Future of Smell

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Future of Smell

Future of Smell helps brands design sensory experiences through research-backed custom fragrance design & smell-based technologies.

We provide insights and solutions for the design of custom scents and experiences for world-leading brands.

22/09/2026

More choice puts more pressure on the way people find fragrance. Consumers are also describing what they want differently, through mood, occasion, feeling, context and the kind of experience they are looking for.

That is one of the problems I’ve been exploring with Scentgenie: how language, images, music and other taste signals can help people find fragrances that feel more relevant to them.

The wider shifts behind this — personalization, changing scent behavior, new formats and new scent occasions — are some of the areas I look at in The Smell Report.

Comment REPORT and I’ll send it to you.

21/09/2026

Your body changes throughout the day. So does your environment and your state of mind.

Temperature, movement, stress, time of day, where you are, even what you’re doing can all change how you experience scent.

We already have wearables that can release fragrance and materials that can control when scent is released. Add sensors and better personalization, and fragrance starts to become much more responsive.

I find the idea fascinating: scent that fits the moment rather than asking us to choose the moment in advance.

Would you want your fragrance to respond to you?

18/09/2026

A lot of founders start with a strong idea. The hardest part is having the discipline to carry that same philosophy through every decision. The fragrance, the name, the packaging, the visuals, the first collection, the next launch — all of it should still feel connected to the same core idea.

That consistency is one of the hardest parts of building a distinctive fragrance brand.

Where are you in building yours?

17/09/2026

Over the years, I’ve worked with many fragrance tech startups, and one thing I’ve learned is that interesting technology is only the beginning. The harder part is turning it into a fragrance product people actually understand, want and enjoy using.
That usually means getting much clearer on the role of scent, the quality of the fragrance itself and the consumer experience around it.

If you’re building a fragrance product around new technology, this is the kind of work I help teams pressure test early.

16/09/2026

More than 6,000 new perfumes launched in 2025. That is a lot of choice for anyone trying to find one fragrance they actually want to wear.

People move between notes, reviews, TikTok, samples, recommendations and a lot of trial and error.

At the same time, fragrance demand is still strong. In the first half of 2026, U.S. prestige fragrance sales grew 6%, while mass fragrance sales rose 15%.

For me, that makes discovery one of the biggest opportunities in fragrance.

A system that learns what you wear, what you finish, what you layer, what you avoid and what you choose for different moments could build a much richer picture of your taste.

The next breakthrough may not be another fragrance. It may be helping people find the right one.

15/09/2026

If Spotify can learn from what you play, skip, save and repeat, fragrance should be able to learn from what you actually wear.

Your fragrance wardrobe already says a lot:

what you reach for most what sits untouched what you layer together what you buy again what you choose for work, dinner, travel or comfort what you consistently avoid

Over time, those choices could create a much richer picture of your taste in smell.

That could mean better recommendations, better samples, more useful fragrance wardrobes and a much more personal way to discover scent.

I would love to see someone build this properly.

Would you want a fragrance platform to remember your taste?

01/06/2026

What if fragrance became something you could generate in the moment, print as a wearable patch, and replace as your day changes?

A few months ago, student teams from different countries reached out to me for strategic input on their L’Oréal Brandstorm projects. Brandstorm is L’Oréal’s global innovation competition, where students develop new ideas for the future of beauty. As a former adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design, I advised teams on scent strategy, product concepts, and how to make fragrance ideas feel more relevant and future-facing.

One of the teams imagined L’Oréal AURA, an adaptive fragrance system built around a skin-scanning device, fragrance cartridges, and a wearable scent patch. The scan reads the user’s skin and context. The system recommends a personalized blend using existing L’Oréal Luxe fragrances. The cartridge device micro-mixes the selected proportions, then places the final blend into a controlled-release patch that can be worn on the body.

The patch format makes fragrance more modular, more precise and easier to change throughout the day. You could wear one scent in the morning, replace it for a specific moment, alter it before an evening event or choose a different scent when you do not want remnants of other fragrances on your clothing or skin.

Project by Ahmad Reva Dany Fawwaz , Muhammad Adnan Bayu Firdaus , and Pratisara Khansa Teges Palupi

Personalized, printed, wearable, replaceable fragrance turns scent into a product system built around daily rhythms and change.

Would you try it?

28/05/2026

Fragrance is expanding in several directions at once: formats, online purchase, AI materials, and disclosure.

What do you see?

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https://www.futureofsmell.com/

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