The Latest Trend in Botanical Perfumes Are Single-Note Fragrances

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, perfume season is in full force. But if you browse the shelves (or receive perfume as a gift) you might notice that the landscape of fragrance is changing. In a recent article for Allure, Liana Schaffner writes about how single note fragrances are slowly replacing the more traditional, complex blends. These new scents tend to focus on a single, botanical element like jasmine or geranium. As Schaffner writes:

But the latest trend in fragrance is changing all that, turning scent into an open and startlingly honest affair. Overt, uncluttered, and free of innuendo, these new perfumes have nothing to hide. And the result is pure magic. Our favorite new fragrances emphasize one thing.

And it’s not one emotion or one aspiration or one vacation destination—it’s one ingredient. They come with straightforward names: Sage, Rose, Blackpepper. What you see on the label is what you get in the bottle, which may not sound radical but borders on revolutionary for an industry that glories in the abstract and draws on our willing suspension of disbelief (very willing, if names like Alien and Beyond Paradise are any indication). “We wanted to see how pure we could get,” says creative director Marcus Wainwright of his mission in creating Rag & Bone’s first fragrances, an octet that includes Amber, Cypress, and Bergamot. “We started each one from a single note and built around it to get something that’s beautifully made but clean and uncomplicated.”

Read the full article on Allure.