What 2025 smelled like 🦋🪞🛩️

Scenting our favorite releases of the year

Dec 09, 2025

Addison Rae announces 2025 world tour with dates in UK, Europe, North America, Australia | WTYE / WTAY

It’s that wonderful time of the year where culture obsessives get to catalogue our faves of the past 365 days. We’re leaning into this OCD tradition by pairing our favorite cultural moments from this year with perfumes, obvi. We’ve already covered some of our 2025 highlights—Addison Rae’s sparkly debut, Taylor Swift’s Charli xcx diss track, Ethel Cain’s Southern Gothic masterpiece, and, of course, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City—but there’s so much more to celebrate. Whether it’s the albums that soundtracked our spirals, the shows that gave us lowkey eye twitches from binging, or the books that made us feel vaguely literary for once, here’s what else made 2025 unforgettable, paired with the scents that capture them.

Like a Ribbon by John Glacier with Molecule 01 + Iris

I live for an East London girl rapper with a blasé flow, which makes John Glacier my freaking catnip. She’s also peculiar in a way I love. She refuses to reveal her real name (her Instagram bio just says “No✨”), told The Guardian she was “20,000 years old,” and delivers everything in a deadpan that makes her sound like the most unbothered person on the planet. On her debut album, Like a Ribbon, she raps over crunchy post-punk guitars and stripped-down, glitchy production that’s all metallic edges and empty space. On “Emotions,” she raps: “Now they’re calling me a bitch / You best believe it / I’m as cold as the ice / When I don’t feel it.” That icy bitch IS Molecule 01 + Iris by Escentric Molecules (also British). Perfumer Geza Schoen took his cult-classic Molecule 01 and added one ingredient: iris pallida absolue, one of the most expensive materials in perfumery. This iris is powdery but not sweet, buttery but cold, with a starchy quality that feels almost mineralic—one Fragrantica reviewer called it “floral sand.” It’s the purple flower on Like a Ribbon‘s cover, not lush but austere, floating over Iso E Super’s icy, barely-there beats. And just as Like a Ribbon was one of my most streamed of the year, Molecule 01 + Iris was among my most worn.

Hot or cold? Positively glacial.
Who wears it? Shoreditch girls who can code.
Place? Hackney garden.
Animal? Damselfly.
Song? “Emotions” is the one!
Texture? Floral sand.
Signature drink? Iced Earl Grey.
Favorite word? “Innit.”
Vampire or angel? Neither; satellite.

—Anna

The Compound by Aisling Rawle with La Divina by Marissa Zappas

I spent this year becoming progressively more illiterate, speed-reading cheap mysteries and thrillers via the Libby app on my iPad like a toddler mainlining Cocomelon. One book that broke through my haze and made me hang onto every word was The Compound by Aisling Rawle (Ireland loves manufacturing genius young female novelists). I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s basically “what if Love Island took place in a dystopic universe and the contestants were forced to psychologically torture one another for prizes and sustenance?” Our universe and Love Island are already pretty dystopic, so it hits very close to home. Every word of the novel is dripping with dread, but the romance in it is very tender and sincere. There’s a whole subplot that involves gardening, which is partly why I’m pairing The Compound with La Divina by Marissa Zappas. La Divina is an entire rose bush ripped out of the soil: it’s a realistic, fresh rose mixed with soil, wood, and musk. It smells like a secret rendezvous with your lover, dirt still under his fingernails from a long day’s work in the sun. It’s fitting that La Divina is named after “the first Roman courtesan to achieve celebrity status,” since all the contestants in The Compound are basically celebrity courtesans. For their willingness to perform on TV, they’re showered in gifts from the reality TV gods—you can imagine a hot twenty-something with a veneer-filled smile holding La Divina’s bow-adorned bottle up to the camera, expressing their profuse gratitude as they attempt to disassociate in vain.

Hot or cold? Global-warming-level hot.
Who wears it? Girly girls who crave a Rob Rausch type.
Place? A luxury villa in hell.
Animal? Hummingbird.
Song? “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey.
Texture? The last rose petals on earth.
Signature drink? Prosecco served in a white plastic flute with your name on it.
Favorite word? “Winner.”
Vampire or angel? Untrustworthy angel.

—Crissy

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk with Gossamer Spirit by Universal Flowering

As someone who’s always been terrified of flying, I got a strange thrill reading about a quirky loner with an erotic fantasy of dying in a plane crash. Kate Folk’s debut novel Sky Daddy stars Linda, a San Francisco content moderator who spends her weekends riding the AirTrain at SFO, booking cheap round-trip flights, and watching plane crash videos with the fervor of a lovesick teen. Her ultimate dream is to be recognized mid-flight by a plane as its soulmate and go out in a final act of union. With notes of cold metal and smoke, Gossamer Spirit quite literally smells like a plane crash—maybe into a church. Sky Daddy is obviously a metaphor for God, and Gossamer Spirit is quite holy. The metallic notes evoke aluminum fuselage, while the incense brings you straight to the altar. Lonely and spiritual, the perfect scent for Linda’s peculiar devotion.

Hot or cold? Warm smoke.
Who wears it? Girls who fantasize about dying (in a romantic way).
Place? Gate 777.
Animal? Dove with a broken wing.
Song? “Unison” by Björk.
Texture? Burnt aluminum.
Signature drink? Bloody Mary.
Favorite word? “Union.”
Vampire or angel? Spirit.

—Anna

The Leopard with Relique d’Amour by Oriza L. Legrand

Much of my 2025 was spent trying to learn Italian. This attempt will continue into 2026, but my expectations remain molto basso (very low). I watched The Leopard as a part of my education—with the original Italian audio and Italian closed captioning for maximum learning potential—but quickly became too invested in the story to have my nose in a dictionary. Thank god for English subtitles! The Leopard is an adaptation of Italy’s top-selling novel (ever!) and is the story of many things: the fall of Sicily’s nobility, the unification of Italy, sexy young people in tortured love triangles, and how Deva Cassel is the luckiest nepo baby on planet earth (her mom is Monica Belluci and her dad is Vincent Cassel, goddamn). Relique d’Amour smells like the convent that Concetta, daughter of a slutty Sicilian prince, is rescued from: it’s heavy on incense and woods, punctuated by cool, fresh lily. It’s known to smell like a damp cave and the word “melancholic” is thrown around a lot in its reviews, so you know it’s good. It’s the perfect scent for clutching your rosary while you think impure thoughts about your hot socialite cousin.

Hot or cold? Cold and yearning.
Who wears it? Anyone whose name has a lot of vowels.
Place? The confession booth.
Animal? Il Gattopardo!
Song? “Città vuota” by Mina.
Texture? Gilded cage.
Signature drink? Amaro on the rocks.
Favorite word? “Principessa.”
Vampire or angel? Vampire with an accent.