2025’s Top Perfumes Throw Out The Rulebook. Nicoleta Tomsa and Oli Marlow Just Proved It

If your idea of “fresh” is shower gel, 2025 is here to ruin that comfort zone in the best way. The latest Top 10 by Nicoleta Tomsa and Oli Marlow reads like a permission slip to stop playing safe. No fixed theme, no forced cohesion, just a confident sweep from citrus with salt and bite to shadows that don’t rely on syrupy oud. Finally.

What I’m smelling on wrists this year feels more personal. Fresh is mineral, saline, even a little bitter. Woods are inky and dry, not candied. Florals are photoreal but not precious. That line about vision, storytelling, artistry is not a buzzword salad. It’s the dividing line between perfume that wears you and perfume that makes you think.

A few scent signals that line up with this moment:

• Salty citrus instead of sugar water. Think of the bracing lift you get from something like Hermès Un Jardin à Cythère, where brightness meets texture. It’s a mood, not a body spray.
• Smoke that whispers instead of shouts. Inky-woody structures, the way Zoologist Squid made “blackness” feel aquatic and quiet rather than charred.
• White florals with a spine. The green, menthol-laced swagger of Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower remains the benchmark for tuberose with nerve.
• Modern myrrh that glows rather than broods. The silken resin of Tom Ford Myrrhe Mystère shows how to make warmth feel aerodynamic.

None of these are box-ticking trends. They’re threads you can trace across this year’s best, the kind of choices that make a skin-scent read like a short story. When curators like Nicoleta Tomsa and Oli Marlow refuse to wrangle a Top 10 into a cute theme, it tells you something crucial about 2025. The center has shifted. “Fresh” can be saline and mineral. “Dark” can be translucent. “Pretty” can have teeth.

If you’re hunting the best perfumes of 2025, follow the tension. Look for brine over sugar, ink over smoke, stems over petals. The artistry is in the contrast, and that’s where the thrill lives now.