2025 Is The Year Of The Artful Fragrance Bottle
December 31 | 5 minute read
Words by Christie Sinclair
We pulled vanilla notes from the patisserie and harvested vegetal delights from the garden. We lived through the great revival of body mists and saccharine scents. Then, witchy concoctions designed to enhance our mood and wellbeing pulled us back down to earth. Or did they?
What could possibly be next for the world of scent, you may be wondering? Interestingly, it has less to do with smell than you might think...
Perfume has always been about what’s inside the bottles, but experts are predicting that our focus will shift to the bottle itself. In 2025, the finest fragrances must not only smell superlative, but look like miniature works of art worthy of display in our public rooms rather than tucked away in the back of our medicine cabinets.
“I love that perfume has made it out of the bathroom (which is actually a terrible place to keep your perfume!) and into the living room,” says Kavi Moltz, one half of the Brooklyn husband and wife duo behind creative fragrance house, D.S. & DURGA. “The scent you chose and the brand you choose it from is a signal of something about your style or persona, just like the items you choose to display for people to see.”
It makes scents. We all wish to adorn our walls with an original Matisse, however in reality the art we can afford is an ornate amber vessel handblown in a London studio and filled with an intoxicating aroma that will very likely cause people to accost you in the street. Said vessel, which has become the emblem of the brand Perfumer H, took founder and UK based perfumer Lyn Harris and glassblower Michael Ruh a year and a half to perfect. With an ornate ground glass stopper that sparkles like cut glass when the light catches it just so, it would be a crime to part with the bottle once you’ve spritzed all you can.
Instead, the Ink Handblown Eau de Parfum would make a fine centrepiece in your living room, next to a stack of books, a mushroom-inspired lamp dimmed to the lowest setting. Slip in a Diptyque candle, and add a tinkling classical piano soundtrack and you’ve just made the newest iteration of the #shelfie.
Dubbed #clustering, this form of decorating is the art of arranging your treasured items to create considered vignettes that represent your personality and design taste - and there are countless snippets of just like this burning up TikTok. Rarely will you spy a cluster without a luxury fragrance or candle.
Speaking of Diptyque’s designer vessels, these have been considered prized possessions since 1961 when they first appeared in the fabled windows of the original 34 Boulevard Saint-Germain boutique in Paris, not only for their inimitable olfactory appeal but also their visually beautiful vessels, with their distinct black and white oval labels and emblematic dancing letters. The candles, hand made in South of France, have become a status symbol in their own right, regularly appearing in celebrity home tours and the lobbies of the chicest hotels, even when burned down to nothing but the vessel.
Vyrao’s vessels, designed by founder and fashion director Yasmin Sewell, are vibrant, sculptural statements with colours inspired by auras and feel as transformative as the scents they hold. Meanwhile Australian music mega-star and tastemaker Troye Sivan describes his brand Tsu Lange Yor, a collection of gallery-worthy objects and fine fragrances, as “playful and cheeky and interesting, but also still totally artful and thoughtful.” The popstar worked with artists, industrial designers and Melbourne-based creatives to ensure what’s on the outside is just as covetable and satisfying as what’s on the inside.
Now that it has become du rigour to allow others to peruse our perfume collections, there’s added responsibility on the makers to consider how their fragrances might look to the eye - or camera explains Moltz, who is drawn to art deco with its geometric patterns and sharp angles. “D.S & DURGA as a whole has always taken a cue from surrealism, and that has driven not just the visuals, but the attitude and identity of the brand. It reminds us to always keep it weird,” she says.
As fragrances become more and more about the visual appeal, do we risk the actual scent becoming secondary to the aesthetics? Moltz isn’t worried. “We, D.S. & DURGA, do solemnly swear to always put the juice first.”
