If you read Highsnobiety, you likely know what Burberry or Tom Ford’s Fall/Winter 2024 runway shows looked like. But do you know what they smelled like?
At Fashion Month, a fragrant trend joined the crush of food-shaped handbags and shades of green: scented runway shows. An increasing number of luxury fashion labels are collaborating with fragrance brands to perfume their Fashion Week events, augmenting the visual and aural spectacle of a catwalk with an olfactive element.
While fragranced fashion collaborations have recently gained traction, brands have long recognized the power of scent. Since the late ‘90s, labels including Bill Blass, Prabal Gurung, Rodarte, and Thakoon have incorporated perfume into their runway shows. Luxury hotels often have “signature scents” — Le Labo, for example, has created custom scents for The Standard and the Gramercy Park Hotel.
Even banks use scent marketing to forge positive associations with their services. And we’d be remiss not to mention Abercrombie & Fitch’s famously smelly flagship stores, where employees once sprayed every surface with the brand’s signature Fierce cologne — a particularly recognizable example of scent augmenting a clothing brand’s marketing efforts.
The art of scenting strategy has endured. At New York Fashion Week last month, Parfums de Marly’s Haltane — a woody, aromatic offering — scented nearly every aspect of Willy Chavarria’s runway show, from the venue (Brooklyn’s Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse) to the models themselves.
“We chose [Haltane] because it’s sexy, warm, and inviting,” Chavarria said in a statement. “It’s a masculine fragrance with a nostalgic futurism. Sensuality reflective of the Willy Chavarria ethos.”
Burberry also used fragrance to reflect its design ethos. Perfumer H’s Ivy — a musky rose — permeated Burberry’s FW24 show space, a gigantic tent erected in Victoria Park. The fragrance, reminiscent of a traditional English garden, was fitting for a collection awash with quintessentially British style references, from trench coats to tartan.
The scented runway traveled to Milan, too, manifesting at Tom Ford’s moody, sexy show augmented by the equally sexy Vanilla Sex — a recent offering from Tom Ford’s own fragrance line.
Brands did more than just scent their runways. At NYFW, emerging designer Jane Wade collaborated with Hawthorne on a co-branded shoulder bag reimagining the Dopp kit. The duo also came up with a particularly Instagram-worthy “ice purse,” a rectangular ice sculpture with three Hawthorne perfumes suspended inside.
“Like personal style, fragrance can become signature to the wearer,” Wade, who launched her eponymous brand in 2022, tells Highsnobiety. Phil Wong, Hawthorne co-founder, elaborates on the fashion-fragrance connection: “[Hawthorne has] always viewed fragrance as both the foundation and finishing touch to your outfit — the journey from external validation to internal celebration. When you’re wearing a fragrance, using eye cream, or styling your hair with clay, you’re defining your shape and the space around you, similar to articles of clothing… You shift the context around you.”
For fashion brands, scent doesn’t just open new creative avenues — it also poses financial opportunities. “Providing a 360-degree experience is paramount to invite guests into the world of fashion and fragrance,” says Parfums de Marly’s President of the Americas, Yvan Jacqueline. “This ‘re-enchantment’ through sight, sound, and smell helps foster emotional links with consumers that will trigger a purchase, forge a connection, and establish loyalty with the brand.”
So the next time you find yourself at a flashy fashion event — or perhaps just paying a visit to your local ATM — take a deep breath in. Smell that?
