1 min
Since consumers have started abandoning traditional canons in favor of a more personal approach to beauty, self-expression has become the new focus of the beauty Industry.
A quest for authenticity
With perfect hair, nails, and makeup being no longer required, thriving businesses are focusing on body positivity and feeling good about oneself, and best-seller products are meant to fulfill this new desire for creativity and self-expression.
Conventional beauty has become just one of the options, rather than a place for validation, and this is true, especially with Gen Z (18-24 year-olds), who value authenticity as the most important thing. Their quest for self-expression is fuelled by social media: Instagram and TikTok are perfect places to broadcast never-ending streams of performances.
Self-expression in perfumery
Since perfume has always been one of the main means of self-expression, the trend has impacted the fragrance world, too.
Millennials, and even more the Gen Z-ers, are averse to pouring on a prepackaged personality. They ask for concoctions they can strongly relate to, able to express their inner selves. Fragrances melting with their skin, evaporating close to them, telling others who they are, and how they feel.
“Self-Express” scents evolve from successful skin-like accords of the last ten years: clean, musky bouquets with powdery and soft floral nuances recalling fresh, harmless, pure, out-of-the-shower feelings.
From skin-scent to sophisticated ambery-woods
Though keeping unobtrusive and comforting, skin-like accords gained a little weight and complexity in these last three years, entering a more individualistic territory. Sophisticated ambery-woods and clean musky citrus are the two categories under which they fall.
- In the sophisticated ambery-wood scents, warm ambery notes are blended with sandalwood, cedarwood, cashmere woods, and musks to gain a little mystery and get sensual and enveloping, without being overwhelming; sort of “come closer” scents designed to help people smell like their glorious, unique selves..only better!
- With the clean musky citrus trend, fragrances tend to be less abstract than their predecessors, with stronger links to real life conveyed by distinctive notes like green tea and neroli. The overall impression, however, is never too descriptive, situating somewhere between reality and abstraction. The idea of freshness is always there but deprived of any hygienic connotations.
Among the newest examples, there are Byredo’s “De Los Santos”, a comforting, powdery, orris note with ambrox and musk, and the new “Iris” in Zara’s Home collection, a warm amber enriched with citrus fruits and orris.
Are you ready to join the Self-Expression beauty movement?
Contact us for more information; we will support you in designing your unique “Self-Express” fragrances!
