How are we using gourmands — or, at least, the suggestion of gourmands — to offer public insight into the self?
I’m scrolling X, and three separate Fragrantica screenshots appear on my feed. Toffee, Baileys, Creme Brûlée, Whipped Cream, White Chocolate, Ice Cream, Brown Sugar, White Sugar, Candy Floss, Bubblegum.
It’s not just that these fragrances are sweet; they’re also all gourmands. Gourmand, meaning scents that mimic edible qualities, is a very particular form of perfume. Wearing a gourmand, compared to almost any other type of perfume, is interesting in effect of its pure synthetic nature. Wearing a toffee, whipped cream, or ice cream noted perfume will always smell synthetic because, well, whipped cream is a “synthetic” consumable object. It’s a food comprised of processing other edible materials to create something new. And so, when wearing a perfume meant to mimic this, the man-made quality jumps out. You can walk out into the world, and can smell from the earth’s bounty of marigolds, roses, sea salt, lemons — but a creme brûlée has to be made, so too toffee, Baileys, and candy floss. Gourmands then, have a unique quality of drawing attention to its own artifice. A cursory search through Google will find Reddit posts asking where to find gourmands that don’t smell so obviously like perfume. But that’s hard to find — even the softest touch of bubblegum will conjure the act of putting it on. It will always carry an aroma of process.
Now, measuring someone’s actual perfume taste against a Fragrantica screenshot is essentially meaningless. Of course, I’m not the first to note that there are many in the online perfume space that have never tried much of their posted catalogue, and use Fragrantica screenshots as a kind of social correspondence. Perfume critic Audrey Robinovitz (@foldyrhands on X, also HALOSCOPE’s Fragrance Editor) has made the claim that the visuality of Fragrantica, compared to the more classic copywriting style of perfume marketing, has allowed for a new method of communicating about perfume on online platforms. By turning the world of niche luxury perfume — both intangible in its qualities and granular in its specifics — into a visualised index, Fragrantica has transformed the ways in which people online discuss perfumery. You no longer need to have experienced the scent of a perfume to discuss its qualities; you only need to experience the notes in a visual format to “understand” its composition. It has transformed perfume, a largely untranslatable commodity object, into a visual currency of taste and identity.
I think that perfume functions differently than any other form of luxury cosmetics, although there are obvious crossovers. Perfume, by its nature, is highly individualised. There are some current brands that foster widespread internet fawning (Le Labo and D.S & Durga spring to mind here), but there’s a key difference between a perfume brand with a cult following to a makeup line with a cult following. Makeup still has a long way to go in terms of diversifying its stock and range, especially for people of colour. But, compared to perfumery, makeup’s online social engagement is much more far-reaching. Even more conceptual and avant-garde makeup brands find their way onto websites like BeautyBay and Cult Beauty. And the reverse is also true — you can create an otherworldly makeup look using cosmetics found for cheap at a high-street shop. Makeup gives someone the opportunity to create, experiment, and take bits and pieces from different styles and fashions, collaging them into a unique interpretation on the skin. Whereas there are ways to work with cosmetic products that don’t quite suit your needs or fit your style, perfume is rigid in its subjectivity. Sometimes, there are scents that will touch you as purely putrid and disgusting, but to others, they may be delicate, beautiful, and sensual. There are hyped scents that fall bland on your skin. Sure, you could layer it with another fragrance, but when an individual perfume from a luxury perfume house can cost you anywhere from £120 to £300, most people don’t. Therefore, this exclusivity and subjectivity are at the root of how perfume is communicated in online spaces, only heightened via perfume’s complete untranslatability. You can watch a runway show, delve through archive photos, and see Daniel Roseberry’s hand-sketching each dress behind the scenes. You can absorb the world of the catwalk as a visual medium without ever coming near the clothes in your day-to-day life. Sure, it won’t match the actual experience of wearing the clothes or sitting front row at the catwalk, but it’s a good enough facsimile for most. But, even with the visual aids of Fragrantica or the copy of perfume houses, you can’t translate the experience of smell virtually.
So, why all the synthetic sweetness, then?
I think, really, this trend falls into wider preoccupations dominating certain streams of fashion intrigue targeted towards women. Bows, pinks, frills. An obsessive tilt towards infantilisation and self-creation. A turn backward into the crutches of youth. It offers little more than nods and winks to the past. Heightened by artificial gourmands and teeth-fuzzing sweetness, this trend in perfume asks the wearer not to imagine a future, or to imagine a world, but instead to fall backwards without self-reflection. When I think of this perfume trend, I think of the recent Sandy Liang SS25 pre-show copy:
“Being a princess is a job, just like being a spy girl is a job. This season there’s something to… live in, to create your own world in.”
Perfume is an experiential, sensorial, and ultimately impermanent object, that within the span of hours waxes and wanes, producing waves of different sensual notes. But, I wonder if the focus on this type of perfume elides the physical properties of perfume in favour of socially and virtually communicating “taste” and by extension, identity. The ribbon bows of perfume don’t often ask you to think critically about why perhaps you’d want to smell like a sugar cookie at the age of 27, or why you’re fixated on a certain youthful period of of your life. This communication of the “I’m just a girl” aesthetic ultimately goes beyond the products themselves. I wear this because I want to communicate that. I like this because I want to be that.
Even Britney Spears’ Fantasy had orris root and musk, and even Mugler’s Angel tried to balance the overwhelming sweetness of fruits and sugar with the amber sandalwood and anise of caraway. Although these are perhaps not apt comparisons, as they are dominated by overly sweet gourmands, they still attempt to communicate adult feminine sensuality. This online social communication of scents that relies heavily on childish feminine pastiche toys with nostalgia in an uncritical way. It invites the wearer to go back and re-imagine their childhood. I can guarantee that most childhoods did not smell of toffees and whipped cream, but for some, perhaps it is comforting to re-imagine it so, to cocoon oneself in the blankets of sentimentality. Perhaps it is comforting to remember your youth as untainted by the boundaries of modern living — no you can’t eat this, no you shouldn’t be that — and re-remember youth as untethered from the “rules” of feminine adulthood.
The synthetic edible notes of whipped cream, frosting, cookies, and toffees, invite the wearer to figure themselves as a fixture of indulgent pleasure. Critically so, this lean towards indulgence within this variety of perfume alludes to femininity coded as indulgent. The use of overly sweet pastiches of “feminine” fragrances invites the wearer to posit themselves as an indulgent treat — something to be enjoyed. And I think this idea is engendered into the very fabric of perfume marketing from the youngest of girls to the oldest of women. It is desirable to be desired. All of the traditional Western marketing of feminine-angled products tells us so. But being desired is not a singular activity. To be desired is to always involve the presence of the other at any and every turn. It involves an outsider, a third party, a watchful eye, or an inquisitive nose. Perhaps this is the backbone of all perfumery. Is it ever enough to smell divine for oneself, or does it always need to be quantified by the ghost of another?
Taking the infamous quote from Barthes’ The Fashion System, he concludes the introduction to his semiotic analysis of fashion magazines by stating, “It is not the object but the name that creates desire, it is not the dream but the meaning that sells.” He meant this to explain how the written vestiary code of fashion as expressed in magazines works on a meta-linguistic level that goes beyond the material reality of the garments themselves. It is the meaning, the signals of the words, that introduce desire into the world of fashion copywriting. I think that this exact sentiment applies to the world of how perfumery is discussed online. The proliferation of saccharine sweet gourmands that dominate certain online discourses of perfumery perfectly illuminates how communicating about perfume has gone beyond the material composition of notes and silage. Perfume communicates ideas about desire. Openly acknowledging one’s desire for a decidedly childish or youthful edible gourmand communicates a specific desire that has been keenly fixed to the feminine sphere. The desire to be desired, the desire to be devoured, the desire to be seen as indulgent, the desire to be seen as sweet. The artificial construction of these gourmands only adds cloying insult to injury.
I think this engagement towards infantilised feminine aesthetics doesn’t always have to be mindless, and I think some brands engage with this gendered nostalgia effectively and critically. Nor do I think that all powerfully sweet scents are indicative of this trend — I don’t think Stora Skuggan’s explosion of narcissus, cherries, and honey in Thumbsucker falls into this category. But, that’s because, behind the scent, there’s a story and a world. The desire expressed in Stora Skuggan’s iconic scent comes from the perfume itself, how the narrative of childhood and youth reflects its construction. It comes from the inside out. That’s what separates these types of perfumes and the way they get spoken about online. On the one hand, some perfumes invite the wearer into a specific world, and on the other, some perfumes invite the wearer into pure self-world-creation. 🌀
M.P.S is a writer, zine-maker, part-time urban researcher, full-time perfume over-thinker, maximalist fashion enjoyer, and creature from East London. You can find her looking gorgeous on Instagram as @_femmedetta or giving unsolicited opinions as @cyberyamauba on X.