I’m often in the mood to speak with strangers these days. Maybe because I recently moved from London to Lisbon, it’s an opportunity to practice Portuguese or make a new friend. But there are some days when I just don’t have it in me. Today’s one of those days, which is unfortunate, because I’m on my way to Lisbon Perfume Club along with over 20 strangers – and I’m attending alone.

Thankfully, when I arrive, I instantly relax. The event takes place in a queer-leaning function room which opens out onto the street, with big windows you can peep through and assess the vibe before entering. This is exactly what I’m doing when host and organiser Olle Eriksson spots me, heads over and envelops me in a muscular hug that smells like vetiver and patchouli.

Tonight’s special guest is one of Portugal’s most decorated perfumers, Miguel Matos. As Eriksson kicks off the Q&A, we pass around blotters spritzed with fragrances Matos dreamed up both for his own brand and others, like Nobile 1942’s A Grazi and Acampora’s Young Hearts. He tells us about the time he threw all his samples in the toilet in a fit of despair, the time he was nominated for a prestigious award and felt utterly numb, and the time he incorporated petrified rat urine from the desert into a formulation. Everyone is enjoying themselves.

Chances are there’s a perfume club near you, or someone thinking of starting one, with communities springing up everywhere from London to Berlin, New York to Wroclaw, Helsinki to Newcastle. Some are informal, built around blind smelling sessions; others run tours, workshops or swaps; some do all of the above.

Eriksson started his club because he wanted to share his interest in a group setting. “I’ve been here for four years and though I have lots of acquaintances, it’s been really hard to find people that I vibed with,” he says, explaining that he’s recently felt fatigued by ‘catch-up culture’. “You meet up for an expensive coffee, talk about how the last two weeks were, and then schedule the next. It becomes like work.”

It’s for similarly sociable reasons that Arabelle Sicardi, olfactive expert and author of The House of Beauty, launched Perfumed Pages, their ‘experimental creative container’. “I was feeling lonely as a writer and fragrance fan, and wanted to cultivate a community experience of the stories that beauty told me were possible,” they explain. “I wanted to share the ethos of [The House of Beauty] in a way that made sense; I think the best versions of beauty culture involve experiencing it with other people. So I made that happen intentionally.” Sicardi’s club is hybrid, offering both in-person and online events to ensure that “people who are very Covid-conscious or disabled [are] able to participate meaningfully in beauty culture, too.”

The timing is telling. According to recent UK government data, younger adults are now more likely to feel lonely than older generations, and research shows that loneliness among young people is a worsening problem around the world. So is it any wonder that a generation of fragrance obsessives, many of whom discovered their olfactory passions while locked down in a pandemic, are now grasping for group experiences?

Eriksson and Sicardi have both spotted new friendships forming at events. “When you’re very involved in community, it’s actually hard to be lonely,” says Sicardi. “There’s definitely regulars at every event, and friendships and creative partnerships have formed out of them. People celebrate birthdays together, grab dinner before or after events, do ad-hoc scent swaps and become pen pals… I’m in group chats now that span the world.” Maksim, founder of Helsinki Perfume Club, has seen something similar. “People mentioned that it creates a sense of belonging, that they’ve been looking for this kind of community for so long, and it makes their life brighter, especially during dark winters.”

Typically, perfume clubs welcome new enthusiasts and novices – Eriksson isn’t afraid to set the tone or gently guide conversations away from ‘insider’ language. “This is not a competition,” he explains. “Don’t guess if this fragrance has chamomile, or if that one has rice notes: say what you feel.” In this way, perfume’s an excellent icebreaker – a vehicle for bypassing small talk into much richer conversations, about memories, cultural scripts, taste and preferences. It is also a powerful stimulus for conversations about politics, power and intersectionality. 

At Lisbon Perfume Club’s inaugural event last year, for example, the conversation drifted into a discussion about the slippery connotations and power-play behind using the word ‘clean’ to describe certain notes and accords. This readiness to debate allows the clubs to interrogate just how much consumerism plays a role in olfaction as an art form, while facilitating a less transactional way to enjoy fragrance. “Fundamentally, there is enough of most things in the world – or would be if we shared,” says Sicardi, who says they feel “disenchanted” by the impact of waste and overconsumption in the beauty industry. Their events often encourage participants to swap their stash or decant and share what they have. 

It’s strange that it took so long for us to congregate around our sense of smell in the same way that we eat together at supper clubs, read together for book clubs, and dance together at nightclubs. But if the growing excitement around the movement is anything to go by – Eriksson is already inundated with requests for future events, and Sicardi is planning their next Nose Training series for 2026 – this is far from a fleeting trend. People are ready to take the olfaction far more seriously, one perfume club at a time.