The higher the perfume cap, the closer to God
On gigantic perfume caps and brand loyalty.
Last week, I discussed the Boy Smells rebrand drama. I don’t want to relitigate it here, except to say that I think the discourse around it brings up interesting points (and I also wrote more about it at my day job). Namely, are people right to be upset that a brand has sold out its explicit LGBTQ messaging? Or is it counterintuitive to actual queer liberation to expect our capitalist brands to exercise moral values? I don’t have an answer to that, but I think it’s worthwhile to debate, outside of the Boy Smells drama.
But the redesign does signal an end to another facet of perfume branding, specifically Boy Smells’ commitment to perfume cap supremacy.
When Boy Smells first launched its perfumes in 2021, it seemed to me like an escalation into just how gigantic you could make a perfume cap. It was similar to the evolution in how big could your pants be, or how tiny of a beanie could you prop on your head before you’re just rocking a secular yamaka. Boy Smells’ original design took the oversized caps of Stora Skuggan and Nasomatto, pioneers in big ass perfume caps, as a sort of challenge. What if the bottle was all cap?
There’s good reason to put all your design chops into the cap rather than the bottle: designing and manufacturing a custom perfume bottle is incredibly expensive, and thus something you’re more likely to see in a mass-produced designer brand like Carolina Herrera’s Good Girl stiletto or Comme des Garçons’ iconic resting flacons, designed by Marc Atlan, over a then-indie brand like Boy Smells.
In 2019 while on a work trip to Paris, I was invited to Ex Nihilo’s Saint Honoré store to get to know the still emerging perfume brand. Despite holding down expensive real estate in Paris’ 1st arrondissement and offering an in-store customization experience, commissioning a custom bottle was out of the brand’s budget, co-founder Benoît Verdier told me at the time. They had to be satisfied with stock bottles, and though the brand has since received a hefty investment from Eurazeo, they’ve kept to the same rectangular bottle as always.
Ex Nihilo isn’t unique in this. After comparing the bottles of Ex Nihilo to those from BDK Parfums and Fueguia, my sense is that they all use the same stock bottle, with caps to distinguish their individual identities. I think BDK does this particularly well, with caps modeled after classic mansard roofs in a nod to its Parisian roots.
But maybe the most notable trend brands have taken with their caps in recent years is to contrast the standard geometric bottle with a round cap. You see these in Liis and Sana Jardin, launched in 2020 and 2017, respectively. On a recent visit to Stéle in Nolita, founders Jake Levy and Matt Belanger called out Ode Ona as offering a playful evolution in the round cap trend with a half-dome style.
And caps have only gotten more expressive in recent years. I particularly like the black and white swans of Gumamina’s Odette and Odile perfumes, and the organic rock caps of Hong Kong brand Oddity. Most brands won’t have the capital to make it worth investing in a custom bottle, but the sky is the limit on caps.
But Boy Smells 2.0 doesn’t need a custom cap to make a statement. My assumption, based on their distinct coloring and embossed lettering, is that these new bottles are custom. So somebody at Boy Smells HQ has the capital to invest in costly molds and manufacturing. And perhaps it’ll pay off, even if Boy Smells’ original fans don’t come along for the ride.
