To understand You, the best-selling fragrance launched by Glossier in 2017, you have to understand Santal 33, the best-selling fragrance launched by Le Labo in 2011. Both have the same father — Frank Voelkl, of the firm dsm-Firmenich — but are otherwise sisters with categorically opposite vibes.

Santal 33 wears like a finely tailored coat: On every body its spritzed upon, or every room infused with its scent, Santal 33 is engineered to smell the same. You, instead, mimics a lipstick; composed mostly of base notes, it reacts to the wearer, enhancing one’s natural scent. The fragrance, and the collection it subsequently inspired in 2024, “Impressions of You,” is the foundation of the 11-year-old beauty label’s newfound focus. Its fragrance business generated $100 million last year, a person with knowledge of the company’s finances said.

With its portfolio of four scents, including the latest scent Fleur which debuts March 27 on Glossier.com and at Sephora, the ongoing marketing of You affirms the company’s mission of creating beauty products for individuals, according to chief executive Kyle Leahy. “The brand’s tagline, ‘You look good,’ is about you,’” she said. The growing collection of scents is designed to smell like a Glossier version of its wearer.

Fleur, a floral-forward version of You packaged in a mauve glass flacon, will debut in Paris at an “experiential” pop-up shop celebrating the brand’s entire fragrance collection. Then it will drift, like a petal on a westward wind, to New York and LA. It’s a move from the old Glossier playbook — the original You launched with an “experience” in lower Manhattan that may or may not have been a pop-up — scaled to the new Glossier’s ambitions. It’s also a departure from the cool-girl ethos Glossier cultivated around its 2014 launch, and reflects not only the company’s hopes — to become a “hundred-year beauty brand” — but also its latest pivots to appeal to a bigger audience.

In 2022, founder Emily Weiss, and the architect of Glossier’s cool, stepped back to make room for new CEO Leahy, who joined from Cole Haan; the next year, a selection of products launched in Sephora, including You. The one-time DTC darling is now readily available in nearly everywhere beauty is sold including the UK’s Space NK and Australia’s Mecca, in Sephora stores in Europe and the Middle East, and even at Kohl’s.

It also begs the question: If You is for everybody, who is it really for?

Part of this has meant catering to younger consumers, who were in elementary school when Glossier launched but now increasingly congregate at the once-Millennial coded brand; Marina Mansour, who heads up beauty and wellness at digital creator firm Kyra, notes that Glossier is in the top five most coveted brands among Gen-Z for makeup and skincare, beating out incumbents like Maybelline, Clinique and Fenty.

Its future in fragrance is less clear. The category itself has become more crowded with not only more brands but newer formats like inexpensive body sprays and lotions courtesy of lines like Sol de Janiero. Newer entrants like Phlur and NOYZ, which launched since the pandemic, have brought niche perfumes into accessible price points. Glossier’s Fleur retails for $78.

Leahy affirmed the brand’s mission to continue shoring up its cross-category franchises, but noted a particular opportunity for fragrance, given the response You and its Impressions have received. This opportunity is especially acute for Glossier, where a single fragrance costs more than multiple makeup or skincare products.

“As a business person and a brand builder, when you see indicators of consumer connection and consumer demand to that level, you run, don’t walk,” Leahy said. “We want to take that insight and really create the next fragrance house for the next generation.”

The Smell of Success

Many fragrances are built top-down: a big celebrity face like Dua Lipa or Jisoo, a million-dollar marketing investment to create a campaign that plucks the heartstrings of potential consumers through their phone screens or television sets.

Glossier’s You is not many fragrances. The original scent launched in 2017, three years after Glossier’s inception, and was celebrated at a pop-up in New York City, where red gloved hands spritzed visitors with the musky, “You”-but-better fragrance.

You was spun out into multiple permutations — including a body collection and candle — but it was five years before it became a hit. “We saw it really pick up momentum in 2022,” Leahy said, citing its “Bitcoin Papi moment” — referring to the TikTok user whose video declaring You the “scent of the summer” went viral. The short video may also be responsible for bringing the heretofore Instagram brand into the TikTok age. The next year, When Glossier entered Sephora with You; it became the retailer’s best-selling fragrance that year.

In 2024, Glossier announced You’s flanking program, Impressions of You, with the introduction of two fragrances, the gourmand Rêve and woodsy Doux. At the launch event, held in a warehouse on New York’s East River that was reupholstered almost entirely in red, founder Emily Weiss told The Business of Beauty she could envision a shelf full of different Yous. “We came out with two together so that it immediately allowed us to represent the idea of a collection,” Leahy said.

It was the brand’s largest launch to date, due in part to its bottom line: The pair of fragrances, when purchased as a duo, cost $150, or three times the brand’s average order size. The price of the original fragrance increased from $60 to $78 in 2023.

It was also about time. Fragrance was the fastest growing category in beauty in 2024, according to insights firm Circana, for both its prestige and mass segments. The former has been driven by niche formulations, with the latter benefitting from a boom in body mists and sprays. In the time between launching You and extending it, brands like Sol de Janeiro have multiplied their fragrance collections — the bodycare label surpassed revenue of $1 billion last year. Glossier, for its part, will continue to take things slow and steady: Fleur will be the only new fragrance to launch this year, Leahy confirmed.

Pillar Up

The brand has made it clear that turning Glossier into a fragrance house isn’t its only goal — it’s only one of them. Leahy affirmed the brand’s promise to grow its hero collections, which include Boy Brow for eyebrows, Cloud Paint for blush and bronzer, Balm Dotcom for flavored multi-purpose salves and Futuredew, for skincare.

“We operate like a lifestyle beauty brand,” Leahy said. She points to recent launches like its Black Cherry collection, which included new shades of Cloud Paint and Balm Dotcom, as well as eye and lip pencils.

But the brand has also made strides to cater to Sephora customers through recent product launches, like February’s Milky Jelly Cleansing Balm, a flank of the best-selling Milky Jelly Cleanser. The Cleansing Balm is a thicker formula that also addressed criticisms of the original Milky Jelly, which a vocal minority of Sephora customers found to be too scented and not powerful enough.

Recently, the brand has been caught awkwardly between the demands of its core audience and its new one. The brand launched into Sephora with a vegan formula of its Balm Dotcom, but capitulated to consumer demands for the old formula later that year, re-releasing its original non-vegan option. While the comeback was heralded with a “you asked, we listened” marketing campaign, it’s unclear who “you” referred to — the original fans that demanded the vegan formula, or the Sephora fans who wanted the better balm.

As the brand challenges itself to 100-year-old relevance — and a hopeful acquisition along the way — coolness will only get it so far. “I remember Emily [Weiss] talking about wanting Glossier to be an Apple, or a Nike,” said Mansour. “You can’t get to that just by being cool. You can get to that by having good products that people come back to.”

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Disclosure: Brennan Kilbane worked at Glossier from 2015 to 2017.