In Beauty Freak, a column for Highsnobiety, Sable Yong explores how the culture of beauty impacts our lives.
The most expensive fragrance I ever bought was La Selle, an extrait oil from Byredo’s 2016 Night Veils collection. La Selle was a rich, heady leather scent with cashmeran, tobacco, and black tea. When applied, it was smooth and buttery — not sweet but certainly very inviting. And it would last for days on skin. Friends said they could tell where I’d been because my scent would linger (in a good way).
I first came across La Selle as a sample, which I nursed for as long as I could. Then, on the occasion of a new job in 2017, I decided it was time to splurge. I was aware that Byredo fragrances ran about $250 at the time and assumed that La Selle would be similar, if not slightly higher, in price. When the Byredo salesperson told me it was $500, I all but retreated into the shrubbery, Homer Simpson-style. After mumbling something like, “Oh my bad, too rich for my blood,” the salesperson offered me her half-off employee discount. It occurred to me much later that she might have been flirting, or maybe she simply knew a lifer when she saw one.
Little did I know then that, a decade later, a $500 price tag would be closer to the norm for luxury fragrances — extrait or not. (Extraits — or extracts, en anglais — are highly concentrated perfumes, typically upwards of 30% oil concentration, although there’s no standard percentage. But it does make them more expensive.) Brands such as Byredo, Le Labo, Frederic Malle, and Diptyque have spent the past 20-ish years pioneering the “niche” or “artisanal” luxury fragrance category (I use quotes because these are marketing, not technical, terms). Their distinct branding and olfactive styles wooed people away from department-store perfume counters by offering something more unique and more easily gatekept. Now, in an Uno “reverse” move, traditional designer brands are looking to mimic the success of these niche makers — with their own heritage and IP attached. And buyers are eating (sniffing?) it up.
We all know that beauty divisions keep the lights on for fashion houses, and perfume is often what makes them profitable. More people can afford luxury fashion brands on their dressers than in their wardrobes. Chanel’s small classic flap bag will run you $11,300, but a bottle from its Les Exclusifs fragrance collection starts at $335. With the luxury fragrance industry valued at an estimated $27 billion this year, it makes sense that no one wants to leave money on the table. (The global fragrance market is projected to be worth up to $89.4 billion by 2033 — a potential lifeline amid waning luxury sales.)
For a fashion house, each fragrance release is another avenue for artistic storytelling — and profit. So, instead of doubling down on existing lines — like Loewe’s Botanical Garden collection or Maison Margiela’s Replica series — many houses are launching new, ultra-luxury, ultra-exclusive collections. This fall, Loewe’s Crafted Collection released five new scents developed by in-house perfumer Nuria Cruelles. The product certainly seems luxe: The resinous, amber-y scents are bottled in thick, bubbled glass that looks hand-molded. The cap is carved stone embossed with the Loewe logo. They feel more special and artisanal than Loewe’s non-Crafted Collection fragrances. So why shouldn’t they be roughly double the price ($395, compared to the $210 eau de parfums)?
The same goes for other brands. Balenciaga dropped its high perfumery collection, consisting of 10 fragrances, in September 2025. This September, they introduced three new scents — “The Extraits” — to their portfolio, noting in the press release how the artfully blended premium ingredients are representative of the house’s approach to craftsmanship. Balenciaga’s parfums are $320 a bottle, and the extraits are $395 each. Not too drastic a difference. For other houses, like Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the margin between formulas is a bit wider: a 70 mL bottle of the popular Baccarat Rouge 540 eau de parfum is $360, and the extrait version of the same scent is $495.
Hermès is another fashion house with multiple fragrance “franchises,” the most exclusive of which is their Hermessence line. In-house perfumer Christine Nagel “creates with absolute freedom,” she emphasized in a media appointment at Hermès’s HQ recently. It was a visit to the Hermès stables that prompted Nagel to create Paddock, a limited-edition release fragrance encapsulating the annual Saut Hermès equestrian event. It’s deeply earthy and leathery with elements of grass, carrot, hay, and even manure (in an exquisite way, believe me). It’s arguably the brand’s most Hermès fragrance and can only be found in Hermès boutiques and on some regional websites for for €350. That is, if it isn’t sold out.
Not unlike a superhero movie franchise, there really are no limits to ultra-luxe fragrance world-building. Maison Margiela’s popular Replica line, for instance, has been around since 2012; each scent has a title, a year, and a place to suggest a real-life memory. But this past May, Margiela released a new Haute Parfumery collection called Scentsorium: six fragrances as chapters that represent complex human emotions. The perfume’s ingredients “were cauterized and incised to reach the edge of extraction…to mirror the construction of a couture piece,” Sandrine Groslier, L’Oréal’s global president of Luxe Fragrance Brands, told Cultured. She compared the process to décortiqué, a peeling back of layers to reveal the internal structure. I attended the Scentsorium presentation earlier this year and can confirm that the scents pair familiar notes with metallic, singed, and jagged elements. Their unique refinement is gorgeous and definitely not the kind of thing you’d expect to find at a Macy’s counter.
The way these products are talked about is different, too. Traditionally, Big Perfume communicated via a sexy celebrity on a billboard with a designer name emblazoned below. Slow-motion vignettes of famous people starring in what were essentially arthouse short films were all in service of ensnaring your dollars at the Duty Free. Perhaps you’ve seen the 2012 Chanel ad in which Brad Pitt monologues what sounds like his morning pages, eventually uttering the phrase “Chanel No. 5.” For a long time, you didn't need to make sense to make billions in perfume. You just needed an A-lister. These newer releases do feel more considered, or at least closer to the idea of designer artistry. It’s gratifying to see houses actually work to offer a unique point of view or an emotional hook — because isn’t that what we’re really paying for? Sure, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but the black rose concentrate in Margiela’s Anguish And Awe smells like straight-up yearning.
Sadly for my own purposes, Byredo eventually discontinued the La Selle oil extrait, only to relaunch it as an extrait de parfum called Sellier, which was discontinued and then released again as Cuir Sellier. When I sampled it in this new form, the scent was similar if a bit watered down — literally. It’s still part of the extraits collection but as a traditional spray-on formula, not the oil.
That experience alone was a reminder that luxury can be, in this case, literally liquid. The product morphs to fulfill a need — for the maker and the consumer — and it can change just as quickly. To wonder about the state of perfume requires a deeper understanding of all the things perfume is supposed to be: an expression of identity or taste; a sensorial fantasy or a form of mood regulation; a commercial product with incredibly high margins or a material expression of a brand’s essence. Which is to say: For certain people, it’s worth a whole lot.
