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How luxury unisex perfumes became the most searched scent category in the UK and why everyone is obsessed
There was a time, not especially long ago, when walking into Boots or Selfridges meant choosing a side. Pink bottles on the left, blue bottles on the right, and an entire industry built on the assumption that your gender should decide what you smell like. Nobody seems especially bothered about that any longer. The unisex shelf, once a slightly apologetic corner of the fragrance aisle, has quietly started to command the most shelf space. Ask 10 people why they made the change and you will get 10 different answers, and they all land in roughly the same place.
This is not really a mystery once you think about it although it took the industry considerably longer than that to catch up. Deciding which side of the counter you were supposed to be shopping from used to come with the same needless seriousness as arguing over whether Smithy or Nessa gets the better lines. Nobody actually needed the rule. Everyone just followed it anyway.
Retail is usually the last part of any industry to notice a shift, and fragrance has been no exception. The actual change started in the search bar. Typing best unisex perfume or gender-neutral fragrance UK into Google costs nothing and commits you to nothing, which makes it a far more honest indicator of what people want than what they feel obliged to ask for out loud at a counter with an assistant hovering. Search interest in unisex and gender-neutral fragrance has climbed steadily for years, well before most shop floors caught up with it. Nobody has to explain themselves to a search engine, which turns out to be exactly the point.
The notes were never gendered to begin with
Fragrance families were never actually gendered to begin with. Citrus does not know if you are a man or a woman. Neither does sandalwood, oakmoss, or musk. The idea that certain notes belong to certain people was a marketing decision made decades ago, not a fact about the ingredients themselves, and once enough people worked that out, the whole system started to look a bit silly. A rose does not care who is wearing it. It never has.
Minimalism did some of the work too
The same instinct that has people buying one good coat instead of five mediocre ones has arrived in the fragrance cabinet. A single, well-chosen unisex bottle does the work that used to take two: something you can both reach for, something that does not need justifying at the till, something that fits in one washbag instead of two when you are packing for a weekend away. It is the fragrance equivalent of the capsule wardrobe, and it turns out to be just as popular for exactly the same reasons. The John Lewis fragrance counter has noticed. So has everyone else.
It also solved a genuine gifting problem
Buying fragrance as a gift used to involve a fairly detailed character assessment.Does she prefer floral or fresh? Does he lean towards something classic or something with a bit more attitude? Get it wrong and the bottle sits unused at the back of a bathroom cabinet for the next three years. A well-chosen unisex fragrance removes most of that guesswork. It is built to flatter a wider range of skin types and tastes by design, which makes it considerably harder to get wrong, and considerably easier to wrap with confidence.
Nishane built Hacivat's reputation on being famously hard to pin down, and Eternal Verde works from the same brief. Pineapple, grapefruit and bergamot open things sharply, cedar, patchouli and jasmine settle in through the middle, and a dry, mossy base means it never tips into anything as simple as fruity or woody. It is one of the more convincing arguments going for why the whole men's and women's split felt unnecessary in the first place.
Hibiscus Mahajád built a small cult following almost entirely on the strength of its base, and Majesty follows the same trajectory. Hibiscus and a sharp note of bitter orange open things up, rose and vanilla take over through the middle, and a warm base of leather, cinnamon and musk is what actually lingers. It reads as feminine to some people and masculine to others, which is precisely the point of a fragrance built to outgrow the label.
What this actually changes about how you shop
The practical upshot is that the question worth asking at the counter is no longer "Is this for me?" It is simply "Does this work on my skin?" Buying by note and by how something actually wears has always been the better method, and it has nothing to do with which name is printed on the box. The full Scentspired range of luxury unisex perfumes lists the notes and concentration for every fragrance, so you can shop by what you actually like rather than what aisle it used to sit in. Browse the bestsellers and find your favourite.
