Troye Sivan’s Fragrance Line Is So Much Better Than Most Celebrity Perfume
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A few years ago, I embarked on a quest to sniff every modern iteration of the celebrity perfume. A new vanguard of A-list Gen-Zers was dipping their toes into the fragrance space, and the shelves at Sephora and Ulta were lined with scents from Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, and Sabrina Carpenter. But overall, I wasn’t impressed. All the scents hewed closely to the standard formula designed for mass-market appeal, which is to say: gourmand, gourmand, gourmand.Eilish’s eau de parfumis a bomb of vanilla, sugar, and musk; Grande has released around 30 scents to date, all containing notes likemarshmallow,macaron,cream, andcoconut; and Carpenter’s line is literally namedSweet Tooth, with bottles shaped like candy bars.
So I was pleasantly surprised by Troye Sivan’s Tsu Lange Yor. Perhaps it’s the fact that Sivan is Australian rather than American, or that he came up through YouTube instead of the Hollywood machine, or that he genuinely has great taste, as evidenced by hisArchitectural Digesttour. But it was clear from the start that Sivan had no intention of following the usual celebrity perfume playbook.
Tsu Lange Yor — a Yiddish phrase that translates to “to long and good years” — officially launched in 2023 with three fragrances: TLY 5755, Luca, and Pool. TLY 5755 is a warm, peppery blend with notes of vetiver and cashmeran. Luca is woody yet floral, with notes of bergamot and clary sage. And Pool, which turned out to be my favorite of those first three, is a green, aquatic, spicy concoction that reminds of me swimming in a suburban southern California backyard. They were by far the best, most interesting, and most sophisticated of the celebrity perfumes I sniffed — plus they came in fun, sculptural bottles that would look very nice displayed on a vanity.
In 2025, the brand added three more scents — Sala, By Your Side, and Sage’s Rose — as well as a line of candles and burner oils. But with so many goings-on in the fragrance world, the brand had slipped off my radar until recently, when I was hanging out at a friend’s place and she pulled out the latest release for me to try. The Garden Set launched earlier this year and contains three scents: Tomato, Fig, and Orange Grove. All three are quite photorealistic — meaning they’re not so much an artful blend of many notes and ingredients, but instead smack you in the face with exactly what they are. I love fresh, earthy, “just pulled from the dirt” scents, so I’d be perfectly willing to just wear them on their own, but the website says they’re designed for layering and personalization, which makes a lot of sense: I think they’d work well to create more complexity for a straightforwardly fruity perfume or give an extra boost to a perfume’s green or floral element.
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Intrigued, I set out to smell any Tsu Lange Yor scents I hadn’t yet tried. Because the brand is based in Australia, it can be tricky to find in stores, though it’s available online at theTsu Lange Yor websiteas well as retailers likeNordstrom,Revolve, andAnthropologie. In New York, it’s only carried IRL at Aedes and the Nordstrom flagship. So I stopped by the latter to try two of the three scents that were launched last year, By Your Side and Sala. (Sadly, Sage’s Rose was out of stock when I went.) By Your Side was a little too smoky and dry for my taste — it’s quite incense-y and woody with a pink pepper note. But I really liked Sala: It’s wet and grassy and verdant, opening with a green, resinous galbanum note and drying down to orchid and musk. While I was there I also discovered the brand’s very delightfultooth-shaped oil burner, a true objet d’art.
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Tsu Lange Yor’s elevated scents, stylish branding, hand-cast accessories: It’s all consistent with what I’d expect from a niche, independent fragrance house, definitely not a celebrity line. If you’re ever looking for a gift for the perfume snob in your life, Tsu Lange Yor is worth a sniff.
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