The Best Perfume Launches of Fall 2024

Whether you’re looking to add a new scent or two to your fall and winter fragrance rotation, or you’re on the hunt for a new signature perfume (no easy feat!), you’ve certainly come to the right place. This season’s fragrance launches feature everything from timeless concoctions to audacious gourmands to soft, romantic florals.

Some of the inspiration sources behind these new scents may surprise you (the sunset in Texas, Paris at night, and even elements in nature that don’t actually have much of a smell. Continue reading to learn about the best perfume launches of fall 2024 from the perfumers themselves. And who knows, maybe you’ll find your perfect match in the process.

The Instant Classic

Merit Beauty Retrospect Extrait de Parfum

Three years after its launch, Merit Beauty, everyone’s favourite minimalist brand, has entered the world of fragrance with Retrospect Extrait de Parfum. Formulated with a blend of classic ingredients — bergamot, ambrette, orris, vanilla, musk and moss — Retrospect is a bottled-up ode to timelessness.

Created in Paris by renowned nose Fanny Bal, the scent was developed as an extrait de parfum, the most concentrated and long-lasting form of perfume. It opens with a fresh burst of bergamot before wearing down into something else entirely — a scent that is deep, dry and sensual. Retrospect is both a daytime and an evening scent. It’s timeless, seasonless and for all occasions — not a mere once-in-a-while olfactory fling. Make no mistake: Merit Beauty’s first fragrance is in it for the long haul.

The Gold Standard

Rabanne Million Gold for Her Eau de Parfum

It’s the golden age of florals. Meet Million Gold for Her Eau de Parfum, Rabanne’s first-ever grand floral scent. (Think bold and audacious with a heightened sense of drama, plus a flair for the dramatic.)

Crafted by a group of four world-renowned perfumers, Million Gold is a blend of sparkling rose and delicate white flowers that is contrasted with salty, mineral musk notes and rounded out with vanilla-bourbon absolute. The contrasting notes create a game of tug-of-war between traditionally feminine and masculine accords — one that ends in an over-the-top eruption that’s equal parts thrilling and addictive.

If neither side wins, then perhaps they both do.

The Cold-Weather Comfort

Emporio Armani Stronger With You Absolutely

’Tis the season to curl up by the fireplace with a warm, comforting beverage of your choice. In the case of Emporio Armani’s latest cologne, that beverage is rum, notes of which open Stronger With You Absolutely alongside those of bergamot. What follows are notes of lavender, smoky cedarwood, cinnamon, vanilla extract and sugar-coated chestnuts. It’s at once spicy, addictive and oh-so-cozy.

The Sweet Escape

Dolce & Gabbana Devotion Eau de Parfum Intense

Introducing the latest addition to the Dolce & Gabbana fragrance family: Devotion Eau de Parfum Intense. A bold, intensified version of last year’s Devotion, the new fragrance retains many of the original’s beloved notes (such as Madagascar vanilla and orange blossom) and was developed by the same nose as the original: Olivier Cresp. The main difference between the two — other than sheer strength — is that Devotion Intense replaces its predecessor’s candied-citrus top note with rich, comforting hazelnut. The result is a gourmand scent that’s deeply sweet, creamy and utterly delicious.

The Desert Rose

Narciso Rodriguez All of Me Eau de Parfum Intense

Roses are red, violets are — wait, back to the roses. Narciso Rodriguez’s latest launch, All of Me Intense, is an intensified version of last year’s All of Me and features rose notes at its heart. Crafted by perfumers Dora Baghriche and Daphné Bugey, All of Me Intense is a blend of florals, white musks, geranium bourbon and vanilla-pod absolute. Floral skeptics need not apply.

The Collector’s Items

Loewe x Lladró Collection

Loewe Perfumes has teamed up with fellow Spanish brand Lladró — known for its high-end lighting, homewares, accessories, sculptures and porcelain figurines — on a collection of three new eaux de parfum: Agua, 001 Woman and Earth.

Agua is a refreshing floral fragrance that draws inspiration from the Spanish-rock-rose wildflower and is blended with uplifting bergamot and orange-flower absolute. 001 Woman is inspired by early-morning light and formulated with notes of jasmine, linen and musk. And Earth is floral, ambery and musky, made up of notes of truffle, pear, mimosa and violet.

Of course, the limited-edition flasks (only 600 of each scent were made) are all topped with porcelain flower caps that have been individually handmade and hand-painted by a Lladró artisan — a five-day-long process for each flower.

The Decade In The Making

Hermès Barénia Eau de Parfum

“Without audacity, there’s no creation,” says Christine Nagel, director of olfactory creation for Hermès Parfums, during an intimate gathering in a private residence on the rocky shores of Ontario’s Lake Muskoka. Behind her, the water sparkles in the afternoon sun through bronze-clad windows. Nagel has been at the brand for a decade and had been dreaming up Barénia, the latest scent, for just as long. After all, it’s Hermès’s first foray into the world of chypre fragrances. Chypre is used to describe an olfactory family defined by a combination of notes — typically bergamot, rose or jasmine and patchouli and oakmoss.

The result? Complex scents that are simultaneously fresh and woody. Barénia is an updated chypre, featuring notes of butterfly lily, miracle berry, oak and patchouli for a finish that is mysterious, bright, rich and totally unique.

The Explorers

Guess Amore Collection

Dreaming of an Italian getaway? Consider your vacation scent covered. Guess’s Amore collection features four fragrances, each inspired by an Italian destination. There’s Portofino (a woody, fruity scent with mandarin and salted-vetiver accords), Roma (a floral amber fruity fragrance with notes of pear, sugared rose and amber), Capri (a floral, woody scent featuring bergamot, ylang-ylang and musks) and Venezia (a floral amber with notes of pink pepper, Tuscan orris and vanilla infusion).

The Nature Lovers

Les Essences de Diptyque

Nature is at the heart of Les Essences de Diptyque, the brand’s latest collection of five eaux de parfum. Each fragrance pays homage to a natural substance, using scent to evoke thoughts of things not usually associated with the sense of smell: coral, mother-of-pearl, tree bark, water lily and desert rose.

“Coral has no scent, but it evokes an atmosphere,” says Alexandra Carlin, the perfumer behind Corail Oscuro Eau de Parfum. “I was inspired by its intense red colour, its chiselled, fiery shape and, above all, its salinity. But I didn’t want to create an aquatic fragrance, as that would have been too predictable. So to translate this impression, I delved into the idea of salty texture. I also wanted to express the contrast between the light reflecting on the water’s surface and the depth of the sea.”

To bring these elements of salt water to life, Carlin used a blend of natural leek extract, ambrette seeds and sandalwood. And to represent the intense pink colour of coral, she turned to Rosa bourboniana.

For Lunamaris, perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin was inspired by mother-of-pearl. “Its layers create a mesmerizing effect,” he says. To develop a similar olfactory effect, Pellegrin overlapped different raw materials to represent the way that colour and light coincide in mother-of-pearl. This was done via a blend of pink pepper, incense and labdanum absolute. “I wanted to convey its iridescent nuances,” says Pellegrin. In the development of Lilyphéa, perfumer Nathalie Cetto took her inspiration from water lilies. “I’d always observed them as thick, fleshy leaves floating in water,” says Cetto. “I translated the aquatic freshness through violet leaf and ginger. I used warm vanilla accords to evoke the comfort of this light, floating leaf and create a veritable perfume cocoon.”

Has anything ever sounded quite as wonderful and tempting as a perfume cocoon?

The Southern Belle

Ellis Brooklyn Dear Sky Eau de Parfum

“The first beauty event I ever went to was a fragrance launch, and it blew my mind,” says Bee Shapiro over a video call. “From that point on, I thought about fragrance in a different way; I saw that it could tell a story.”

Shapiro, longtime beauty columnist for The New York Times, founded her perfume brand, Ellis Brooklyn, in 2015. “Often, when we get fragrance stories from other brands, they’re not modern or realistic,” she says. “They’re these old-fashioned, fantastical, wonderful stories, but they don’t reflect how we live our daily lives.”

Enter Dear Sky Eau de Parfum, Ellis Brooklyn’s latest launch, which Shapiro describes as a modern fruity floral. “I was like: ‘Why are fruity florals always so girlie and lighthearted? Why is it always the same stereotype over and over again?’ With Dear Sky, I wanted to explore the likeability of a fruity floral but make it our own,” she says. Inspired by the American West, Dear Sky features radiant notes of honeydew melon, strawberry leaf and white peony for a fruity finish that’s sweet and fresh yet substantial. “I’d been spending a lot of time in Texas and was inspired by the sunset light in Texas Hill Country,” she explains. “I love the feeling that anything is possible there. It’s a spirit that is tied to the idea of the American West — the dream to blaze your own path.”

The Hopeless Romantic

Guerlain Patchouli Paris

“Patchouli is difficult; it’s very earthy and camphorous,” says perfumer Delphine Jelk over the phone from Corsica, France. “It has a lot of failures, which is what makes it so polarizing. People either love it or hate it. That’s exactly what I wanted. Not every fragrance can be for everyone, you know.”

Indeed, Jelk took the earthy ingredient to an extreme place with Guerlain’s latest scent for the brand’s L’Art & La Matière collection, creating what she describes as a patchouli overdose. The inspiration behind the scent? A couple walking through Paris at night.

“You can feel their passion,” says Jelk. “I imagined one of them was wild, like patchouli, and had to be tamed by the other. That’s where the vanilla notes come in. Vanilla softens the patchouli and makes it less wild.” The scent is then rounded out with iris and aldehyde notes. This fragrance is about love, explains Jelk.

“So the couple spends the night together, and I wanted to incorporate the smell of an unmade bed and of clean, white sheets. There’s almost a tension within the contrast of notes.” As for the bottle? “Red is the colour of passion and love,” she says. “Of course, it’s also very Parisian — red nails, red lipstick, red lights throughout the city at night. And Paris is where love can live in freedom.”

The Global Sensations

Bottega Veneta Fragrances

For Bottega Veneta’s first fragrance collection under the creative direction of Matthieu Blazy, the house found inspiration in its hometown of Venice (a longtime hub of cross-cultural trade) and in its famous style of weaving together leather strips, called intrecciato — a Bottega Veneta signature since 1975. The collection features five fragrances, each of which interweaves hero ingredients from different countries.

First, there’s Colpo di Sole, featuring notes of French Angelica oil and orange-blossom absolute from Morocco; Come With Me blends Italian bergamot with French orris butter; Acqua Sale combines woody laudanum absolute from Spain with Macedonian juniper oil; Déjà Minuit is made with geranium from Madagascar and Guatemalan cardamom; and, lastly, Alchemie marries Brazilian pink pepper and Somalian myrrh. Prepare to be taken around the world in five spritzes.

The Fall Floral

Marc Jacobs Perfect Elixir

If a warm, comforting floral scent is on your fall wish list, look no further than Marc Jacobs’s latest launch, Perfect Elixir. A rich and opulent evolution of the original Perfect Eau de Parfum — which launched in 2020 — and crafted by the same perfumer, Domitille Michalon-Bertier, Perfect Elixir features notes of purple rhubarb, golden amber woods and vanilla-bean extract.

It’s the perfect (no pun intended) luscious, creamy scent to help you transition from warm weather to the colder months.

This article first appeared in FASHION’s November 2024 issue. Find out more here.