CHICYEE

“The sillage on this goes hard,” I overheard while deep in a sniffing spiral in the fragrance section of a Sephora. “I still prefer Haltane,” someone else said.

Anyone familiar with the world of niche fragrance knows Haltane as a crowd-favorite oud scent. I tore myself away from my blotter strips and realized that these words were coming out of the mouths of two teenage boys: one in a Nike tech sweat set, Foot Locker bag in hand, and the other in a Fear of God Essentials hoodie with a mango ice vape dangling from his mouth. 

Since when did teenage boys casually drop the word sillage in conversation? I was floored; they looked like the type of boys who would’ve asked me why I talked “like a girl” in high school, and yet here we were, speaking the same language.

Take a trip to your local Zumiez, and you’ll notice that amid a sea of Stüssy shirts and Carhartt cargos, there are notes of oud, white musk, and mint lingering in the air. Alas, young boys don’t want just Supreme anymore—they want Santal. One survey found that fragrance spending among teen boys jumped 26% in 2024; the boys are getting serious about scent.

Welcome to the era of “smellmaxxing.” To be a smellmaxxer is to treat fragrance as more of a competitive sport than a grooming habit; in other words, your sillage is your scoreboard. It’s a movement largely fueled by teenage boys on TikTok, and it follows a larger trend of trying to “maxx” out your real-life avatar (see: looksmaxxing, frame maxxing, and even carb maxxing). In the eyes of the smellmaxxers, your signature scent isn’t just what you smell like. It’s a vibe, a status, and a symbol of social capital. 

To be a smellmaxxer is to treat fragrance as more of a competitive sport than a grooming habit; in other words, your sillage is your scoreboard. It’s a movement largely fueled by teenage boys on TikTok, and it follows a larger trend of trying to “maxx” out your real-life avatar (see: looksmaxxing, frame maxxing, and even carb maxxing). In the eyes of the smellmaxxers, your signature scent isn’t just what you smell like. It’s a vibe, a status, and a symbol of social capital. 

How Did We Get Here?

We are all too familiar with the Sephora tween. Her vanity is a neon shrine of TikTok Shop lip-liner stains, Glow Recipe serums, and Summer Fridays Lip Butter Balms. But we seem to have forgotten about her older brother, the smellmaxxer. Next to his sneaker wall sits an equally curated wall of colognes. He has a tendency to go for musk-forward scents; oud is too intense, and fougères remind him of his uncle. His signature scent is an olfactory cocktail of Initio Musk Therapy and Parfums de Marly Percival. When—and why—did teenage boys go from Axe to Aventus?

“Younger men used to choose fragrance by convenience,” says Aymar de Chergé, Vice President of Marketing at Parfums de Marly and Initio Parfums Privés. Now, because of social media, fragrance has become somewhat of a spectator sport: “They watch videos, compare viewpoints, and approach choosing a scent the way they would choose sneakers or tech.”

The smellmaxxing renaissance on TikTok has reframed fragrance as a cultural commodity—something to acquire, flex, and display rather than simply wear. Much like sneakers or streetwear drops, today’s most hyped scents function as markers of taste among teenage boys, fueling a new kind of collectible culture around perfume. “Collecting is cool now, and it’s fun to have the newest and trendiest scents,” says Elijah Yeroushalmi, a 23-year-old fragrance creator. “Fragrance isn’t seen as ‘gay’ anymore. It’s seen as cool.”

Notably, the boys aren’t just sticking to mass-market hits like Dior Sauvage—they’re going niche. Once a tightly gatekept category that kept influencers at arm’s length, niche fragrance has been democratized by TikTok. “A 30-second TikTok can help decode a $400 niche fragrance instantly!” explains de Chergé. As one falls deeper into the smellmaxxing rabbit hole, the desire for increasingly niche, hard-to-find scents only grows.

The Business of Smellmaxxing

Brands, of course, are moving quickly to capitalize on the smellmaxxing wave. Designer and niche fragrance houses alike are now partnering with young male creators in the fragrance space. The bigger shift, though, seems to be in how brands are talking to men.

“We noticed that men are no longer waiting for someone to buy them a cologne, but instead, [are] discovering them on their own,” says Phil Riportella, co-founder of fragrance brand Snif. Last October, Riportella and co-founder Bryan Edwards launched Notewrks, a Snif sub-brand that specializes in men’s fragrances “curated like a playlist.” Challenging traditional notions of a cologne, the line frames scent through the lens of music. One fragrance description reads: “The track is smooth. The scent is sexy.” 

Alex Brands, founder of fragrance brand Rite of Way and former head of brand marketing at Madhappy, is also keen on reinventing how fragrance brands speak to male consumers. “They know much more about brands and style at a younger age, so this generation of shoppers is smarter,” Brands tells Byrdie. “In contrast to the campy Axe ads of my youth, brands have to find a way to communicate that’s more implicit.”

Even the frat bros are getting in on the smellmaxxing boom. For Drew Frank, a 22-year-old I knew back in college as a brother of Sigma Nu, fragrance really is the new streetwear. His first venture began in 2019 with his streetwear label Concrete Hills; six years later, he’s now translating his streetwear sensibilities into scent with his new brand Temperatures. “We have a lot planned similar to streetwear,” he tells me. “Limited edition bottles, scents, and collabs with brands on fragrances.” 

What Do the Smellmaxxers Smell Like? 

The beauty of smellmaxxing is that there isn’t one way to smellmaxx. The boys are all over the place. “Sweet vanilla scents—more specifically Armani’s Stronger with You Intensely—took over recently,” Yeroushalmi tells me. His personal favorite, though, is Parfums de Marly’s Percival, because it smells like a stronger version of his first-ever fragrance, Abercrombie & Fitch’s Fierce. For Jatin Arora, known as @thecologneboy on TikTok, he loves scents from Arabic perfumeries because “they’re affordable and replicate the smell [of a designer fragrance] almost 90% of the time.”

What links them all isn’t a specific note so much as a vibe: Each fragrance offers a signature you can claim as your own. “Younger men respond to fragrances with a clear signature,” de Chergé says. “Something that stands out without feeling traditional or overly easy to wear.”

This, of course, isn’t a new sentiment. Scent has always been a shortcut to identity, a metaphorical band tee of sorts—communicating good taste before you even open your mouth. But for the smellmaxxers, fragrance feels like the ultimate flex; scent is the new drip. It’s only a matter of time before they discover the miraculous magic of Korean milky toners. Stock up while you can.