Savory gourmands and quiet sillage: APAC brands challenge fragrance conventions

As Asian perfume brands gain global momentum, they’re bringing new storytelling codes, olfactive directions, and approaches to scaling. Among these Asian voices, Chinese and Korean brands are drawing the most attention: China for its scale; South Korea for its cultural influence, with perfume emerging as an extension of the K-beauty wave. Southeast Asian brands, however, remain largely unnoticed. Beneath that lack of visibility is an ecosystem of independent perfumers, niche brands, and organizations such as Thailand’s Creative Economy Agency (CEA) that is helping bring Southeast Asian perfumery onto the international stage. Many of these players are reaching consumers by building strong identities and emotional connections rather than leaning on elegance and social status. Their narratives subtly incorporate cultural heritage while carrying a broader global appeal. From durian to grilled rice, Asian brands reimagine gourmands At the Asia Perfume Show 2026, 20 fragrance brands from China and 25 from other parts of Asia, including Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and India, convened in Paris. From September 23 to 25, APAC brands spotlighted new olfactive territories through ingredients ranging from mango, rice, tea, and durian to lesser-known materials such as Thai Assam tea, which, once fermented, takes on an animalic, oud-like character. At the same time, familiar ingredients were reinterpreted for a global audience. Mango appeared green and sour, paired with chili, salt, or booze, as well as yellow and ripe, evoking Thai sticky rice or Hong Kong pomelo and sago desserts. Rice, meanwhile, took on a smoky, grilled character in Wren Atelier’s Smoky Gourmand, inspired by tupig, a charcoal-grilled Filipino sticky rice delicacy. The fragrance won the Asia Perfume Foundation’s 2025 Emerging Perfume Brand Award. Interestingly, gourmand scents in Asia are not just about comfort; they are increasingly becoming a vehicle for more nuanced expressions of identity and femininity. With a touch of bitterness in Cocoa Toffee, Chinese niche perfume brand Zhufu steps away from the “sweet and naïve” (傻白甜) scents popular with young Chinese women in favor of warmer, smokier notes. Voice From the Sky, another niche Chinese player, similarly brings unisex, woody olfactory codes into women’s fragrance through its fruity chypre Tough Berry. Western perfumery assumes that food naturally translates into a sweet gourmand. But in Asian cultures, where cooking draws on an abundance of spices and aromatic herbs, it can lead to savory gourmands, new fougères, or new chypres. This puts Asian brands at the forefront of this exploration, with tamarind soup sinigang, Thai smoky longan, and Vietnamese pho among the new directions emerging from this region. Expanding what performance can mean While the fragrance industry largely focuses on projection, longevity, and sillage, Asian players are exploring a different set of standards: umami, restrained sweetness, and fugitive beauty. As the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi teaches, imperfection, subtlety, and transience can be sources of beauty in themselves. Haku-To by Liberta Perfume celebrates the Shimizu white peach from Okayama, emphasizing its almost weightless texture rather than its refined sweetness. Working with a peach farm, the in-house perfumer captured a unique white peach extract from the skin and paired it with iris to evoke the fruit’s smooth texture. He then built a base of suede, musk, and saffron, extending that delicacy into a hushed, silky sillage. The success of Korea’s Pesade and Indonesia’s Alchemist Fragrance further suggests that soft-toned scents with a quiet reserve can find an audience. At the other end of the spectrum, Indian maximalist culture crystallizes projection and sillage differently from Middle Eastern perfumery. Sasva’s Gourmand Bazaar fragrances, inspired by chai and barfi, build their sillage on milky, spicy, warm tobacco notes rather than oud. In Thailand, Prin Lomros, a two-time winner of the Art and Olfaction Awards, defies the cliché of soft, discreet Asian perfumery with a very animalic and intense approach. Western fragrance culture historically developed around abstract compositions, a heritage so ingrained that it implicitly shapes how fragrance is perceived. By contrast, Asian perfumery often captures notes such as cucumber and tea with remarkable realism, preserving their natural nuances rather than abstracting them. This should not be dismissed as a sign of an immature industry but understood as a different olfactive philosophy. Beyond cultural identity That said, Asian brands should not be limited by their cultural or national identities. Borntostandout demonstrates how global relevance can come from creative freedom rather than cultural prescription. Jun Lim created Borntostandout in 2022, observing that no Korean brand had yet taken perfumery onto the global stage. Backed by Bold, L’Oréal’s corporate venture capital fund, the brand has since entered Sephora US and more than 80 markets. Yet Lim refuses the Korean label, crediting his growth to the freedom to create without fitting within a predetermined cultural template. What this means for Western brands With just a whiff, Asian perfume brands can transport consumers to Tibet, the Philippines, or Bombay. Yet their greatest contribution may be expanding the industry’s scope of possibilities. What may look like an emerging scene is, in China, already on its fourth generation of fragrance brands, each busy reinventing itself. As global tastes become increasingly homogenized, brands from East to West will need to reinvent themselves faster to keep pace with what consumers are eager to discover. The Western brands that maintain their edge will be those able to grasp their intercultural blind spots and develop a stronger command of this new cartography of taste.

Sectors

Insights

Company

Savory gourmands and quiet sillage: APAC brands challenge fragrance conventions