On The Scent… of NEWS: our round-up of fragrant excitement. (And trust us: getting lost never smelled so good.)
To bring you ‘On The Scent’s regular round-up of events, campaigns, pop-ups and other excitement, we’re pleased to introduce as our newshound Amanda Carr, writer, trend-spotter and Barnes Fragrance Fair founder, who’ll keep your finger on the pulse of all things fragrant
Flâner - getting lost never smelled so good
Flâner co-founder Mary Fox hand-filling bottles at Flâner
Australian perfume is having something of a moment both in its own country and around the globe, as fragrance fans seek out interesting new scent stories often using new-to-us ingredients. So it’s a warm welcome to Aussie brand Flâner, which has set up home on the edgy-cool beat of East London’s Redchurch Street.
Flâner, meaning ‘the joy of wandering through cities without a destination’, is the second store for founders Mary Fox and Andrew Hardeman (above), the first being in Melbourne. The couple moved to London to take the brand - already a great success in their home country – to the next level. Flâner celebrates ‘slow perfumery’, and the spacious store has a cool and minimalist vibe, with warm wood surfaces blending with textural stone and wood floors and off-beat natural hues of terracotta, plaster and putty. It’s a relaxed, calm environment with super friendly service in which to discover the the nine-strong fragrance collection, made in the pouring studio at the back of the store.
This lab-come-workshop space gives the store an authentic ‘we know what we’re doing’ feel and is designed to encourage customers to have a conversation around what goes into the scents. Three candles, created using olive wax, are also available alongside a good value discovery kit. Bestsellers from the collection include a beautifully bright, watery Sonic Silver, created to replicate the smell of the tram lines in Melbourne after it rains, and Manhattan Cherry, basically a delicious cherry negroni in scent form.
British customers, we’re told, have fallen for Green With Envy, a botanical green washed through with mineral notes, inspired by rivers running through cities, along with Amber Narcotique, a spiced gentle amber. Andrew told us the next launch will lean creatively into a London-based story.
Expect an events and workshops schedule shortly, as the brand gets itself settled into its new home-from-home.
52 Redchurch St, London E2 7DP flanerfragrances.com
Visitors to San Francisco’s ScentFest SF, smelling their way through 100 niche brands
ScentFest San Francisco: another fragrance fair for next year’s diary!
The growth of Scent Fairs continues not just in the UK – hello, London Home Fragrance Show– but around the world, as they become the go-to places for learning about and buying fragrance.
The inaugural ScentFest San Francisco happened earlier this month. It was the brainchild of Sebastian Jara, also known as Perfume Guy, who wanted to create a world-class, consumer facing show in California to showcase West Coast Perfumery. With over 4,000 visitors and 100 global niche brands, the event was a huge hit. It ran right after the World Perfumery Congress in Monterey, making it easy for industry insiders to both attend and feature at both shows.
As well as selling a LOT of fragrance, the festival offered 17 talks and workshops over three days, with attendees packing out the halls to listen to perfumers, brand founders and industry stars. French institution Osmothèque also hosted an exhibition and brought 25 heritage fragrances no longer available for the general public to experience.
Sebastian told us, ‘ScentFest SF was created to bring the fragrance community together in a meaningful way, and seeing so many people come through our doors for the very first edition exceeded every expectation. It proved that niche perfumery has a passionate, growing audience that’s eager to discover new brands, meet perfumers, and share their love of scent.’
The overall vibe, according to talks organiser Yosh Han, is that people loved the extensive offer of international niche brands, especially from China, Korea, Thailand, Burma, India, and the Philippines, showcased alongside many well-known European brands. Yosh told us: ‘I think having brands that don't have distribution in the USA really helped create a kind of frenzy I haven't seen yet in other shows. Many brands were sold out on the first day!’
In our digitally overloaded world, fragrance consumers everywhere seem to enjoy the real life, community spirited fun a fair can bring. We say ‘more of this, please!” Next fair on the agenda? Geelong Fragrance Fair, Australia, running 11th -13th September, with dates for ScentFestSF ‘to be announced shortly.’
Antoine Lie, who is opening a new space where DJs, producers and perfumers will work together
Trend Alert : Music and fragrance – the new frontier for scented emotions?
Is music becoming the new emotional inspiration for perfumers? We’ve seen a huge surge in fragrance launches recently using emotional wellbeing as their inspiration. We think music, and the emotional resonance a great song can have on how we feel, could well be where this trend heads next.
The recent success of Sabrina Carpenter and Kylie’s fragrance brands is also driving big fragrance houses to look at expanding the emotional connections between music culture and scent creation. Fragrance house Takasago’s US division has announced a creative collaboration with Japanese based music company Handcraft Entertainment, which represents many popular J-Pop musical acts, including Mia Takarabe.
First up will be a fragrance built around Takarabe’s recent hit ‘Heartless’, created with Steve Aoki, translating the inspiration and emotions in the song into scent. The collab promises rich cultural storytelling, via social content, that will deep dive into the scent creation in behind-the-scenes style, helping to inform a new generation of fragrance fans.
Over on Instagram, independent perfumer Antoine Lie has announced a perfume and electronic music hook-up he’s describing as ‘A new art form’. He is opening a new space where DJs, producers and perfumers can work together to create ‘tracks with their own fragrance, scents with their own sound’. It sounds… intriguing. Keep up with it more on his Instagram, here.
And I can’t miss an opportunity to highlight our own music + scent hook up at Barnes Fragrance Fair, where our ‘Scent & Sound’ talk, hosted by Thomas Dunckley and Haydn Williams, featured an emotion-driven music and perfume collab between Nosu Perfumery and London based music producer Jeigo. Listen to how the collaboration worked on the BFF Youtube channel here.
Scent and sound, the new scented emotional frontier. You heard it here first.
Summer 2026’s Water Counter at Diptyque (PHOTO: Diptyque)
Water cooler moment at Diptyque
It’s all about the fragrance+food pop up in London currently, where luxury brands have gone a bit bonkers for the temporary format. Diptyque is the latest brand to tempt us in with sensory delights, via a delightfully retro-style, 1970s inspired Water Counter pop up.
The stylish bar offers a menu of delicious infused waters, taking flavour and scent inspiration from Diptyque’s summer 2026 Limited Edition collection, alongside seasonal fruits, delicate florals and uplifting aromatics. The menu offers unexpected and intriguing flavour pairings and each drink comes in a highly collectable Diptyque bottle, made exclusively for the pop up shop.
The pretty pastel hued space has been set up in conjunction with French creative and culinary pair Shirley Garrier and Mathieu Zouhairi, of The Social Food, which accounts for the charming style and covetable graphics. Certainly, water never tasted so pretty.
The pop up runs at the Maison Diptyque, 107 Bond Street, London W1S 1ED until 31st August. The limited edition drink is free for customers spending over £145.
Sciopolis : pop-up perfume lab space in West London
Calling all new fragrance brands in need of some proper professional lab space. Sciopolis, an innovation hub creator, has opened pop-up, ready to occupy lab spaces, with meeting rooms and event areas available on tap, for short or long term rent, in Acton, West London.
The idea is to provide support to young companies and brands who often can’t afford traditional lab space to make their products and who are frequently in need help and support when first starting off. Charlie Mitchell, founder and CEO of Sciopolis, told us “Essentially we provide two key things. Firstly, ready to occupy lab space, together with office, meeting and event space and secondly, an active and supportive ecosystem including access to equipment suppliers, funding partners, etc.’
The innovative incubator space offers new ventures a place to start, grow and even collaborate with other residents. The company has strong links within Imperial College to support any tricky science puzzles.
While not created specifically with fragrance in mind, the lab space is flexible enough to be used by any beauty or fragrance product development needing well specified lab facilities for creating, testing and production. So if you’re a small brand growing out of your kitchen table production space, have an innovative idea around aroma or are thinking of growing your fragrance company, this may be for you. The company’s North Acton location is the first in what it hopes will be many such locations around the UK.