Pop-up Perfumeries

The power of fragrance to elicit deep emotional responses and improve memory recall at live events isn’t a new concept. But several brands have been offering a fresh take on scent-centric experiences to cut through a beauty category that is becoming increasingly oversaturated—and the data fueling the surge in pop-up perfumeries doesn’t lie. According to a Bath & Body Works-commissioned 2025 survey of 1,500-plus Americans, 72 percent agree that fragrance “makes their lives better,” while 78 percent say it has the power to transport them to another place or time. With those stats in mind, let’s explore how top brands are passing the new smell test.

The Great Outdoors

Just in time for spring, Marc Jacobs activated a personalization-forward Marc Jacobs Daisy Garden event on April 24 at the historic Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills, CA. Area tastemakers were invited to the launch event to experience the newest addition to the Daisy fragrance collection, Daisy Wild Eau So Intense, and a whimsical outdoor journey spanning installations, sensory moments and personalized touchpoints.

Each vignette found within the Daisy Garden was designed to reflect a different characteristic inspired by Daisy scents: optimistic, playful, lively and adventurous. The activation concluded with a “Personality Picnic” featuring curated f&b in a lush meadow setting where attendees created personalized charms for their picnic baskets, added custom embroidery and concocted their own green juice or cocktail at the DIY juice bar.

Festival Sponsorships

At this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, cult-favorite beauty brand Sol de Janeiro dug into its Brazilian roots to deliver Casa Cheirosa, a 30-foot by 30-foot fragrance-forward playground that featured six interactive zones: Attract, Enter, Entice, Engage, Chill and Extend.

As festivalgoers explored the vignettes, brand ambassadors were on hand educating them on the story behind the numbers attached to Sol de Janeiro’s Cheirosa Perfume Mist products, like Cheirosa 62, inspired by 1960s-era Brazil, a golden age of beach culture, self-expression and the height of the bossa nova music genre. And at Cheirosa Your Way, attendees encountered a fragrance wall installation that combined scent, personalization and play.

Another popular experience was the reimagining of Rio de Janeiro’s iconic orelhões, dome-shaped public phone booths. The brand transformed multiple booths into perfume pods that were themed after Cheirosa mists, each featuring original artwork designed to capture that product’s mood and identity. The goal? To ensure everyone left refreshed and altogether cheirosa—a term that translates to “smelling incredibly delicious.”

Meanwhile, Bath & Body Works is also hitting the festival circuit this season with its Scent x Sound Labs experience, which is slated to include a multisensory journey during which fragrance and music converge to create a “unique scent-memory connection.”

Cross-continental Launches

To introduce its Chance Eau Splendide fragrance, Chanel took a cross-continental approach, activating a pop-up perfumery at The Grove in Los Angeles from April 30 to May 18, as well as in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London from April 28 to May 5.

In L.A., attendees can participate in a playful, carnival-like experience that encompasses larger-than-life perfume bottle installations, a branded maze, a ring toss, the opportunity to get a whiff of all five Chanel Chance fragrances, a Chance (fortune) Teller who reveals secret messages, photo ops, a listening station where consumers can listen to the launch campaign’s theme song, “A Little More,” and—get this—a carousel that features Chanel bottles in place of horses.

Across the pond, a Chance Street pop-up invited consumers to “Take a Chance” and engage in a funhouse-inspired experience featuring a fragrance discovery bar, a display of makeup products inspired by the scents in the Chance collection, cotton candy treats and a Hall of Mirrors installation inspired by the campaign film. Attendees could also book personalized beauty services for a fee, and sign up to attend a special evening event on May 1 featuring fragrance discovery activities, a live DJ, cocktails and canapés.

Catch up on all of this year’s weekly trends here.