- - Why All of a Sudden Is Every Fragrance Nostalgic?

April LongDecember 24, 2025 at 2:56 AM

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Fragrance Nostalgia Is the First Trend of 2026 Getty Images

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It is no coincidence that the word “redolent” means both fragrant and memory-evoking. Much has been made of perfume’s extraordinary ability to catapult the mind across space and time to places once visited and people once loved. This is something that happens mostly by chance: You pass a stranger in the street wearing a scent that snaps you back into the arms of a college boyfriend, or step into an elevator with an invisible presence that whisks you into a scene from your childhood like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Recently, though, there’s been a widespread inclination to use this particular power of perfume more purposefully. We are increasingly reaching for scents that soothe us by temporarily removing—or at least distancing—us from the here and now. Is it any wonder?In the world of fragrance, nostalgia can come in many guises. The most literal is the quest for vintage perfumes, which is no longer strictly a pursuit of obsessive ephemera collectors. Thanks to social media influencers such as Erin Parsons, Gigi Hadid’s makeup artist and a de facto fragrance historian, there’s a growing subculture of fume fanatics keen to sniff the contents of decades-old flacons—even if they have gone somewhat sour. Searches for “vintage” and “vintage-inspired” fragrances spark spools of suggestions in Reddit forums; TikTokers unbox antique bottles like they’re unearthing the Ark of the Covenant. The appeal? These scents act as perceived portals into the past, conjuring up things that we crave but have somehow lost: decorum, civility, elegance, mystery, panache. They are Old Hollywood movies for the nose.

Taking note of this trend, fragrance brands have been dipping into their archives to revive long-discontinued scents. The splashiest of these—Coty’s reintroduction of Ambre Antique, a scent from 1905 meticulously reconstructed and relaunched in the new Infiniment range—was a well-timed mic-drop reminder that Coty had invented the now wildly popular “amber” category more than a century ago. Meanwhile, Coty founder Francois Coty’s great-grand-daughter Veronique Spoturno has unveiled her own perfume brand, Spoturno, which was conceived, she says, as “a dialogue between eras” to honor her heritage. Spoturno 1921, the line’s centerpiece, is a luminous floral amber based on a flapper-era formula and modernized by virtuosic former Chanel perfumer Christopher Sheldrake. “In a world shaped by speed and constant reinvention, vintage-inspired perfumes offer a different rhythm,” Spoturno says. “They connect us to the artistry of earlier generations, to time-honored “savoir-faire,” to stories that endure.” This further explains the enthusiasm surrounding Shalimar’s 100th anniversary, which Guerlain celebrated officially in November with special editions (including an art piece inspired by Frida Kahlo, who wore the perfume) and exhibitions. A pop-up museum at New York’s Waldorf Astoria dedicated to Shalimar’s illustrious history had to be extended to meet demand—proof that the OG vanilla fragrance’s mystique remains undimmed.

And yes, we must speak of vanilla. It probably comes as no surprise that the defining perfume note of the 2020s is also the smell most associated with nostalgia. Whether we are aware of it consciously or not, the scent of vanilla takes us back to the comfort and safety of childhood. Its effect is more than just simple regression—it actually helps us de-stress. NUE Co., a wellness brand known for its “functional fragrances” has tapped into this with its new Nostalgia Collection—a trio of scents (Past Time, First Milk, and Otherwhere) that are calibrated to affect the body as well as the mind. “Nostalgia isn’t just a feeling, it’s a physiological response,” says NUE Co. founder Jules Miller. “Humans are hardwired to be drawn to gourmand notes, like vanilla, with compounds that echo the makeup of milk and sweet childhood foods. Studies show that scents experienced in infancy are the strongest triggers of emotional recall, essentially providing a gateway into ‘when all things were good.’” She cites a study in which patients undergoing MRI scans reported 63% less anxiety when exposed to gourmand fragrances, and notes that Nue Co. scents are underpinned by five years of research at the University of Geneva using brain imagery to map neurological responses to scent. Notably, however, none of the fragrances in the Nostalgia Collection are traditional gourmands. The perfumes, concocted by perfumer Frank Voelkl of Santal 33 fame, incorporate notes such as milk, vanilla, amber, and soft woods to elicit a sense of serenity without the sugar high. “We were interested in the mood-shifting benefits of nostalgic notes, not the literal sweetness,” Miller says. The goal was to create comforting, but elevated, scents that “calm the nervous system and help you feel more anchored in your body.” Who doesn’t want that?

Not all nostalgic scents lead us back to our Sesame Street years. There are also those powered by a desire to recapture something grown-up, vivid and glorious—and to channel emotions not of coziness and contentment, but of freedom, release, and fun. Remember fun? The latest from luxury house Krigler, Velvet Night 76, is a recreation of a scent that was originally composed by Liliane Krigler in 1976 but never released. Both feminine and feminist, it is a dynamic orange blossom-forward floral that evokes a Parisian milieu marked by the power of women’s lib and the giddiness and glamour of legendary nightclubs such as Castel. “It comes from a time when people were having fun,” says Ben Krigler, the fifth-generation perfumer who now helms the brand. “I want to bring that back.”

This is the mission of Discotheque, a new fragrance line founded by party-loving pals Jessie Willner and Hanover Moulton, who set out to capture the atmosphere of excitement that has pulsed through history’s most iconic nightclubs. You can shop the scents on the Discotheque site by decade, from the soft violet hum of Baise Moi on the Dance Floor, inspired by Les Bains Douche nightclub in Paris in 1979, to the come-back-to-mine leathery oud of Eye Contact, inspired by London’s 1980s Taboo Club, to the hedonistic samphire-and-salty-skin swirl of Sweat, Tears, Paradise, inspired by 1990s Cavo Paradiso rave scene on Mykonos. Each scent comes with a playlist and an evocative mise en scene backstory, and the brand’s marketing imagery is peppered with I’d-pay-anything-to-be-on-that-guestlist photographs of celebs like David Bowie and Kate Moss living it up after dark. “I think people are craving the same thing that we’re most inspired by: a time when you could get lost in the moment and you couldn’t endlessly experience it through a small screen,” says Willner. “You had to actually go out to see what people were wearing or hear what a DJ was playing to find your next favorite song. It was just people loving the moment they were in and inspiring each other.”

L'Eau de Spoturno 1921

Hot Rod

$375.00 at luckyscent.com

Ambre Antique 1905

Hot Rod

at bloomingdales.com

First Milk

Hot Rod

$125.00 at thenueco.com

Shalimar L’Essence Eau de Parfum Intense

Hot Rod

$140.00 at sephora.com

VELVET NIGHT 76 perfume

Hot Rod

$770.00 at krigler.com

Hot Rod

$160.00 at violetgrey.com

Immortal Perfumes, a Portland-based artisanal brand created by former English teacher JT Siems, also hearkens back to a world unperturbed by social media, with obsessively researched scents that channel the personalities and environments of historical figures and literary protagonists. Bestseller Sylvia was inspired by a passage from the Bell Jar, and wafts with black tea, clove, and fig; new scent Swanstone Reverie pays homage to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who hosted ghostly dinner parties for imaginary guests in his candlelit mansion, with notes of champagne, candied violets, feathers, and gun smoke. This is fantasy nostalgia, and Siems says her customers wear her fragrances like talismans. "They want to embody certain characteristics that person had,” she says. “People don’t want to just wear a fig perfume because they like scent of fig, they want it to have a story. They crave depth and meaning. The world is chaotic right now, and I think people want to feel connected to something larger—to people who share their interests, and to others who came before.”

For those wishing to go truly old-school, there’s new “olfactory archeology” fragrance line Anti-. Conceived by French fashion industry veterans Brieuc Larsonneur and Larissa Sugaipova, the scents span 4,000 years of history, beginning with the haunting frankincense blast of Bast, which interprets humanity’s first-documented perfume recipe dating to 2000 B.C., through a scent inspired by a preserved extract of perfume found in the ruins of Pompeii (Rosa Antiqua, which features notes of damascene rose, olive oil, and ashy birch), to Duke’s Carpet, a debonair dry martini of a scent that references the London club where Ian Fleming dreamed up James Bond. What these fragrances do, wonderfully, is demonstrate how perfumers can take cues and information from the past, but still create something imaginative and interesting that smells completely new.

Part of the attraction of looking backwards is that we see the past as a complete story. In uncertain times, anything with a beginning, middle, and end is a balm. But history was never how we envision it to have been—we embellish it, smooth the edges, spotlight the fabulous, erase the unpleasant. We blend the known with the unknown to create a picture of a more perfect world. That’s why nostalgia isn’t negative, nor does its ubiquity signal a culture that has given up and just wants to retreat to a quiet room with a book and blanket (though that sounds good, too). It’s hopeful, in a way. We are addle-brained and anxious, overwhelmed by apps, AI slop, and existential dread—but the fact that we long for things like grace, class, tranquility, clarity, optimism, and wild abandon proves just how much we need them. Spraying on a fragrance that closes a gap in time and brings those notions into the present doesn’t just make us feel better, it may be an Ariadne’s thread that can lead us out of the labyrinth. Something that guides us, as we move forward, to a better place. Because even when we can’t trust our own eyes, we can always trust our noses.

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