Your Favorite High School Fragrance Is Finally Back

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Take one lap around a Sephora, a mall, or a scroll-through on any fragrance site, and you are bound to spot something pink, purple, or plum. Berry is back, popping up in nearly every new fragrance launch these days.

What used to be the stuff of middle-school lip-gloss keychains is suddenly chicer than ever. No matter the price point, you’re bound to run into it in 2026. Indie perfume house Fulton & Roark launched its raspberry-and-blueberry fragrance, Lady Bird ($205, Fulton & Roark), at the tail end of last year.

Both Mugler’s Alien Pulp Fruitée ($159, Ulta) and YSL Libre Berry Crush Eau de Parfum ($180, Ulta), too, hit shelves.

In the body mist category, Bath & Body Works released its raspberry-forward Fruity Musk ($19, Bath & Body Works), while Athena Club launched the multipurpose Amber Hours Hair & Body Mist ($16, Athena Club), featuring raspberry leaves.

To figure out what’s behind the sudden berry boom, the Looker reached out to five perfume experts within the fragrance world.

The GLP-1 Craze Strikes Again

While many experts we spoke to noted nostalgia as a driving factor, the most unexpected hypothesis we heard is that people still love their sweets but simply want a little less of them. Or at least, a different form of their sugary scents.

It may be less about rejecting gourmands (more on that in a moment) and more about overall health consciousness.

“There’s something exhilarating and refreshing about fruits,” says Frank Voekl, principal perfumer at Firmenich. He posits that the health factor of berries could also be a reason behind their newfound popularity.

“I think people are very concerned, much more aware of their health and what they’re eating,” Voekl added. After all, post-pandemic and GLP-1-mania, who isn’t thinking about their health more than ever?

The ‘90s Called...

For anyone who grew up smelling their mom’s Sun-Ripened Raspberry from Bath & Body Works, the berry renaissance (berrissance?) is long overdue. One whiff of a berry-forward scent and you’re instantly transported back in time.

This might be by design. Many agree that nostalgia plays a role in the sudden surge in berry popularity.

“You’re seeing more of how nostalgia is being reimagined,” Mary Testa-Gough, AVP of product and fragrance development at Bath & Body Works, says of today’s berry-forward fragrances.

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Kevin Keller, co-founder of Fulton & Roark, agrees: “I think the nostalgia stuff is very real.”

“There’s something kind of comforting and calm about nostalgia…that may be where other folks are coming from, [considering] the tumultuous times we’re in right now, I think a little comfort is nice,” Keller says.

Emma, who runs the popular @perfumerism TikTok with over 600,000 followers, also noticed the sudden berry boom. In a YouTube video she posted predicting 2026’s big perfume trends, she declared, “2026 is the year of the berries.”

“I think it’s a natural evolution of gourmand,” Emma told the Looker. “Gourmands have been super popular, and berries are a step in the direction back into the fruity floral trend that took over the 2000s.” And with early-oughts nostalgia at an all-time high, it’s only natural to feel soothed by familiar scents.

Even the pros who work in fragrances day in and day out aren’t immune to the nostalgia factor, which is perfectly reasonable given the strong connection between scent and memory.

Keller recounted a time when someone on the Fulton & Roark team smelled a berry perfume of the brand, Roark’s Cove (which was released in 2024), and said something to “the effect of ‘It reminds me of a really grown-up Bath & Body Works kind of thing.’”

Goodbye, Sweets. Hello, Neo-Gourmands.

Keller believes the surge in berry notes could be a response to the gourmand craze of the last few years.

“People are a little done with the full-blown desert kind of gourmand as we’ve seen in the last couple of years,” Keller tells The Looker.

Simple fruits, like berries, are the natural response to that trend falling by the wayside.

“If we’re talking about gourmands, a plate of berries, raspberry in particular, is totally a step away from the truly decadent chocolate or vanilla kind of thing and [is] a lighter take on that,” he added.

Testa-Gough added that, “Part of what’s happening also from an olfactive trend is called Neo-Gourmand,” where you have the sweetness of berry, but it’s “less sugary, syrupy sweet.”

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Instead of smelling a baked cake, you’re still getting notes of sweetness, but it’s in the natural berry and less of a manufactured dessert that comes out of the oven.

Paul Fino, who runs the popular @PaulReactss perfume TikTok account with 2.5 million followers, agrees. “They offer that same sweet, addictive quality people are craving, but with a little more brightness and juiciness.”

Maxing Out on Textures

While the response to berry notes may be rooted in old memories, today’s berries are a different class entirely, thanks to new innovations in perfume and fragrance making.

Testa-Gough calls what’s happening with berry scents today “texture-maxxing, where perfumers are exploring how these notes feel.” Where the nostalgic berry scents of our childhood and youth may have been more one-dimensional, today’s berry notes are able to capture more nuance, like the tartness or freshness of a fruit.

It’s due to these fragrance innovations that perfumers are able to get more “hyperrealistic” in these interpretations, Testa-Gough explains. “So, you’re getting a little bit more of the flesh, the seeds, the skin, just the natural juiciness of it.”

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The sweetness of berries also gives people something to play with. Notes like raspberry leaf allow greenness to sit alongside the berry’s sweetness, Voekl says. Fino recommends layering berry scents with musks, woods, or vanilla for depth and dimension.

While this means today’s berry scents are less instantly recognizable than those of our middle school memories, it also means there’s a whole new world to explore with the fruity fragrances—though the memories that will attach themselves to your 2026 berry perfumes are another story.