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Who wants anything made in a hurry? Just think about it—when people take their time to craft something, the approach tends to be more thoughtful and the quality much better. That explains why movements like slow food and slow fashion are gaining traction. Now the concept is trickling over to beauty with slow fragrance. 

“Slow fragrance is one of the most magical things to talk about because it is so in opposition to the masses,” says Douglas Little, founder, perfumer, and creative director of Heretic Parfum. “Especially for Gen Z, I think that slow perfume is the secret sauce that’s going to turn them on because slow perfume is small batch perfume that’s made by niche artisan perfumers. I’m not trying to make it clandestine or secret, but it is done in a capacity that bigger brands just don’t want to bother with. People who make slow perfume do it for the art. Beautiful things take time.” 

So, what exactly is slow fragrance? And why has it taken over the current perfume conversation? Read on for everything you need to know about the movement. 

What Is Slow Fragrance?

Slow perfume is a movement typically defined as fragrances made in small batches, instead of mass production, with thoughtful craftsmanship using traditional perfumery processes and usually natural ingredients. 

“We like to think of slow fragrance as a part of the fragrance industry that’s participating with consciousness and intention—brands with slower, more considered releases, smaller batch production, ethical ingredient selection and sourcing, and more powerful storytelling and depth over purely following trends,” says Phway Su Aye, CEO and creative director of Gabar. “For us, slow fragrance also means those customers are participating in a similar vein—choosing quality over quantity, backing brands with values they believe in, prioritizing sustainable and local brands versus larger, designer brands. We love the idea that slow fragrance is putting intentionality, sustainability, craftsmanship, and emotional connection at the forefront.” 

Arnaud Poulain, founder and perfumer of Les Eaux Primordiales, sees slow fragrance as taking your time and paying attention to every detail. “But for me, that’s simply the natural pace of true artisanal creation, not a trend,” he says. “If we’re talking about a thoughtful, intentional approach, then the benefit is creating fragrances that have meaning—ones that aren’t driven by instant gratification or fleeting trends.” 

What Are the Benefits and Appeal of Slow Fragrance?

A Higher Quality

Slow perfume puts the focus on quality over quantity, meaning you’ll get a beautifully crafted perfume because it takes time to be made. “For me, the quality of raw materials is more important than the number of ingredients,” Poulain says. “At Les Eaux Primordiales, we work with a small number of materials, but each one is chosen, measured, and worked with extreme care.” 

Ben Krigler, fifth-generation perfumer for the House of Krigler, sees it as an artisanal movement that’s the opposite of mass market perfume. A major reason why the quality is better comes down to the ingredients, which are often only available in small quantities. That can also make the perfumes more complex. 

“Slow fragrance is the pursuit of quality, the pursuit of exclusivity, of perfection,” Krigler says. “We can use different components that cannot be used in mass market products. At Krigler, the fragrances contain between 80 to 90% of natural ingredients; this is due to the number of bottles made each year.” 

Intentional and Complex Formulations

Many of the ingredients in slow perfumery are sourced from local farmers all over the world. Their limited nature serves the slow perfumery movement well. “It comes down to ingredients because that’s where slow perfume shines,” Little says. “In slow perfume, you have a real focus on the origin of the ingredients and their olfactory properties.” 

The movement is accurately named because crafting perfumes by those standards is a much more time-consuming process. “Most of slow fragrance is made with a very high concentration of naturals, and most people don’t understand how complicated working with naturals is,” Little says. “One of the key parts of working within a high-natural-concentration formula is that you can’t bottle it and then just sell it. It has to be macerated. That macerating time can vary from a week to a month, because what happens inside the bottle is a process called blooming. As it matures in the bottle, much like wine, it will start to evolve, and it can flip a perfume formula. When they say slow perfume, assume it’s quite accurate because it’s not something that can be done immediately. The benefits of working with aroma chemicals are that whatever you are doing, it is pretty much going to be a ready-to-wear, so it’s a much quicker process.” 

It Tells a Story

The formulation and creative process is often slowed down by the thoughtfulness and intentionality with each new launch. “At Gabar, a new release can take anywhere from a year to several years, depending on the concept at play and the length of time needed for the dance between us as a team and our chosen perfumer,” Aye says. “We place a lot of importance on the story, concept, and emotion behind each fragrance, aiming to craft scents that are meaningful and lasting, and this usually requires time and patience.” 

That’s one of the many reasons why the formulation and creative process is different for slow fragrances than their mass contemporaries. “We have more freedom, more time, and like a good wine, we can let it be macerating,” Krigler says. “It also provides us the ability to create perfumes out of the safe area, meaning to be more edgy, more special, more open to any type of creation. A perfume like Krigler Boudoir Renaissance 223 takes three and a half years to be made. It’s impossible if we were manufacturing millions of bottles, but when you make 1,000 bottles a year of a perfume, it’s easier and more doable.” 

Aye agrees that slow perfumery allows for the perfumers to get more creative and explore the artistic side of the industry. “Slow fragrance enables more consideration in the space, and much less waste,” Aye says. “It encourages people to generally slow down and be more thoughtful in both their production and consumption processes, meaning more ingredient integrity, more considered storytelling, and less overconsumption, which, all in all, supports a more curated and longer-term relationship with fragrance and perfumery, versus a more impulsive and short-term one. Through slow fragrance, the actual art and craftsmanship behind fragrance-making becomes more central.” 

Environmentally Conscious

Slow perfumery brands also tend to be more eco-conscious. However, natural perfume can arguably be harder on the planet than its mass counterparts because of the resources needed to cultivate natural ingredients, including the harvesting and extraction process. In contrast, synthetic ingredients are made in a lab and take less of a toll on the environment. 

“Slow fragrances focus on quality and intentionality rather than mass production and fleeting trends, so they’re much more likely to be sustainable,” says Su Zar Wan Hnin, COO and global director of Gabar. “Slow fragrance brands are also more likely to focus on sustainable packaging, ethical ingredient sourcing, and other production methods that are aligned with their overall ethos of conscious creation. Oftentimes, the values that feed into the production process will be pervasive behind the company’s wider stance on doing business. At Gabar, we cut waste in all aspects possible, have minimal packaging, and have recyclable components wherever we can. This mode of intentionality runs through our decisions on sustainability as well as our creative processes.” 

Why Has Slow Fragrance Become So Popular?

It seems like there is a new perfume launch practically every day, and while it’s great to have options, that can result in shoppers having too many. “With the flood of choices we have these days, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and inundated, especially when it comes to industries like beauty,” Aye says. “There are hundreds of new releases every month, some considered and some less so, and it’s feeling generally like the world has become overcrowded with new products. People are feeling burned out. Being able to step back and make a conscious choice to opt for select brands, and also select values and philosophies that align with a future you want to build, feels all the more important.” 

As a result, the way fragrance is marketed is quickly changing, and shoppers are onto that. “People are now becoming more aware and frankly, more skeptical,” Aye says. “Old kind of marketing stunts and non-transparent processes just won’t cut it anymore. Customers want to know more about what’s behind a brand and the choices made. Slow fragrance offers more of this clarity and trust. In a fast-moving world, it feels that more people are prioritizing depth and connection over pure hype.” 

Yet another effect of TikTok is that people have a much better understanding of the perfume industry these days, so they have a deeper appreciation of slow perfume. “Thanks to the internet, people are way more educated and learn about perfumes, and they study the art of perfumery,” Krigler says. “They know that what works today is the quality over marketing. The better the quality, the better the perfume is.” 

It’s Trendy to Smell Unique

Another reason slow fragrance is on the rise is that people don’t want to smell like everyone else. “This new generation is looking at fragrance in a very different capacity,” Little says. “In the past year, we’ve seen fragrance exploding in this way, where people are looking at it as a true individuation, but more than that, it allows you to further immerse yourself in ideas, places, and far-flung concepts. Niche perfumery is moving into places like slow perfume, ideas of compositions that are made 100% naturally, making fragrances out of strange molecules. The greatest part about individuation is not everyone wants to smell like this soapy rose.” 

Distinct scents are capturing people’s imaginations now. Little believes another reason for their rise is the storytelling behind them. “Slow perfumers are exploring concepts that are very thoughtful and poetic, and there’s much more deep storytelling,” Little says. “There’s an interest in concepts that are left of center. We’re starting to see products for people that don’t necessarily celebrate the way everyone else does, and that reflects in these fragrances. They’re looking to TikTok and Instagram for these new trends more than ever. The most powerful part of fragrance is storytelling. That is the magic. I stopped trying to appeal to a broad audience and started to lean into the stories that resonated with me. Slow perfume is immersive and takes you into these places that are unusual. They can be beautiful, they can be scary, they can be filled with hope and joy. It was why Robert Eggers wanted to work with us on Nosferatu, because he knew that we could convey storytelling through fragrance, and telling the story of Nosferatu through scent was one of my greatest joys that I’ve ever had in my career.” 

The Final Takeaway

When you shop slow perfumes, you’re getting an olfactive piece of artistry. “I love it,” Little says. “It fills my heart with so much joy to do this. I’ll be in a business development meeting and then the next portion of my day I get to go into the laboratory and blend and work with these magical materials and actually do my craft. That’s what I wanted to create, that sense of where I’m able to work both sides of the brain.”

Think of slow fragrance like any other slow movement: It’s more mindful, with carefully and thoughtfully crafted products as a result. “Our process isn’t driven by marketing calendars or trend cycles,” Poulain says. “It’s guided by a desire to create beautiful, perfectly balanced, timeless, and generous perfumes. For us, true luxury is taking the time to do things well—not as a label or marketing stance, but as a way of being. Our perfumes aren’t fast or slow—they’re just right.”