Young men are smellmaxxing. What does that mean?

Van McCourt is a 17-year-old with a $5000 fragrance collection.

The high school student from Hawke’s Bay has about 25 bottles. Two from Louis Vuitton are worth about $500 each and McCourt shipped them from overseas.

Yes, he has a few mainstream fragrances, such as Y by Yves Saint Laurent, the first fragrance he purchased at the age of 15. He describes it as “a bit aromatic, fresh, citrusy as well... not too up my nose".

But lately, he has moved into niche scents from brands like Guerlain and Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Vibrato by Sospiro, a fresh fragrance with notes of lemon and lime, is his current signature scent.

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“They will be big for the fragrance community, like big brands amongst people who know fragrances, but not really known to the public.

“I like collecting more rare, high-end fragrances.”

The community he is talking about largely lives on TikTok under the banner of smellmaxxing. It’s here that influencers such as Noel Thomas (863.9K followers) and Nose Blind (442K followers) offer detailed reviews of fragrances.

They discuss minute topics such as what fragrances to over or underspray, and what fragrances women love - and hate - on men. Many of these influencers are young men speaking to their peers, like McCourt. It comes as increasing numbers of young men turn to and talk openly about self-care at levels that were historically seen as a female domain.

“Me and my friends would always have competitions to see who smells the best...

“I guess smellmaxxing was just a kind of like the process of enhancing one's scent, like just wanting to smell the best you possibly can.”

While his friends are into smellmaxxing, McCourt has the biggest and most expensive collection.

“I won’t let anyone else have that title.”

He hustles for it, too. He works a part-time job, and finds underpriced fragrances on Facebook Marketplace to resell on the NZ Fragrance Community page. It’s a Facebook group with 7000 members.

Ryan, a 21-year-old university student in Auckland, bounces between the five fragrances he owns. His collection is worth about $1000. Others in his friendship group have much larger collections, he says.

“I think it's more about yourself, that if you smell nice, it is going to make you feel a bit nicer and a bit cleaner. It makes you feel better about yourself rather than trying to attract [someone].”

Women are still the main customers at Fragranzi Artisan Perfume Studio, a make-your-own fragrance studio in Christchurch, but there are increasing numbers of young men coming in, says Conan Fee, the studio's founder. He is also a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Canterbury, where he runs a fragrance course as part of the university’s product design school.

“But also what’s notable is that you get these young guys coming in and they’re certainly in their teens, sometimes early teens, and they seem to have quite a lot of knowledge about perfume and perfume notes and particularly top brands.

“It’s quite amusing in some ways. Sometimes they’re coming in with their mother and they’re making a perfume and you can tell there’s a sort of rite of passage going on... they’ve reached a certain age or maybe they’ve asked a girl out or something.”

That hints at something about smellmaxxing - fragrance and harnessing its power of attraction isn’t new. The ancient Greeks were the first to create liquid perfume thousands of years ago, according to a history of perfume compiled by the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Canada. Eau de cologne, a fragrance for men, was invented by an Italian barber at the beginning of the 18th century.

Jehan Younis, the owner of the Auckland fragrance store Whiffy, received his first fragrance as a gift from his dad about 15 years ago, long before TikTok or the term smellmaxxing was a thing. Now, at 39, he has more than 2000 in his personal collection and turned his hobby into a business.

"Ten years ago, when I moved to New Zealand, I was trying to find a few unique brand perfumes that I could not find in New Zealand."

Younis is hoping to open another location in the coming months because of demand, including from increasing numbers of young male customers.

"They are knowledgeable about the fragrances, but mostly stick to the ones that are in their budget."

The global male fragrance industry is expected to grow to about NZ$80 billion in 2031 from $55 billion in 2023. A key driver is a growing emphasis on men’s self-care. In the hierarchy of TikTok terminology, smellmaxxing sits under looksmaxxing, where young men undertake beauty rituals like chewing hard gum constantly to achieve a chiselled jaw or a complicated skincare routine to emphasise pouty lips. The roots of looksmaxxing are somewhat tangled with the manosphere, often dark and misogynistic undercurrents on the internet.

Rory Lynch, 21, is looking at a career in fragrance design after taking Fee’s fragrance course. Lynch will graduate with a Bachelor of Product Design majoring in chemical formulation design.

“I wasn’t initially that into fragrances, but in the past few years I have become a lot more interested in it.”

He has found designing perfume more creative than lotions or other formulated scents. He likes notes of black pepper and the Gourmandy family of fragrance, which tend to be sweeter. And he loves one called concrete.

“Yeah, it smells like after it rains on asphalt.”