Lactose tolerant
A begrudging take on gourmand perfume.
A couple months ago, I received a sample of Eris Parfums’ latest release, Mother’s Milk. My first thought was huh, even Eris is going for the milk trend now?
There are some perfume launches that feel like they were engineered in a lab to meet the trending TikTok algorithm. But Eris Parfums, whose tight edit of scents like Mx. and Belle de Jour are inspired by the likes of gender non-conformity and French New Wave cinema, does not usually go for such straightforwardly commercial appeal.
Mother’s Milk is indeed a gourmand, the fragrance family you simply can’t escape these days. But if Eris, founded in 2016 by vintage perfume expert Barbara Herman, is going to do a gourmand, it’s going to offer more than just crowd-pleasing sugar and sweet. Created by perfumer Antoine Lie, Mother’s Milk injects an animalic accord into the lactose family, mixing nostalgia with a sense of danger.
Milk has been the reigning perfume note for what feels like eternity (actual time, maybe two years). But more recently it also seems to be the aroma of choice for niche brands finally making the jump into a true gourmand scent.
Dusita’s 2025 launch Tonka Latte is, according to the Luckyscent description, the brand’s “first true gourmand fragrance.” Essential Parfums’ newest scent Ambre Latte is also the brand’s “entry into the world of gourmand fragrances.” D’Orsay made its foray into fruity, truly edible notes with 2025’s Holy Berry, a blend of strawberry milk and vanilla.
While most fragrance trends trickle down from niche to the mass market — see pistachio’s proliferation from D.S. & Durga’s initially limited-edition Pistachio to Target-brand Finery’s Pistachio Please all the way back to luxury in Loewe’s new $265 pistachio candle — milk seems to have gone the opposite direction.
The likes of Dusita and Eris aren’t the first true niche brands to delve into milk — Blanche Bête by Liquide Imaginaires and Bianco Latte by Giardini di Toscana have been milky niche hits for quite some time. But the new phase of milk launches do come after the tier of what I’d call Sephora niche brands have truly well and owned the milk aisle: think Phlur Heavy Cream (launched in 2024); Commodity Milk (2021) and its 2025 flanker Orchid Milk; Dedcool Milk (2018) and its many flankers like 2022’s Xtra Milk, which even got its own Erewhon smoothie interpretation a while back. These are the kind of brands that straddle commercial appeal with just the right amount of edge. And milk seems to the perfect vehicle to achieve that balance between accessibility and novelty.
Perhaps that’s what makes milk also the preferred vehicle for indie brands dipping their toe — dare I say begrudgingly — into the more commercial world of gourmands. In seeing Dusita and Essential Parfums just now launch their first gourmands, I can’t help but wonder if some more business-minded person told these brands that if they want to stay in the perfume business, they’re going to have to make a gourmand. Spate’s 2026 Fragrance Trends report lists gourmands as the undisputed leading fragrance family, with the category’s popularity on social media and in search volume up 85.1% year-over-year. Of the top ten notes by popularity, only two are non-gourmands — bergamot and oud. Pistachio’s popularity alone is up 852.5% year-over-year, and banana’s nearly 1,000%.
When it comes to edible scents, milk is a versatile base. It’s a crowd-pleaser that can play well with caramel and baked good notes, but is a little more unexpected than simple vanilla. It can adapt to florals, like in the lactonic white floral Freckled and Beautiful from What We do is Secret or Fzotic’s Lilac Brûlée. You can even go dairy-free, like with the almond milk in Anti Parfums’ Kleopatra and the rice milk in You Soie, the latest Glossier You flanker.
But back to Mother’s Milk. On smelling it, my second thought was that it does indeed evoke childhood nostalgia, at least for me. After a few whiffs, I realized Mother’s Milk is a shockingly accurate rendition of the smell of the Kayser’s health food store in La Cumbre Plaza, which will only mean something to those who remember Santa Barbara in the 90s. Call it a mix of carob, protein powder, and styrofoam1, or just a hearkening back to when health food stores were still a little crunchy and not trying to look like an Apple Genius bar.
And Mother’s Milk is, at least for Eris’s dedicated audience, a crowd-pleaser. The scent sold out roughly two weeks after its launch in March. Gourmandise has reached such critical mass that even niche brands can’t deny their fans a glass of milk.
To be clear, this is, to me, a delicious combination; as a 90s SoCal baby, I love carob.