Can K-beauty make fragrance its next global export?

“What we need is not more Korean perfume. We need more perfume brands from Korea with a real point of view,” says Jun Lim, the founder of Borntostandout, the Seoul-based fragrance label that has built a cult following among fragrance enthusiasts from Paris to New York. Lim’s statement captures the gist of a growing industry discussion about the viral fame and future of Korean fragrance. Just as K-fragrance is stepping onto the world stage, its global expansion is being studied with fascination — and not a small dose of anxiety. Lim, an ex-banker and self-proclaimed “rebel against standards,” is no stranger to contrarian views and international controversies. He ruffled some feathers at the most recent Esxence art perfumery exhibition in Milan with a provocative rendition of the Last Supper, recasting the iconic farewell dinner of Jesus and his disciples as a parody coffee and pastry social set against a vermilion-red backdrop. Some saw it as a way to highlight the launch of the brand’s latest product range, a fine fragrance coffee collection. But Lim says it was “to rebel against elitism in all categories.” “Perfume is our first language, but I do not want it to be our only language,” he tells Jing Daily. “We want to enter more parts of people’s lives without losing the reason they cared about us in the first place.” “The goal is not to become a lifestyle brand that sells everything. It is to become a lifestyle brand with a strong point of view, a point of view that inspires and resonates,” he adds. K-beauty enters its next chapter A strong point of view is exactly what K-fragrance brands need as international consumers discover and embrace them at surprising speed. In the UK alone, TikTok Shop searches for K-beauty jumped 125% in 2025, according to NielsenIQ. British retailer Boots said earlier this year that a K-beauty product is sold in its shops every 11 seconds. As K-beauty brands flood international markets and saturation increases, a compelling point of difference and emotional value are becoming increasingly essential to building resonance and lasting connections with consumers. “Skincare established South Korea’s credibility for clinical innovation, efficacy, and formulation discipline,” says Elisabetta Borghi, partner for beauty, fashion, and retail at consulting firm Amati&Associates. “Fragrance is the natural evolutionary next step: it transitions the narrative from functional beauty to emotional and identity-driven luxury.” South Korean cosmetics exports hit a record $11.43 billion in 2025, a 12.3% increase from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. This milestone has propelled the country ahead of the U.S. as the world’s second-largest beauty exporter globally, behind only France. But it was fragrance that showed the strongest export growth with a 46.2% year-on-year rise to roughly $60 million. While still a small share of South Korea’s overall beauty exports, K-fragrance has emerged as an inspiring player in regional markets and beyond, driven by its aesthetic leadership. K-fragrance sells more than scent For Gen Z and millennials in Western and Middle Eastern markets, who have been experiencing olfactory fatigue from overpriced, heavy, traditional Western perfumery, K-fragrance fills a whitespace, explains Borghi. “It offers skin scents (intimate notes) and atmospheric accords — hinoki wood, green tea, rice wine, and damp earth — that focus on personal wellness, quiet luxury, and spatial storytelling rather than pure seduction or projection,” she says. Korean olfactory culture of subtlety and unobtrusive scent profiles is just one reason that K-fragrance has resonated with international consumers, notes Sungju Hong, Korea project manager at Asia Cosme Lab, a Paris-based consulting agency that specializes in Asian beauty markets. “Korean fragrance brands are selling much more than just perfume,” Hong says. “Brands such as Tamburins, Nonfiction, and Borntostandout are built around aesthetics, storytelling, concepts, and immersive brand experiences. Rather than focusing solely on the scent, they express the brand’s artistic vision through experiences that engage all the senses.” At Pitti Fragranze in Florence, Borntostandout built a striking, fortress-like installation in blood red, evoking the silhouette of Ponte Vecchio as a localized expression of the brand’s anti-conformist spirit. Uniform cream-colored perfume bottles lined the crimson walls like guards, reinforcing the brand’s rebellious identity. Tamburins, another cult-favorite Korean fragrance brand, has built its olfactory identity by leveraging the retail network of its sister company Gentle Monster. Through conceptual art installations and visual storytelling collections, it elevates fragrance and personal care products to artifacts. Rewriting the rules of niche Defying its “niche” label, K-fragrance brands are choosing not to focus on art perfumery alone. Instead, they are engaging with as many aspects of consumers’ lives as possible. Their collections span perfumes, extraits, fragrance tags, hand creams, body care, lip balms, and even luxury oral care products. In May, Borntostandout launched an unconventional line of fine fragrance-infused specialty coffees, pledging to return coffee to its true taste. Developed in partnership with perfume manufacturer Mane, the collection infuses single-origin Brazilian coffee beans with aromatic perfume compositions to create intriguing blends such as Dolce Rosso (inspired by wine), Crème Coco, and Durian Custard. It premiered in Milan as another subversive nod to the city’s coffee culture. The brand has plans to extend its luxury fragrances into daily essentials, such as laundry detergents, and elevate daily personal care routines. Meanwhile, Pesade and Saranghaeyo, two Seoul-based niche fragrance brands with international ambitions, are translating minimalist Korean aesthetics into olfactory experiences. Pesade focuses on elevating the everyday, encouraging consumers to see familiar moments from a new perspective. Saranghaeyo takes a more memory-driven approach, translating specific places and moments into scents designed to evoke emotion. Can K-fragrance follow skincare’s global rise? These K-fragrance brands are now beginning to take their first steps outside Asia. In April, Pesade opened its first flagship boutique in Europe in Milan, presenting its collection of perfumes, body care, and home fragrances. Borntostandout is now available in many heritage retailers in Europe, from Harrods to Samaritaine, with bespoke scents created exclusively for these luxury destinations. L’Oréal signaled its backing for K-fragrance by announcing an investment in Borntostandout last year to support its international expansion. “The Korean fragrance market has been dominated by clean, minimal, and universally appealing scents,” says Hong. “Borntostandout expanded that landscape by introducing a much stronger sense of individuality and creative expression. I also believe its success has encouraged more Korean fragrance brands with stronger, more distinctive identities.” Lim, however, is dismissive of the recent hype surrounding K-fragrance. “The K-prefix is useful for marketing, but it can also become a very small box,” he says. “There is no single Korean fragrance style, and there should not be. Yes, many brands share a similar vocabulary. Clean, quiet, poetic, tasteful, safe. Sometimes so safe that you forget what you smelled.” K-fragrance is the latest K-wave to emerge from South Korea, admired for its cultural exports and emulated for its soft power. Korean dramas, films, beauty, and food have dominated social media since the 1990s. The critically acclaimed Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition in London in 2022, which explored the origins and success of the Korean wave, or Hallyu, was such a commercial triumph that it set off on an international tour, spanning from Boston to Canberra. Sung Soo Kim, founder of niche perfumery brand Saranghaeyo, recalls how global interest in K-beauty and K-culture inspired his own concept. When creating the brand in 2020, he registered Saranghaeyo, which means “I love you” in Korean, as its name, confident that its meaning would carry across borders alongside the K-wave. K-culture opened the door, but brands must do the rest While K-fragrance may have relied on South Korea’s soft power to build international prestige quickly, this is not the real root of its success. Cultural affinity alone doesn’t sustain a luxury market. “As with K-beauty, I think the true driver of the K-fragrance surge is creative velocity and immersive retail design,” says Borghi. “K-culture opens the door, but Korea’s mastery of physical-digital retail architecture is what keeps international consumers coming back.” Hong takes a similar stance. “While some Korean fragrance brands have increased their visibility by collaborating with K-pop idols and hiring them as brand ambassadors, I think the real momentum comes from the brands themselves — their distinctive aesthetics, storytelling, and the immersive experiences they create,” she argues. Behind what may appear as organic expansion for South Korea’s beauty and fragrance businesses lies a deliberate and layered government support system, one that Borghi likens to China’s efforts to accelerate the expansion of its manufacturing sector. South Korea’s government recognizes that much of K-beauty’s success stems from its distinctive ecosystem. Small brands can develop a product and rely on sophisticated Korean original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) to formulate and produce it quickly. The country is now deliberately extending the industrial-policy model behind K-beauty into underdeveloped beauty categories, including perfume and home fragrance. In November 2025, the government introduced new programs targeting perfume and home fragrance SMEs, alongside a KRW 40 billion ($28 million) K-beauty fund, dedicated K-beauty policy loans, and voucher programs to support overseas market activations. C-fragrance vs. K-fragrance With many niche Chinese fragrance brands already establishing a strong foothold in the domestic market, the question is whether C-fragrance can replicate K-fragrance’s international success. “C-fragrance doesn’t have that exact pop-cultural export tailwind (as South Korea), but it possesses something equally powerful: unparalleled domestic market scale and profound Eastern cultural heritage,” Borghi shares. “While K-fragrance scales internationally through viral global agility, C-fragrance will likely build enormous enterprise value domestically first, establishing a strong luxury positioning before selective, high-end global expansion into capitals like New York City, Paris, London, Milan, and Dubai,” she concludes. Antoaneta Becker is the director for consumer economy at the China-Britain Business Council. She is a China brand strategist, working with fragrance, beauty and luxury brands to support their entry and growth in the most dynamic consumer market.

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Can K-beauty make fragrance its next global export?

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