Why has perfume become so expensive?

David Moltz believed the perfume was perfect. For years he had been experimenting with tuberose, one of the most expensive natural materials in the world. His new formula had the highest amount of the flower he’d ever seen in a fragrance. Then he did the maths.

A bottle of Durga retails for more than £300 for 50ml – it’s one of DS & Durga’s Gold Label fragrances, a premium line Moltz conceived in 2017. The fragrances showcase the industry’s “rarest, finest materials”, he says, including orris, oud and orange blossom, and are handmade in small batches that sell out multiple times each year.

Niche fragrances, a category of scent made for a more exclusive market, are a beauty-industry phenomenon, with pioneers – L’Artisan Parfumeur, Serge Lutens and Goutal Paris – now regulars on retailer shelves. Many are produced by small brands who don’t rely on advertising or celebrity endorsements. They might come in refillable glass bottles and contain higher concentrations of fragrance oils – in some cases up to 40 per cent. Most use high-quality natural ingredients that are too unruly – and costly – for mass production. Their limited quantities, meanwhile, lack economies of scale. In a category growing at one of the fastest rates in the beauty industry – the global perfume market is set to reach $69bn by 2030 – the niche fragrance is the leader, expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 13.2 per cent.

Although the niche movement dates back to the ’70s, it didn’t gain momentum for another 30 years. Until then, explains Nick Gilbert, co-founder of scent consultancy Olfiction, perfumery was a “job done in the shadows”. Then came Frédéric Malle, who made the perfumer the “star”. Perfumer names – Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo – replaced branding on bottles. Many moved on to launch their own eponymous lines. 

This category of perfume is driven by passion – not what we think is rational or not

“That was the [beginning] of fragrances that were all about the juice,” says Veronique Gabai, who launched her own line after eight years as Estée Lauder’s global president for fragrance. Free from the shackles of the mass market, perfumers could make their “juice” as they pleased. Ingredients became rarer and more divisive. Prices leapt. The namesake ingredient of one of Gabai’s most recent launches, Oud Elixir (£245 for 85ml), sells for anywhere between $50,000 and $80,000 per litre. Adds Gabai, whose fragrances are made of up to 90 per cent natural materials: “This category of perfume is driven by passion – not what we think is [rational] or not.” That said, in a good month her repeat customer rate is 30 per cent. 

Perfumer H’s Lyn Harris uses the 18th-century enfleurage method, where fragrance compounds are captured in layers of fat. “These labour-intensive methods are coming back because [they were] the best way of extracting from rose petals, jasmine and tuberose,” she says. She has built her growing business – Perfumer H has eight stores across Europe and Asia – on the basis that her clients appreciate these kinds of details. And, by doing so, are prepared to pay a higher price. Harris moved further into niche perfumery after years spent creating fragrances for her line Miller Harris. “Perfumer H was purely me being a perfumer and expressing my true art form,” she says.

Penhaligon’s Portraits The Omniscient Mr Thompson, £235 for 75ml EDP

Maison Crivelli Hibiscus Mahajád, €292 for 100ml extrait de parfum

Marc-Antoine Barrois B683, €275 for 50ml extrait de parfum

Thameen London Fanfare, £250 for 100ml cologne elixir

Aēsop Karst, £145 for 50ml EDP

LBTY Zephirine EDP, £225 for 100ml

Traditional techniques are time-consuming and costly. Natural ingredients, said to give fragrances more depth than synthetics, are also at the mercy of climate change. “My family’s organic lavender farm in France had half the usual yield of their essential oil last year,” notes Beckielou Brown, co-founder of Altra (fragrances from £168 for 50ml), who spends between €15,000 and €18,000 a kilo on her most expensive ingredients. Droughts in Grasse have caused some growers’ tuberose harvests to fall by 40 per cent. Increasingly, perfumers – Harris, Brown and Gabai among them – are paying extra to work with sustainable farms. The price of the perfumes therefore reflects the increasing market price. 

Harris has “always used expensive materials”. “When I was in Grasse training in the ’90s, they all laughed at me; they said, ‘You smell these materials as references, but you’ll never be able to use them.’” One such material is iris, an ingredient worth three times its weight in gold. Perfumer H’s top-end perfumes are housed in hand-blown glass bottles and priced from £590 for 100ml (refills are available from £180). Harris has never worried about her prices. Her goal is to make something that “smells beautiful on somebody’s skin – whatever it takes.”

And yet, the £250 fragrance is becoming less extraordinary. Prices have been creeping up across the board: Le Labo’s cult fragrance Santal 33 has increased in price by around 50 per cent since 2015; 100ml of Dries Van Noten’s Rock The Myrrh has risen from €240 to €295 since it launched two years ago. Designer brands have also jumped on the niche bandwagon, creating exclusive lines that spotlight rare or unusual ingredients: Gucci with its Alchemist’s Garden range (£240 for 100ml), Hermès with Hermessence (from £248 for 100ml), and Loewe with its Un Paseo Por Madrid scents (£236 for 100ml). The latter comes in bottles with marble caps and contain, says perfumer Núria Cruelles, high concentrations of “the most precious essential oils”: iris, rose and jasmine. 

Thameen London artistic director Christopher Chong, whose Britologne cologne collection is priced at £250 per 100ml, says the reason for the hike is “simple”. Take a market rocked by Brexit, add a pandemic, war and soaring inflation. Then, says Nic Mastenbroek, perfumer at niche brand Ruth Mastenbroek, consider the various caps, pumps, labels and packaging – “all things that are industries within themselves”. 

If the industry has upped its asking price, it has still found a healthy market. At Liberty, where fragrance accounts for 30 per cent of the retailer’s business and is its fastest-growing category, the average spend on perfume is between £200 and £500. Many visitors buy more than one bottle on a single visit. “Customers investing in fragrances priced over £250 tend to display a penchant for variety,” says its head of beauty and commercial Natalie Guselli. 

In March, Liberty opened its new Fragrance Lounge, where fanatics can book hour-long appointments to discover their ideal “fragrance profile”. One of the first department stores to embrace the niche market, Liberty has channelled its experience into its own line, LBTY. Bestselling Zephirine (£225 for 100ml) has outpaced many other 100ml luxury fragrances across the store.

You might not like the smell of a niche perfume; its distinctive odour – Aesop’s Karst (£290 per 100ml) harnesses cumin; Erémia spotlights balsamic-like galbanum – is the point. “Some people will absolutely love it; other people will be like, no,” says Gilbert, who has his own niche line, Boujee Bougies. “You want to have a unique olfactory signature.” Synthetics have opened up another avenue for experimentation, says Julia Koeppen, general manager at Penhaligon’s. Recently the brand launched The Omniscient Mr Thompson (£235 for 75ml), which mimics the nuttiness of sesame. 

For others, luxury is about longevity: extrait de parfum is the most concentrated form of fragrance and has a price tag to reflect it. Marc-Antoine Barrois’s B683 Extrait (€275 for 50ml) is made up of 40 per cent essential oils (typical EDPs are around 20 per cent). The result is a scent that can linger even after showering. “A good sillage [the trail created by a perfume] can say a lot about someone’s personality,” says Maison Crivelli founder Thibaud Crivelli, whose extraits (from €167 for 50ml) make up 70 per cent of his sales. “To make a great one – one that will make you feel and be seen like no other – is through a highly concentrated and qualitative fragrance.”

As Gilbert says, “perfume is communication, and what you’re communicating by picking a luxury perfume is: I am a person of taste. I know where to find these things, and I have access to them.” Liberty’s Guselli compares niche perfumes to “acquiring a rare collectible, symbolising exclusivity, craftsmanship and individuality”. 

When Gabriela Hearst launched two limited-edition perfumes (both £450 for 100ml; 315 bottles each) with Fueguia 1833 last year, she “didn’t realise” the market was booming – it was simply a creative experiment. Customers bought bottles without smelling them; people saw them as a new way to experience the Gabriela Hearst brand. “They have become my favourite perfumes,” says the designer “– and it’s not like I have to sell it; we don’t have many.” There are no plans to make more. What if people love them? Hearst shrugs. “Make sure you buy two.”