There was a time when gourmand perfume basically meant vanilla.

Maybe caramel if things were getting adventurous. Chocolate if you were feeling particularly committed to smelling like something available in a bakery case.

Now I look at fragrance notes and genuinely wonder if I’m reading a perfume description or the menu at a very cute café.

Pistachio cream. Steamed milk. Black tea. Rice. Sesame. Honey. Cardamom. Coffee.

And I kind of love it.

Because the new gourmands aren’t necessarily about smelling like dessert. The interesting ones smell more like ingredients.

Steamed rice. Bitter matcha. A cracked cardamom pod. Toasted sesame. Milky black tea. Peaches in syrup.

They’re sweet, but also creamy, salty, green, smoky, nutty or strange.

Probably explains why I love the cardamom, pistachio and tonka in Swan Dive.

And maybe that’s the whole thing. We’ve gotten incredibly specific about how we want to smell and for many of us, it's something we love to eat.

Milk is different from condensed milk. Pear is different from cooked pear. Sugar is different from caramelized sugar. A tea leaf smells different from a cup of tea with milk in it.

I think part of the appeal is that these smells are already attached to tiny pieces of real life and things we adore.

Coffee brewing. Toast browning. Canned peaches from the cabinet. Iced chai with milk. Cold fruit from the refrigerator.

Maybe we don’t want our perfume to smell like some abstract idea of glamour anymore.