After years in the beauty industry, Fanny Descamps and Edwina Réthoré felt niche perfumery had become elitist, static and disconnected from real life. Descamps says, “It was often beautiful, but distant, hard to access and hard to understand.”
Motivated by their frustration at the status quo, the duo left their respective roles—Réthoré most recently was head of revenue at Nuud and formerly held positions at Merci Handy, Diptyque and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Descamps’s résumé winds through Firmenich, CPL Aromas, Parfums de la Bastide and Guerlain—to democratize niche fragrance at Fascent, a Paris-based brand they launched in 2023 that’s been gaining ground in the United States. It entered American retailers Arielle Shoshana, Revolve, Luckyscent and Credo Beauty this year.
“Something we really want to represent is freedom: freedom to play, collect, combine, to put on fragrance on Monday for those reserved for a Saturday night,” says Descamps. “The way we see it, we all have one personality, but with many facets. It was important to us to really showcase and elevate every facet you have.”
Fascent’s assortment contains six fragrances priced at $78 each for a 30-ml. bottle, including woody Milky No Way, skin-like Radical Softness and green aromatic I Fig You. Through international expansion, product launches and a strengthened digital presence, Fascent projects it will generate roughly $2.3 million in 2026 sales. From September 2024 to September 2025, its direct-to-consumer sales have spiked 435%.
It took 18 months and about $230,000—grants, bank financing and a low-interest loan for entrepreneurs were components of the funding—to bring Fascent to market. About a year later, the brand secured a second tranche of bank financing amounting to around $115,000.
Fascent complements younger consumers’ break from the signature scent philosophy of fragrance wearing and encourages mixing and matching. Its core demographic skews to gen Z, gen alpha and millennial consumers. Gen Z has been driving the fragrance category’s growth—prestige fragrance was up 6% in the first half of this year, according to market research firm Circana—and fragrance usage of gen Zers reached 83% in 2023, with about 73% wearing fragrance at least three times per week as of 2024.
Réthoré says, “We see perfume as a lifestyle tool to enhance personality, not as a rigid ritual, but a personal gesture of style.” Descamps says, “Fascent reimagines niche fragrance with a more instinctive, playful and inclusive approach: fragrances that you can wear alone or layer, depending on your mood.”
“We see perfume as a lifestyle tool to enhance personality, not as a rigid ritual.”
For those new to niche perfumery looking for help, the brand’s website features a quiz developed using the Olfactory Stimulation Therapy and Memory Reconstruction (OSTMR) method to arouse emotional responses. In 10 quick questions, site visitors are guided to a fragrance for their personality, mood, emotions, sensations and expectations for raw materials.
“We see the quiz as a starting point, not a rule,” says Descamps. “It helps guide exploration, but once you enter the Fascent universe, the idea is to experiment freely, to layer, and to find your own rhythm. We encourage people to take the quiz as a fun and intuitive entry into the brand, a way to spark curiosity.”
Sustainability is central to Fascent, and its packaging is designed to reduce waste without sacrificing style. Its bottles are constructed from recycled glass, caps are made out of 3D-printed corn starch, and boxes are out of Forest Stewardship Council-certified materials. The brand offers refills come in glass ampoules. It describes its fragrance formulas as free from preservatives, additives and colorants.
Fascent’s fragrances are available in an expanding network of concept stores, beauty boutiques and niche retailers. The brand is sold in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands along with the U.S. Its highly engaged online community enlarges by about 800 new followers every month.
“It was quite complicated to export in the United States for quite some time, and we are super happy with the [Revolve] partnership and positive feedback in just two short months,” says Réthoré. “The U.S. is one of our key priorities for the coming years, and we are currently in the process of setting up a local warehouse to support our expansion and improve logistics.”
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