Even casual perfume consumers know that gourmands, fragrances with edible notes, are all the rage. From Giardini di Toscana’s honey-caramel Bianco Latte to Tom Ford’s almond-tonka bean Vanilla Sex, the most buzzed-about perfumes of the past year smell decadently delicious. But it seems our taste for mouth-watering scents is shifting away from sugary desserts to something subtler.
Enter perfumery’s new favorite note: rice.
Rice-scented perfumes began gaining traction in early 2023, when Diptyque launched L’Eau Papier, a musky, powdery concoction that evokes — you guessed it — steamed rice. The fragrance quickly became one of the brand’s most popular scents.
The same year, d’Annam, a fine fragrance brand from Vietnam, released White Rice. The scent has recently taken off on PerfumeTok, a corner of TikTok where fragrance lovers share unfiltered reviews and recommendations. In one video, beauty content creator Caroline Stern dubs it the “next ‘it-girl’ perfume for summer.” In another clip, fellow “fraghead” Maria Helen gushes: “What you get is a true jasmine rice smell, and it’s absolutely stunning.”
The popularity of L’Eau Papier and White Rice has also prompted creators to round up their favorite rice-centric perfumes, further cementing the trend. “Because [rice perfumes] are receiving a good dose of attention on social media, now we have many customers asking about them specifically,” says Steven Gontarski, manager of Scent Bar in Los Angeles. Linda Song, senior perfumer at Givaudan, adds: “We've observed a notable rise in interest in rice as a fragrance note, particularly among niche and indie brands, as well as in haircare and skincare products.”
To both Gontarski and Song, rice fragrances are appealing for the same reason gourmands resonate with buyers: They’re comforting. Just as the smell of sugar cookies and other sweet treats can evoke happy childhood memories, the smell of rice is often linked to “cultural and culinary experiences,” as Song puts it. And rice is a staple food across a slew of countries, making it (relatively) universally appealing.
It’s also a versatile note. Song notes that rice, in its many varieties, has sweet, nutty, floral, and earthy facets. In other words: there are myriad ways to evoke rice without creating an exact olfactive copy of the food. Gontarski explains, for example, that d’Annam’s White Rice uses notes of iris and musk to create a powdery, starchy impression. “It puts me in a white rice mood,” he says.
If you’re craving something more spot-on, Gontarski recommends Taipei by Day One — “one of the riciest, rice things I’ve ever smelled,” he says. “I can feel the steam from a rice cooker hitting my face as I lift the lid.”
The rise of rice perfume coincides with the emergence of niche and independent fragrance brands led by AAPI founders. d’Annam, for example, was founded by Nick Hoang, who uses his childhood memories growing up in rural Vietnam as a jumping off point for the brand’s fragrances, from White Rice to Pho Breakfast, which incorporates cilantro and ginger notes as an homage to the Vietnamese noodle dish. Other Asian-owned perfume brands garnering worldwide recognition include Borntostandout, Melt Season, Gabar, One Day, Mochiglow, and ELOREA, which recently released a fragrance that features a soy sauce note.
Historically, the perfume industry — largely based in Europe — has regarded Asia through a Eurocentric, orientalist lens. Fragrances like Guerlain’s Shalimar (inspired by Mughal empress Mumtaz Mahal) and YSL’s Opium (broadly inspired by China) were once marketed as fantastical, exoticized interpretations of the “Far East.” Now, Asian-owned brands are reclaiming their place in perfume with scents drawing from their authentic cultural experiences.
From rice to pho to soy sauce notes, perfume might be poised for a full-blown embrace of Asian cuisine — an unexpected evolution of gourmand mania. Consider our palates whet.
