The Sweet-Smelling Revival of Hair Perfume

Funmi Fetto remembers when she first encountered a bottle of hair perfume, 10 years ago. She was the acting beauty director at British Vogue, and thought it was ridiculous: “Who on earth needs hair perfume?”

Plenty of people, it turns out. Hair perfume is one of the fastest growing categories in the $60 billion global fragrance industry, thanks to a perfect storm of the post-pandemic fragrance boom, a vogue for scalp-friendly formulations and relative affordability (hair perfume tends to cost a fraction of more concentrated eau de parfums). Even Fetto has come around — she’s partial to Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540 hair mist, which according to the brand “delicately perfumes the hair while leaving it soft.”

“It’s pretty straightforward — we want our hair to smell nice,” Fetto said. “Not in an off-the-shelf-shampoo kind of way, but in a way that’s elevated and sophisticated.”

The category is “exploding,” said DSM-Firmenich perfumer Nicole Mancini. Since the pandemic, search volume for hair perfume has more than doubled worldwide, according to Google Trends.

Hair and fragrance are the two categories driving the prestige beauty market in the US, which grew 8 percent this year, according to Circana. Haircare brands like Oribe have long used scent to elevate their collections, and position their hair perfumes as luxury products. Meanwhile, upscale perfume houses, from Kurkdjian to Chanel, have distilled some of their bestsellers into less concentrated “hair mists,” often for a fraction of the original price.

Hair fragrances, like candles or bath products, provide opportunities to expand “the fragrance ritual,” says Connor Spicer, a consultant at Euromonitor, noting particular demand for hair fragrance in the US, UK, and UAE. But while it can be chemically challenging to translate a scent from a perfume into a candle or bath product, modifying a perfume for hair is relatively simple, Mancini said, and a matter of turning down the fragrance concentration and alcohol content.

The hair care category’s recent fixation on scalp health — the “skinification” of hair — is also contributing to their popularity. Many formulas tamper down their alcohol content “so that hair or scalp don’t experience over-drying or irritation when applied,” said Spicer. Some savvy marketers may also add ingredients that can promise benefits like UV protection, conditioning, or added shine.

Good Smells Ahead

Humans have fragranced their heads for centuries — the ancient Romans traded a honeysuckle oil specifically as a hair scent — but have only recently decided to bottle and sell unique formulations specifically for this use-case. In 1955, Parfums Christian Dior launched la Siphonette, a tiny brush intended to scent votre coiffeur when dipped into a small vial of Miss Dior. Dior was also the first fragrance house to remix a best-selling perfume for the hair, with the 1999 launch of J’Adore hair perfume.

The category of hair perfume as we know it is a byproduct of the 2000s fragrance boom, as celebrities flocked to the licensing gold rush and designers began “flanking” best-selling scents with various new permutations. Chanel came out with Coco Mademoiselle Hair Mist in 2003. Tom Ford’s first fragrance with Estée Lauder, called Black Orchid, was mixed into a Luminous Hair Perfume in 2008, and the next year, Byredo launched a collection of its best-sellers reimagined as hair-friendly formulas. By 2010, the New York Times reported that hair scents “may be the next fragrance frontier.”

The post-pandemic period saw another fragrance boom driven by prestige and “super luxury” fragrances in the Byredo tier, according to Larissa Jensen, a beauty analyst at Circana. Consumers are also forgoing signature scents for a wardrobe of them that can be worn according to their whims — a phenomenon propelled by fragrance-obsessed Gen-Z, who are hoarding scents and layering them like accessories.

“Fragrance is one of the most important parts of getting somebody excited about using hair care products,” said Dianna Cohen, who founded the hair care brand Crown Affair in 2019.

Cohen’s fragrance of choice used to be Byredo Gypsy Water ($225 for the eau de parfum). She bought the hair perfume ($85) as a way to refresh her scent throughout the day. Before she began designing and fundraising her own line, Cohen contacted a fragrance house, hoping to cook up an aroma that evoked “a little bit of funk, a little bit of Zen.”

The resulting Signature Scent imbues every Crown Affair product, and launched as a hair perfume in October 2022. It costs $85, the same price as Byredo’s or Kurkdjian’s but twice as much as a dry shampoo or finishing spray.

“Our core customer bought it up right away,” Cohen said.

For shoppers unfamiliar with the scent, it was a harder direct-to-consumer sell. But an Allure Best of Beauty Award and a few viral TikToks have been convincing; this quarter, sales of the Signature Scent nearly doubled.

A decade-plus later, this destiny appears to have manifested. Cohen said fragrance is a priority for Sephora, one of Crown Affair’s retailers, and a place where the selling power of a good scent cannot be overstated. “Every year, like clockwork, Sephora is like, let’s put the hair fragrance on top,” Cohen said. “And it sells through.”

On Saturday, the brand launched a Signature Scent candle in partnership with Nette at Sephora, and intends to expand its fragrance range. The whole point is to “elevate the conversation around the [hair] category.” said Cohen. “It’s great from a business perspective.”

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