Green Notes Return to Fragrance as Crises Drive Scent Trends
Green notes are surging again as ecological and geopolitical crises mount, with Armani, Penhaligon's and Margiela launches signalling the shift, say perfumers and trend analysts.
Updated
The takeaway
- Green scents historically surge during environmental crises, from Chernobyl to COVID-19, according to perfumer and historian Alexandre Helwani.
- New launches carrying green notes include Giorgio Armani's I Will (violet leaf), Penhaligon's The Cut, Chloé's Atelier des Fleurs Sous les Pins and Martin Margiela's Tender Defiance.
- Today's green notes are softer than the galbanum-driven 1970s versions, blending with musks, wood, tea and trending matcha, per IFF's Françoise Guermeur.
Green scents surge in fragrance whenever the world faces environmental catastrophe — and today's launches prove the pattern is holding.
"In the 20th century, you see that green scents tend to surge whenever there are big environmental concerns or catastrophes," said Alexandre Helwani, a perfumer and perfume historian, citing the Chernobyl disaster as an example.
"It's an on-and-off trend, which rises every time that we have a crisis," agreed Pierre Bongert-Marlier, fragrance development director at DSM-Firmenich. "We've seen that crisis leads to olfactive answers."
The current answer spans Giorgio Armani's I Will, Penhaligon's The Cut, Chloé's Atelier des Fleurs Sous les Pins and Martin Margiela's Tender Defiance. All carry green, fresh, nature-evoking notes into a market otherwise dominated by gourmand and woody perfumes.
"This is about trying to connect with the renewing power of nature," said Julien Tauvel, a futurologist and cofounder of Imprudence, a future lab and creative studio.
The drivers are concrete. "Today, concerns around the climate, well-being and also urban living, digital overload, are driving consumers to seek a stronger connection with nature," said Françoise Guermeur, creative director of IFF's fine fragrance team. Green notes deliver freshness, authenticity, emotional comfort and an escape, she explained.
"Green fragrance — from nature — symbolizes the comeback to something original, honest, back to the roots," said Deborah Marino, deputy general manager of Publicis Luxe. She likened the phenomenon to returning to the primordial jungle or the Garden of Eden. "It's not just a trend," she said. "It is really an SOS when there's a preference for this kind of fragrance."
A cyclical history
Green notes first made a real showing in the 1970s, in perfumes such as Chanel No.19, Balmain's Vent Vert and Jacomo's Silences. Those scents projected a green leaf, sharp, crisp facet — the scent of cut stems, or galbanum — which stayed big through the '80s, according to Guermeur.
"It had this very vintage feeling," Bongert-Marlier said.
Olfactive trends mirror their eras. "The statement feminine fragrance of the '70s and '80s — Opium and Poison — coincided with women's entry into the workforce and public life post second-wave feminism, functioning as a kind of olfactory assertion," said Erica Moore, head of evaluation at Fragrances of the World.
After the 2008-09 financial crisis, comforting notes such as gourmands and vanilla emerged. The COVID-19 pandemic was another trigger. "What emerged wasn't a craving for earthy naturals so much as an appetite for comfort via skin-like cocooning notes of musk and nostalgic soft powdery florals," Moore said.
The new green is softer
Today's green fragrances do more than smell like cut grass. "Nowadays, they recreate the feeling of being immersed in nature," Guermeur said. "And we need that," she added.
The difference from the '70s is texture. Contemporary green notes are less sharp and more enveloping — softer, more luminous and sensual, blended with musks, wood and tea.
Matcha and tea are trending heavily on TikTok. "Everything that is associated with wellness, sophistication, modern luxury — like matcha, green tea, maté — are super key," Guermeur said. "We've seen a huge trend, especially in the niche segment, about matcha," Bongert-Marlier added.
Louis Vuitton's Tea Storm is infused with lemongrass and tea leaf. Bon Parfumeur's Riviera Absolue has notes of tomato leaf, black tea and caviar.
"There's also another trend around all what we call the 'botanical greens,'" Guermeur said. "It conveys freshness and vitality through raw materials such as basil, sage, shiso leaf and coriander."
Penhaligon's The Cut mixes raw materials from IFF's LMR Naturals with captive molecules that bring a vibrant green leafy natural effect and reinforce the natural raw material's feeling, according to Guermeur. Giorgio Armani's I Will draws its very green olfactive note from violet leaf — an ingredient unused this way for 30 or 40 years.
"We also see something very new," Bongert-Marlier said. "It's about those green aromatic, resinous notes that we haven't seen so far — eucalyptus, for example." L'Artisan Parfumeur's Abyssae L'Extrait contains this. "Eucalyptus was used in fugères in the '80s, but for masculinity and power [characteristics], not for naturality," he noted.
Green also twists with fruit. Gen Z and Gen Alpha respond to juicy fruit notes such as rhubarb, kiwi and green pear, which add a youthful, modern twist to scent, Guermeur explained. Forest woody green facets create immersive natural experiences: Maison Martin Margiela's Tender Defiance plays with pine. "It's very balmy, very woody, with fir, cypress and moss facets," she said.
For now, green notes appear mostly in niche fragrances and in combination with other olfactive facets, such as gourmands and woody structures. "Green can be twisted with almost everything," Guermeur said, noting the madeleine de Proust effect the notes carry. "And when you manage to reinvent them with another perspective, with a new modern vision…it brings something super interesting."
Source: WWD
Olivia Hart
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Senior reporter covering business strategy at Eurasian Beauty Journal.
