There's a bumper crop of fragrances featuring mushroom as a note at the moment, and if that sounds like a weird and wacky idea, you're not alone in raising an eyebrow. A fungus, in fragrant form? But wait, there’s magic to be found in these mushroom fragrances, and here’s why we love them...
WORDS: SUZY NIGHTINGALE
L’Entropiste Festin, with its notes of truffle, caviar, leather and oudh
Now, we’re fully aware that if you were to declare you’re wearing ‘a mushroom perfume’ at a party, for instance, you’d likely watch noses wrinkle in delighted horror. But here’s what you can tell your less fragrantly experimental friends: mushroom is far from a novelty act. Handled well (as in our five perfume picks of the crop, below), it brings a wonderful creamy, earthy quality to a composition – a soft, skin–close intimacy that grounds a scent and gives it deliciously mysterious depth. Think of it as the olfactory equivalent of pushing through damp leaves to find something marvellous growing in the shade.
So how do perfumers conjure it? You cannot, after all, squeeze a porcini into a perfume bottle. The magic may be cleverly built from aroma molecules: geosmin, the compound behind the smell of wet earth; octenol, a volatile compound naturally found in mushrooms, which offers a metallic, inky sharpness; and isobutyl quinoline, for that loamy, green–fungal edge. Truffle accords can be constructed with vetiver, castoreum and patchouli to replicate their buttery, animalic richness, while ambroxan or iso e super can be layered in to add a dewy shimmer or a soft, radiant diffusion that mimics mycelium's organic sprawl. It is meticulous illusionism, and exactly the kind of olfactory alchemy that excites our noses – using notes we’re familiar with, blended in such a way they create an entirely new scented scene when we wear them.
As to why we're seeing so many mushroom scents cropping up right now, the American fragrance showcase scentxplore observed even last year that mushroom-based fragrances were having a moment, and that it's more than just a trend: they tap into a craving for the earthy, the enigmatic, the alive. Perfumers have long used mushroom facets to bring depth and dimension, but today's compositions fully place fungi in the starring roles.
There's a broader 'shroom boom' at play, too, with adaptogenic mushrooms everywhere in skincare and wellness, and aesthetic movements like forest-core feeding our appetite for all things fungal. For perfume lovers who’ve perhaps fallen out of love with sterile, synthetic cleanliness; these notes hit a primal, raw chord, evoking damp soil, mossy groves and the wildness of nature, while gastronomy-inspired pairings such as mushroom, vanilla and truffle, and slightly sweetened woodiness, offer something genuinely novel for our noses to explore.
What's fascinating is the range of results. Some mushroom scents are literal to the point of illusion, so incredibly realistic it's as though you've just been foraging in autumn and returned with a trug full of nature's treasures. Others are wonderfully sophisticated interpretations, where unless you'd read the notes, you might not even recognise the mushroom – simply sensing a creamy earthiness that lends the whole composition more depth and nuance.
Here are five mushroom perfumes that prove the point, from the forest floor to the hothouse...
'If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise,' says Sarah Baker, and certainly the mushroom here is a glorious discovery as it blooms on the skin. Collaborating with the nose Miguel Matos, the result is deep, dark and earthy, with damp soil and mushrooms greeted by the refreshingly bright lift of lemon, while the dark greenery of cannabis and costus lurk underneath, waiting like a rainstorm about to break. Clouds of musk and vetiver swirl like the gathering dusk, and the incense and patchouli lend a groovy 1970s vibe to a fragrance that has ‘slipped through the cracks of time and place’. A total trip of a fragrance without the wooziness (unless you swoon at how gorgeous it is on your skin, of course. Which, to be fair, is likely).
£135 for 50ml eau de parfum sarahbakerperfumes.com
Before the dark, when a Scottish forest wakes: the light doesn't leave but lingers, held between the trees, and the ground softens as something stirs beneath it. That enchanted hour is captured here in a soft, earthy floral that opens with pink pepper – bright, uplifting and restless with possibility, sharpened by bergamot and piquant juniper berry. At its heart, tuberose absolute is tempered by iris butter, cool and powdery, while a mushroom accord gives texture as much as scent: soft suede, pale velvet; while the layered woodiness feels warm and enduring. The unusually high concentration of natural materials means their waxes and lipids don't fully dissolve, leaving a soft natural haze – a suitably magical touch – just as the finest single malts are bottled without chill filtration, the clarity sacrificed for body, velvety texture and a slowly transcendent reveal on skin. Truly exciting!
£150 for 50ml eau de parfum kingdomscotland.com
The eccentric maestro of the house, Alessandro Gualtieri, describes his creation as 'the result of a natural vital delirium, evoking a flourishing ecosystem of organic disobedience', and while we can't top that, we’ll attempt to explain. This fragrance features one of THE most realistic 'petrichor' (freshly rain-soaked earth) notes we've ever smelled, alongside fabulously loamy notes, wet bark and a comfortingly cushioning mossiness as it settles on skin. Altogether, this composition conjures a majestic, magical being wearing a cloak made of moonlight and stars, flitting through an ancient forest at midnight, gathering mushrooms in a moss-lined trug and disappearing into the night, leaving a sprinkle of stardust in their wake. If you've ever wanted to bottle the woodcut image of a folktale’s glamorous forest witch, here it is...
£130 for 30ml eau de parfum libertylondon.com
Inspired by Ancient Roman feasts, the mushroom note is less overt in this decadent scent, yet adds an important depth of creaminess that brings the whole composition together as one beautifully balanced whole. It opens with the dark, ripe flesh of blackberry, stirred by a creamy truffle accord and a saline touch of caviar; at the heart, shagreen leather stretches like a precious hide; then the base ignites as oudh entwines with ambergris. Intensely powerful and deliberately excessive, this is ‘the scent of one who dares’, the lingering trail of a moment when hedonistic desires become beauty captured in art. Outside, flames devour the city, but inside Nero's palace time has stood still: the feast overflows, gold-dusted mushrooms nestle amidst a banquet table groaning with goodies, dancers succumbing to sensuality until dawn…
£295 for 100ml eau de parfum saintecellier.com
Founder and perfumer Euan McCall takes the mushrooms out of the forest and into the hothouse, a ‘beacon amongst the green’. It opens unctuously with exotic, succulent fruitiness and the chewiness of just-zested citrus oils – grapefruit, orange, guava, honeysuckle, cucumber, pink pepper, magnolia and passionflower – a panoply of freshness creating the sense of ‘a fruit that you have never experienced before’, with the unique textural buttery/earthiness of the mushroom note buried within. Mushroom grounds the brightness and acts as a path to the deeper notes that lurk within the brilliance. So, as the fruitiness fades, tree moss absolute, mushroom, cedarwood, patchouli and soil reveal the earth beneath the bloom. For those who perhaps don’t want to bury their hands in soil and flit through a forest, and like their freshness with a hint of the still-humid greenhouse after dark. Still magical, but with less earth beneath your fingernails.
£96 for 30ml extrait de parfum jorumstudio.com
NB Always written by (award-winning!) humans, never AI.