The perfume industry is currently undergoing one of the most significant shifts in its history and most people do not know it is happening.
Forty percent of all new perfume launches in 2023 and 2024 were positioned as unisex or gender-neutral. The unisex fragrance market is growing at 6.81% annually and is projected to reach $33.42 billion by 2031. Sixty percent of Gen Z consumers prefer gender-neutral scents.
These are not small numbers. This is a structural shift in how fragrance is created, marketed, and worn — and it is happening right now while most of Nigeria's fragrance conversation is still organised around men's and women's categories that the industry itself is abandoning.
This guide is for the people ahead of that curve.
What unisex actually means — and what it does not
Unisex fragrance does not mean androgynous fragrance. It does not mean a compromise between masculine and feminine. It means a fragrance designed to smell extraordinary on any person, on any skin, without requiring the wearer to exist inside a gender category that the perfume was designed for.
The best unisex fragrances smell distinctive rather than neutral. They have character and point of view. What they do not have is a gender assumption embedded in their design.
In Nigeria, the unisex conversation is particularly interesting. Men wearing Chanel and YSL Libre is not new — it has been happening for years and the community that does it has always known what it was doing. What is new is the industry catching up and naming it, and the social permission that naming creates for people who were already there.
The best unisex perfumes available now
Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540 EDP
Saffron, jasmine, amberwood, fir resin. The most complimented unisex fragrance of the decade globally. On women it is warm and skin-like and addictive. On men it is the same thing but anchored differently by skin chemistry. The result in both cases is that strangers ask what you are wearing before the evening is over. In Nigerian conditions the amberwood base blooms in heat and the saffron creates something specific and extraordinary. This is what expensive smells like when it is not trying to smell expensive.
Maison Margiela Replica Jazz Club EDT
Pink pepper, clary sage, vetiver, rum, tobacco, vanilla. This is the perfume of a specific memory — warm rooms, late nights, wood and smoke and something sweet underneath. It does not smell like the memory of a time or place you have necessarily been. It smells like the memory of a version of yourself that was completely at ease. On women it is moody and sophisticated. On men it is the same. The tobacco and vanilla combination works equally on both skin chemistries.
Byredo Gypsy Water EDP
Bergamot, lemon, juniper berries, incense, sandalwood, amber, vanilla. This is how Byredo became a cult brand — a fragrance that smells simultaneously like outdoor freedom and indoor luxury, like clean air and expensive wood. It photographs as unisex because it has no agenda. It is simply beautiful. On Nigerian skin the incense and amber base comes up warmly and the result is something that smells like a person who makes interesting choices.
Dior Sauvage EDP — worn by women
This is the one the industry has been noting for years: Sauvage EDP on women smells different from Sauvage EDP on men, and on many women it smells extraordinary. The ambroxan that drives Sauvage's skin-warmth quality interacts with female skin chemistry to create something richer and more floral than the expected masculine freshness. Women who wear this are not wearing a men's fragrance. They are wearing one of the best fragrances available and the gender categorisation is simply incorrect in their specific case.
Comme des Garçons 2 EDT
Ink and smoke and synthetic aldehydes over dry woods and white musk. This fragrance is strange and perfect. It smells like intelligence rather than beauty, like a library rather than a garden. It is not for everyone but the people it is for wear it as something that is completely, entirely theirs — because no one else in the room is wearing it. In our serial A Man Like That, Dare wears this and the choice was deliberate: it is the fragrance of a man who has removed himself from the obvious.
Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille EDP
Tobacco leaf, vanilla, cocoa, dried fruits, wood sap. Tom Ford built this as a unisex fragrance and the gender-free positioning is accurate. On women it is opulent and slightly subversive — warm and dark and overtly sensual. On men it is the date night fragrance that ends conversations about what he is wearing. In Nigerian conditions the vanilla and tobacco base intensifies in warmth and creates something that belongs in the same space as the best food you have ever eaten.
Maison Margiela Replica Flower Market EDT
Green and floral and clean — the smell of a flower market in the morning. This is the unisex fragrance for people who are not yet sure about unisex fragrance. It is approachable and beautiful and completely without agenda. Men who find most fragrances too sweet or too heavy find this clean and manageable. Women who want something lighter than their usual florals find it distinctive. It meets in the middle honestly.
The wardrobe case for unisex
Here is the practical argument: if you build your fragrance wardrobe around the best-performing fragrances rather than the fragrances marketed to your gender, your wardrobe improves dramatically.
Some of the most extraordinary fragrances in existence were designed without gender assumptions. Baccarat Rouge 540. Byredo Gypsy Water. The entire Maison Margiela Replica line. The Comme des Garçons catalogue. Le Labo Santal 33. These fragrances were not made for one body type or one set of cultural expectations. They were made to smell remarkable on any person willing to wear them.
The question is not whether a fragrance is for men or women. The question is whether it is for you.