of scent, "Fragrance Expo 2026", in Ginza, Kyoto and Kamakura.

The places that sell scent are changing too. On May 15, NOSE SHOP, known for its curated niche perfume stores, opened a new store, "U NOSE SHOP", in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Stocking about 20 brands centred on emerging Asian labels, it aims to create "another entrance" for people meeting perfume for the first time. The Shinsaibashi store in Osaka opens on June 5. One of the Japanese brands stocked describes its goal as "the democratization of scent".

To sum up: Japan was a country that did not use much perfume, but it was a country that had understood scent deeply. Now that understanding is meeting the form of perfume. Not a scent that resounds loudly but a scent heard quietly up close — the sense Japan has refined for so long overlaps precisely with the world's current this summer. The oldest textbook for the "scent that stays close to the skin" we have kept pointing to, in the January report and in this piece, is in Japan.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — Recall the smells of the place where you grew up: earth after rain, the wooden floor of your grandmother's house, dried fruit at the market. Those are exactly the memories the world is curious about now. As in Japanese kōdō, hold the blotter to your nose thinking not that you "smell" the scent but that you "listen" to it. The less you hurry, the more you hear.
• If you are building your own accords — Composing the scent of your own culture does not mean putting those ingredients in as they are. It means building impressions such as rice, tea, hinoki, yuzu or osmanthus from several materials and balancing them so that they sound beautiful even to someone smelling them for the first time. If you have the Japanese market in mind, refine the power to stay close before the power to project far.
• If you have been designing for years — The further Asian scent travels into the world, the more it needs a design that conveys an unfamiliar scent without making it feel foreign. Placing a single new note on top of a familiar structure goes further at first. And in a market where small bottles of 8–12 ml become the format of a first meeting, the design must let the face of the scent show within the first one or two sprays.

7. Singapore and Bangkok — cities where it is summer all year round

If this piece is about summer, there are two cities we must stop in: Singapore and Bangkok, where it is summer all year round.

The routes the war changed

When the skies over the Middle East closed in early March, flights between Europe and Asia began to reroute through Southeast Asian hubs instead of the Gulf's hub airports. According to aviation industry reporting on March 4, transit passengers at Singapore's Changi Airport, Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport and Kuala Lumpur's airport rose immediately, and many itineraries were redrawn to pass through Singapore or Bangkok. According to Changi Airport's official figures, passenger traffic in March reached 6.1 million, up 8.5% from a year earlier. In April it returned to almost the same level as a year earlier, but it was a spring in which the travellers who used to pass through Dubai and Doha, and their shopping, moved to Southeast Asia, if only for a while.

Singapore — a crossroads of scent

Singapore has long been a place where the scents of many cultures meet. Jamal Kazura Aromatics, which opened in 1933 and is now in its third generation, is Singapore's oldest perfume shop and has kept alive the tradition of Middle Eastern and South Asian scents worn as oils without alcohol (attar). In 2024, new houses such as Rahasya, which reinterprets India's culture of scent in a modern way, also appeared. The scents of the Middle East, India, China and the Malay world living side by side in a single city: that is Singapore's own particular asset.

Bangkok — Thai niche going out into the world

Thailand already has perfumers who have made their names on the international niche stage. Dusita, founded by the Thai-born perfumer Pissara Umavijani, has placed Thai memories on the roots of classic French perfumery, and Pryn Parfum, by the perfumer Prin Lomros, has released scents that turn Thailand's sea and cities into stories. MITH, which started in Bangkok in 2015, weaves Thai botanical materials together with woods, musks and gourmand notes. These houses put Thai materials such as holy basil, jasmine and tropical fruit at the front, yet speak of them in the language of fine fragrance rather than of souvenirs.

The summer laboratory

Above all, these two cities are something like the laboratory of this summer piece. A scent that stays loved for years in a city that is hot and humid all year round is the surest answer to what makes a scent that does not collapse in summer. High temperatures send scent flying off quickly, humidity holds it down heavily, and several times a day you move between indoor air conditioning and the heat outside. A design that survives these conditions works in the summers of Seoul, Tokyo and New York too.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — Smell the same scent by turns in an air-conditioned room and in the heat outside. Sometimes a material that was quiet in the cool suddenly sounds loud in the heat. That material is the key to a summer scent.
• If you are building your own accords — In humid heat, sweetness and a heavy base easily linger stickily on the skin. Even when you use tropical materials, try placing alongside them materials that let air through, such as tea, citrus peel or transparent musks.
• If you have been designing for years — A scent for a market where it is summer all year round is not a "summer limited edition" but that market's everyday scent. Practising building a structure from the start on the premise of a climate, rather than of a seasonal edition, is also a way to prepare for the summers of a world that will only grow hotter.

8. The stage for independent houses — Esxence grows

Esxence, held for four days from June 3 at Allianz MiCo in Milan, is the international exhibition independent perfume houses regard as most important. The organizers' press release of April 14 shows what the event looks like this year.

The exhibition area has grown by more than 3,000 square metres compared with last year, to about 20,000 square metres. There are 108 houses making their international debut, and the participating countries number more than 40, from Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman to Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, India, Senegal and Colombia. The first three days are open only to trade professionals, and on the last day, the 6th, the doors also open to the public.

In the press release, co-founder Maurizio Cavezzali said that niche perfumery, having started at small, intimate events, has now become a global phenomenon, and that the change has accelerated noticeably in recent years. As events multiply, houses have entered an era in which they must choose strategically where to show. Esxence itself is going abroad, having held events in New York last October and in Hong Kong in November.

In the same press release, the other co-founder, Silvio Levi, said that amid events shaking the world, the language of scent becomes an even stronger messenger of respect and understanding between different cultures. In a spring when war shook the Gulf, houses from the Gulf, from Asia and from Europe are gathering in a single exhibition hall.

What this scene tells us is clear. While the big companies buy and sell names, the number of small houses bringing a scent into the world for the first time is, if anything, rising. Niche is not only being absorbed into large groups; it keeps being born anew from below.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — Even if you cannot smell the exhibition's scents in person, simply looking at which materials and stories the participating houses put forward is a lesson in itself. Collect the note lists of scents that draw you, and try composing those impressions with your own materials.
• If you are building your own accords — When hundreds of houses gather in one place, similar scents are quickly forgotten. Test whether you can say in one sentence what the "one thing that is only mine" in your accord is.
• If you have been designing for years — As new houses multiply, so do the places looking for perfumers. Putting the structures and accords you have built over the years in order is the best preparation for when new collaborations come.

9. The notes of summer — salt, ice, fruit and rain

Let us turn now to the scents themselves. Lay spring launches and industry trend reports on top of one another, and this summer's notes flow along four broad lines. To repeat: these are not sales figures but recurring tendencies.

Salt and minerals

The scent of the sea returns every summer, but this year's sea is a little different. Rather than painting waves and wind like the cool marine scents of the 1990s, scents that paint tangible textures — sea salt, stones warmed by the sun, skin after a day on the beach — appear often. They meet vanilla or caramel to create a salty sweetness, or nutty notes such as roasted sesame or rice to create a clean, plain texture.

The cool gourmand

In January we wrote that the gourmand was moving away from sugary sweetness toward the nutty: coffee, pistachio, hazelnut. Entering summer, that nuttiness is meeting cold things. Notes such as matcha, iced espresso, milk and rice are paired with cool air or clear citrus. Scents that render tropical fruit such as banana as a dessert also stood out in spring. People want sweetness even in summer, but they want that sweetness to have room to breathe.

Realistic fruit

For a long time, fruit scents stayed at "fruit-flavoured candy". This year the direction is the opposite: freshly cut peach and apricot; fruit with a clear sense of place, such as mango, guava, lychee and yuzu; and fruit that holds even the bitterness of the peel and the sourness of the juice.

Scents that resemble the weather

The most interesting current is scent that paints not "the smell of something" but "the smell of a certain air": the air after a passing shower, the dampness of walking through a cloud, a forest heavy with moisture. Notes such as tea, moss, rainwater and minerals often appear in this current. The theme Esxence has chosen this year is also "Sensing the World". The organizers say that scent does not explain memory but awakens it, citing the first sunlight of a spring day and the fine rain of autumn as examples.

Citrus cannot be left out either. Italy's Acqua di Parma, launching a new collection at the end of May, put in its name an old extraction method in which citrus peel is pressed by hand onto sponges and the oil collected in terracotta jars. We are in an age when the very way a material is obtained becomes a story.

Lay the four lines on top of one another and they share one thing. All of them paint "a texture felt up close" rather than "a scent that projects far". It is the "scent that stays close to the skin" we pointed to in January, dressed for summer.

At the bench

A trend note is not the answer to "what should I put in?" but homework on "in what balance should I use it?"

• If you are mixing for the first time — A "salty scent" is not made by dissolving salt. Salt has almost no smell. In perfumery, saltiness is an impression built by gathering several materials that evoke sea air, seaweed, minerals and skin. The same goes for matcha, milk and rainwater. The moment you know that a note's name and the actual materials differ, your eye for reading scent rises a level.
• If you are building your own accords — Saltiness that runs over even slightly feels cold and metallic, and fruit evaporates faster in summer heat. Support a salty accord from below with warm musks or soft woods, and build a bridge from the fruit to the heart with materials that linger a little longer, such as florals of a similar texture or lactones.
• If you have been designing for years — Transparency is the life of a weather scent. The more materials you add, the cloudier the air becomes. Narrow the core impressions to two or three and keep everything else in a supporting role. When creating the impression of moss, also keep in mind that traditional oakmoss is restricted under the International Fragrance Association (IFRA) Standards.

10. How scent is worn — smaller, lighter, layered

The way scent is worn is also wearing the face of summer.

In Circana's first-quarter release, mini sizes of prestige fragrance grew at double digits. In mass, women's fragrance also rose at double digits. Lightly sprayed formats such as body mists and hair mists, small bottles for touching up during the day, and layering several scents appear in every trend report this year.

Summer is the season when this current shows most clearly. A light mist in the morning, a drop of a rich scent in the evening, a clear scent applied again after sweating: people re-dress in scent several times a day. The current we described in January as "an era in which the wearer completes the final combination" becomes even clearer in summer.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — Make the same blend at a high and a low concentration and compare them. If the lighter one feels not like "a weaker version of the same scent" but like "a different impression", you have confirmed by hand that each material evaporates at a different speed.
• If you are building your own accords — Light formats such as mists have a short drydown. When composing a separate light version, try pulling the heart of the original scent slightly forward, designing it so that the face of the scent shows within a short time.
• If you have been designing for years — A summer scent must also be considered when it is layered over other scents. It often overlaps with the coconut and floral notes of sunscreens and body products. Check that it keeps its own outline on top of them.

11. Regulation — July 31, a date in the middle of summer

In the middle of this summer sits one date: July 31, 2026.

In 2023 the European Union amended its cosmetics regulation (Regulation 2023/1545), greatly extending the list of fragrance allergens that must be named on the label. Products that do not comply with the new labelling may be newly placed on the EU market only until this date, and products placed on the market before then may be made available only until July 31, 2028. Any house selling scent in Europe must change its labels or reformulate within this summer.

The United States is not there yet. As we saw in chapter 4, only the direction of the US labelling rules has been set, and no proposed rule has appeared yet.

The more natural materials a scent uses, the heavier this change weighs, because even a single lavender essential oil or a single citrus oil naturally contains several substances subject to labelling.

At the bench

• If you are mixing for the first time — Make a table, just once, of which of your materials contain allergens. You will find familiar names such as linalool and limonene appearing more often than you expected.
• If you are building your own accords — When buying materials, obtain from the supplier both the IFRA certificate of conformity and the allergen declaration. On the day you start selling your scent, they will be your greatest asset.
• If you have been designing for years — If you plan to reformulate a scent to European standards, it is better to look ahead to the US rules that have not yet appeared and design once for both, rather than revising twice.

12. Designing scent in summer — practical notes from the bench

Regardless of the news, there are realities at the bench that return every summer. Finally, we set them down here.

• Heat makes scent fly off faster. As temperature rises, materials evaporate faster. The top grows shorter and the base shows earlier. This is why a scent tuned for winter can feel in summer like "a scent with only the base left".
• Skin and sweat change scent. Sweat and sebum mix with scent and change its impression, and sweet and animalic notes feel heavier in the heat. A summer scent must be checked not only on a blotter but on warm skin.
• Citrus and sunlight. Some citrus essential oils, such as bergamot, contain substances (furocoumarins) that can cause skin reactions in sunlight, so the IFRA Standards limit their amount in products that stay on the skin. If you use a lot of citrus in a summer scent, check the supplier's documentation to confirm whether the oil has had those substances reduced.
• Storage is part of the design. Citrus and some floral materials oxidize easily with heat and light. In summer, keep both materials and finished scents in a cool, dark place, and record the storage temperature in your maturation notes as well.

The summer 2026 calendar

• June 3–6 — Esxence in Milan. 108 houses making their international debut. The first three days are open to trade professionals, and the 6th to the public.
• June 5 — NOSE SHOP's new "U NOSE SHOP" opens in Shinsaibashi, Osaka: a second entrance through which emerging Asian perfume brands meet Japanese consumers.
• July 24 — The scheduled end of the 150-day US temporary tariff. What comes after it is the question on the minds of houses selling scent in the United States.
• July 31 — The EU fragrance allergen labelling rules start to apply.
• Late July to early August — First-half results from the major fragrance companies. They will show whether niche's double-digit growth continued into the summer, and how far the Middle East has recovered.
• Mid-August — The expected timing of Circana's first-half US beauty market release.

Seven things to watch this summer

1. When, and how far, do the Gulf's airports and malls recover? And does Middle Eastern scent culture spread through the world by other paths in the meantime?
2. At what pace does Creed move now that it is inside L'Oréal?
3. How do US tariffs change after July 24?
4. Does Korea's run of record perfume exports continue into the summer?
5. In a Japan with fewer Chinese tourists, how far does Japanese consumers' own search for perfume fill the gap?
6. Does the flow of travellers who passed through Singapore and Bangkok instead of the Gulf remain after the ceasefire?
7. Do salty notes and the cool gourmand end as the trend of a single season, or carry on into the scents of autumn?

Terms used in this piece

• Niche perfume — Fragrance from a house that puts the scent itself at the centre. Today it is used in two senses at once: "a small, independent house" and "an expensive fragrance".
• Fine fragrance — Prestige scented products worn on the body, such as perfume. A term fragrance companies use when dividing their businesses.
• Organic growth / like-for-like basis — Growth seen without currency changes or the effects of acquisitions and disposals. Used to see how much the business itself has grown.
• Gourmand — A fragrance family that evokes things to eat, such as vanilla, caramel, coffee and nuts.
• Marine / mineral — Fragrance families that paint the impression of sea and water, stone and salt.
• Lactones — A family of materials that give soft impressions such as milk, cream and peach.
• Vetiver — A material obtained from the roots of a grass. It gives a deep scent mixing earthiness, woodiness and smokiness.
• Kōdō (香道) — The traditional Japanese art of heating fragrant wood and "listening" to its scent.
• Attar — A Middle Eastern and South Asian form of scent carried in oil, without alcohol. It is applied directly to the skin.
• Oakmoss — A material obtained from a lichen that grows on oak trees. It gives a deep impression of forest and earth but is restricted under the IFRA Standards.
• Furocoumarins — Substances found in some citrus essential oils that can cause skin reactions when exposed to sunlight.
• Layering — Wearing several scented products on top of one another to create a scent of your own.
• Blotter — A paper strip dipped in fragrance for smelling. Also called a smelling strip.
• Formula — The blueprint that sets down which materials are blended in which proportions to compose a single scent. It is what GrassAccord hands over.

In closing — the summer that follows a shaken spring

From the drone at Dubai's airport to the exhibition in Milan, this spring was unusually unsettled. War blocked the crossroads of scent, tariffs left the sums unsettled even after the ruling, material prices rose, and the big companies bought and sold names.

Yet amid all that unrest, one thing did not waver. People kept looking for scent, and above all for scent that speaks through the scent itself. Orders for fine fragrance rose, niche houses grew at double digits, and in Asia new scents awakened.

Summer is the season when the design of a scent shows most honestly. Heat sends scent flying off quickly, sweat and sunlight change it, and people stand close together. Gaps that weight could cover in winter show plainly in summer. That is why, this summer, the scents that last will be made not by trend notes but by balance.

This summer, GrassAccord does the same work. We hand over not a finished bottle but a formula, so that you can test the summer yourself on a blotter with that formula. A bottle that crosses a border meets tariffs, but a blueprint can be born again as the same scent at a perfumer's bench in any country.

If you have any questions about the currents discussed in this piece or about summer blends, please reach out to our Concierge at any time. Our perfumers will answer you in your language.

Sources: Circana release on the US beauty market in Q1 2026 (May 11), Estée Lauder fiscal 2026 third-quarter results (May 1), Puig Q1 2026 results, L'Oréal Q1 2026 sales and announcement of the completed acquisition of Kering Beauté (March 31), LVMH Q1 2026 revenue (April 13), Interparfums Q1 2026 results, Givaudan Q1 2026 sales (April 14), Symrise Q1 2026 sales (April 30), confirmation of Estée Lauder–Puig talks (March 23) and announcement of their end (May 21), Coty fiscal 2026 second-quarter results (February), the US Supreme Court IEEPA tariff ruling (February 20) and related reporting, Circana release on the US beauty market in 2025 (February 10), Shiseido Q1 2026 results (May 13), Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) figures on foreign visitors to Japan for April 2026, reporting on duty-free sales at Japanese department stores (January–April), Premium Beauty News article on the Japanese fragrance market (September 2025, citing Euromonitor estimates), Nippon Kodo's launch of nowas (February 13) and announcement of Fragrance Expo 2026 (April 8), NOSE SHOP's announcement of the opening of U NOSE SHOP (May 15), aviation industry reporting on the closure of Middle Eastern airspace and transit via Southeast Asian hubs (March 4), Changi Airport monthly passenger statistics, Korea International Trade Association perfume export statistics (reported by Personal Care Insights, April 20), reporting on the opening of Olive Young's first US store (May 29), "2026 China Fragrance Industry Report" by Tmall, TMIC and Baqiu (reported by Jing Daily, April 7), the 16th Esxence press release (April 14), industry reporting on Gulf mall sales (March–April), EU Regulation 2023/1545, the IFRA Standards, and spring launches and industry trend reports. The note currents are not sales figures but tendencies that recur across launches and reports. The information on tariffs and regulation is general information, not legal or tax advice.