I Interviewed Over a Dozen Teens About Fragrances. They Want These Scents As Gifts.
Brett, a 15-year-old who lives in Washington, bought his first fragrance the summer before eighth grade on a recommendation from a friend. He wore the now-discontinued bottle from Pacsun for All for about a year. “Then I started seeing videos on TikTok about how if you want to have better hygiene, you have to invest in yourself and get fragrances,” he told me. “I started looking up what fragrances I should get, and I went down this rabbit hole.” He came out of it with four new colognes — Yves Saint Laurent Y Eau de Parfum, Emporio Armani Stronger With You Intensely, Valentino Born in Roma Coral Fantasy, and Versace Dylan Blue — all of which are favorites on #PerfumeTok. Two years after he bought the Pacsun scent, Brett started his own TikTok account dedicated to his fragrance collection, which now includes 11 bottles, with several more on his wish list. He’s among the growing number of teens going all in on their signature scent.
Gen Z’s fascination with fragrance is nothing new. Tweens made headlines back in 2024 for raiding the Sol de Janeiro displays at Sephora (and, famously, Drunk Elephant’s too), and in 2025, The Cut reported that the main target of the perfume industry is Gen Z. We’ve since seen teens popularize the terms “smellmaxxing” (enhancing your own scent) and “scent layering” (combining scented lotions with perfumes and other fragrances). This all compounds into holiday wish lists that might just be harder to parse than ever — at least when it comes to fragrance.
So if you’re a parent who just received a wish list packed with bottles from LoveShackFancy, Billie Eilish, and Kayali (or Valentino, YSL, and Armani, for the boys), it might feel impossible to know where to start. To help make sense of the requests — and to understand what to buy and what to skip — I chatted with over a dozen teens about the scents they wear every day and are hoping to receive this holiday season. Below, everything I learned.
The girls are making high-school hallways smell like marshmallows and vanilla.
They were raised on Sol de Janeiro’s salted-caramel “62” body mist, and as they’ve grown older, their tastes haven’t shifted much. “I love sweet scents. Sweet, feminine, girly,” 18-year-old Ellie Carpenter from the U.K. says, and over in Florida, 17-year-old Kamila agrees. “I do gravitate toward those sweet scents, especially now since we’re reaching the fall and winter,” she says. The boys notice it too: “The note that I smell the most in classrooms is vanilla, and that’s because the girls shower themselves in vanilla,” says 21-year-old Jason Lagos. They’re spritzing fragrances from Kayali, Billie Eilish, and LoveShackFancy (more on those later), but they’ve also leveled up their Sol de Janeiro: 16-year-old Naomi from Canada has the eau de parfum version of the famous 62 mist on her holiday wish list.
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A viral-on-TikTok brand named Kayali is at the top of everyone’s list.
Perhaps the most asked-for scents are a couple of gourmand fragrances from Kayali called Yum Boujee Marshmallow and Vanilla 28. “I mostly just see influencers talk about it, saying it’s really good, so that has influenced me into wanting to buy it,” Ellie told me. “People say that it smells like straight vanilla extract, so I’m really intrigued.”
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But they haven’t forgotten about Glossier.
No one seems to know how to describe the different-on-everyone scent, but Glossier’s signature You fragrance is still a staple in three of the teens’ scent wardrobes, especially for school. “It’s very soft and subtle, so it’s not overpowering,” Kamila says. “A lot of people compliment it just because it smells more natural, rather than a more pungent, powerful scent that can often trigger allergies.”
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Glossier You Duo
LoveShackFancy scents are just as much décor as they are a fragrance.
Has any brand done as many collaborations this year as LoveShackFancy? Gracie, 15, from Oklahoma sleeps in its bedding (a collaboration with Pottery Barn) and has one of the LoveShackFancy Lola Blankets on her wish list. She first bought the brand’s Secret Crush perfume as a decoration piece for her room. “Then I was like, Okay, well, it smells really good too. It’s just perfect,” she told me. Gracie, like many other girls I chatted with, has the brand’s vanilla Secret Crush perfume. “They’re not crazy expensive, but also you don’t need a lot of product for it to smell very strong, so they last a while,” says 17-year-old Camryn, who has Secret Crush and a summery fragrance called Love on the Beach on her wish list.
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The pop girlies are winning the fragrance race, too.
Billie Eilish’s vanilla eau de parfum and Ariana Grande’s floral Mod Blush were favorites last year, and they were still popular with most of the girls I chatted with. There’s also a new contender from Tate McRae that’s fresh and woody, with notes of bergamot, sage, and amber — a rare non-vanilla scent for Gen Z. It’s been out for only a month, and it’s already one of the top-ten most requested gifts on Giftful, teens’ favorite wish-list-making app.
Victoria’s Secret and PINK fragrance mists are back.
Like many an aughts item, Victoria’s Secret’s perfume mists are back on wish lists this year. While the fruity-floral Love Spell was the pick of the ’00s, now it’s another vanilla scent, Bare Vanilla, that teens are coveting. (It’s another regular on Giftful’s “Top 100 Trending”.) Other favorites include the passion-fruit-forward and vanilla body spray called Warm and Cozy and the sweet and floral Tease eau de parfum.
It’s hard to go wrong with fragrances from other mall brands, too.
Fragrances from Altar’d State and Pacsun also came up in my conversations. Fifteen-year-old Kristen from Minnesota is most intrigued by Altar’d State’s Sunkissed body mist, which smells like coconut and vanilla. “A few of my friends have some of their scents, and I always notice that it smells really good,” she says.
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Target’s beauty bet is working — at least on teens who are curious about fragrance.
Most of the time, teens aren’t buying fragrances directly from the brand. Sephora is, unsurprisingly, one of their favorite places to shop for and sniff new fragrances, but they’re also going to Target, which recently launched its Beauty Studio, a “destination for what’s new, now and next in beauty” — including fragrance. “I feel like every time I’m there, there’s always something new or something I’ve heard about, so I like to try them out sometimes, and I feel like for the most part they’re really good,” says Kristen. When they shop there, teens are buying fragrances from Frenshe, EOS, Athena Club, and Dossier.
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Compared to Kayali's vanilla, this one is less rich and more natural, according to Kristen.
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Eos's take on vanilla reminds Naomi of vanilla yogurt.
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Brett pairs this body lotion with the fresher colognes he owns.
But many shop at discount retailers to afford their scent wardrobe, too.
Just last month, Brett got a bottle of Valentino’s Born in Roma Uomo Extradose for $115 — rather than $190 — on Aura Fragrances. It’s one of the many discount retailers that teens regularly shop at to afford their fragrance wardrobes. Some of the teens I chatted with mentioned others — like Beauty House, Arvella Fragrance, and Fragrance.Net — but the discounts don’t mean they’re buying blind. “You go into these fragrance stores and they’re helping you out like, Oh what do you want to smell? What do you want to buy? But you’re just there to smell it to make sure that you like it, so that you can buy it online,” Lagos says.
Dupes are okay (depending on who you ask).
Dupes — especially those from Dossier — came up with a couple of the girls I chatted with. (The brand’s ambery vanilla scent — you guessed it — is a favorite.) It was the boys, though, that have been experimenting with a long list of brands specializing in what many of the teens called “inspired-by fragrances.” Jay, 15, owns about 40 dupes and says, “It’s just an easy way to expand your taste.” There are several TikTok famous dupe brands, including Mykonos, which Jay says is so good the scents often sell out instantly, and Rayhaan, whose most famous scent is a dupe of Creed’s Virgin Island Water. According to Eduardo, a 17-year-old fragrance head from Florida, the dupes just keep getting better. “And they’re getting faster,” too, he says. “Parfums De Marly Althair Exclusif came out like a couple weeks ago. I’m already seeing dupes for it.”
Still, not everyone is pro-dupe. Whenever Lagos makes videos about dupe fragrances, he says people call him a “dupe demon.” Sixteen-year-old Liam, who recently started his own perfume brand, is staunchly against them. “I feel that dupes almost take away from the hobby and undermine people’s hard work by just copying them and selling them at a lower price tag.”
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Ellie saves this Dossier perfume for fancier events, such as a nice dinner.
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Eduardo says this is one of his favorite fragrances (plus Diptyque's Eau Duelle and Prada L'Homme).
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"People say it smells identical to a fragrance called Parfums de Marly Althair," Jay says.
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"It's a dupe of Louis Vuitton Afternoon Swim," Jay says. "It just smells like a very juicy orange."
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Brett recommends the Khadlaj island line for teenage boys just getting into fragrance.
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When Eduardo wears this apple-y fragrance, he says it lasts up to 14 hours.
But it’s the designer scents at the top of most guys’ wish lists.
For teens like Liam who go for the real deal, it’s all about the big four: Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Emporio Armani. Almost like clockwork, just about every teenage boy I interviewed mentioned at least one fragrance from each of the fragrance houses. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Shoop says that Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male Elixir, an amber-forward fragrance with notes of lavender and tonka bean, is the most well-known fragrance among teenage boys right now. Based on my conversations with teens, I don’t doubt that to be true, but I also heard about YSL’s Y eau de parfum, Armani’s Stronger With You Intensely, and Valentino’s Born in Roma Coral Fantasy more times than I can count. (Some girls, like Kristen, like the feminine version of Valentino’s Born in Roma, too.)
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It has notes of mint, lavender, and vanilla, but Brett says the mint and honey notes are strongest.
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Yves Saint Lauren Myself eau de parfum is another favorite.
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"This smells like Christmas in a bottle," Jay says. "It has cinnamon, vanilla, and toffee."
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"It's a very safe scent," Jackson says, and every time he stops into Sephora, he smells it.
Everyone is layering scents and making fragrance hybrids.
There’s a smellmaxxing aspect to fragrance layering, but there’s also a practical reason for doing it: “Moisturizing is the most important thing to do before you put on a fragrance,” Lagos says. “I like to moisturize to just give better projection and better longevity to my fragrance.” He and Brett both use lotions from EOS, which are also popular with the girls.
For girls, though, scent layering includes complementary body mists, hair perfumes, body washes, body lotions, and sometimes even leave-in conditioners. Some teens, like Kristen and 17-year-old Jordan, put on scented lotion after every shower to complement whatever fragrance they plan to wear the next day. Jordan says, “Sometimes I don’t know what people are complimenting me on because I layer a lot of my scents.”
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Kamila has this hair and body mist on her wish list. "It's very sweet, sort of creamy and milky."
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She's also asking for this hair perfume whose sweet scent she's hoping to wear this winter.
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Camryn sprays this into her hairbrush and pairs it with the St. Barts leave-in conditioner.
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Kristen pairs this body wash with the matching body lotion and fragrance mist.
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"It says 24-hour lotion, and I truly believe that," Jordan says. She uses this one and Love Letter.
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Even when Lagos uses this unscented lotion, he says his perfumes smell stronger and last longer.
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