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The tobacco renaissance is here — and it doesn’t care what your cologne used to smell like.

Tobacco is back. Not in a Marlboro Man, leather-jacket, post-shave splash kind of way — that fantasy died with the department store counter. Today’s tobacco wears smoke like silk and trades machismo for mood. It’s sweeter. Stickier. More subversive. Less “gentleman’s club,” more “morning after.”

From the drydown of cult favourites to entire fragrances built around its burn, tobacco has shifted from niche to necessary. Nicolas Chabot — founder of fragrance houses Headspace, Le Galion, and Aether — knows this all too well. His scent Tuberose doesn’t just flirt with the idea. It inhales. The result? A perfume that smells like sex, cigarettes, and someone’s borrowed t-shirt.

But first, what does tobacco actually smell like? In fragrance, it’s not the scent of burnt cigarettes or stale smoke. Instead, tobacco often appears as a warm, sweet, and slightly bitter note — somewhere between hay, honey, dry leaves, and vanilla. It can lean spicy, earthy, or even resinous depending on its blend. At times, it mimics the comforting richness of a well-aged cigar box or the faint trace of someone’s perfume lingering on a coat left at a bar. It’s nostalgic, sensual, and slightly forbidden — which is exactly the point.

Tobacco in perfumery isn’t just a note — it’s a mood. A shape-shifter. Sometimes raw and bitter, sometimes golden and sticky-sweet. Chabot puts it bluntly: “What is now called tobacco by most brands is a sweet, honeyed, ambery and tonka-like accord… it’s like a new offer to vanilla lovers.” Think less ashtray, more after-dinner drink. It’s indulgent — without being obvious.

And yet, its roots are far more complex. “Tobacco leaf in its natural form is green, vegetal and dense,” Chabot explains — not exactly what sells. What perfumers reach for instead are molecules like coumarin, found in hay, liatris, and flouve, that give tobacco its almond-honey haze. Sometimes honey itself joins the mix, sometimes tonka bean. But the end result isn’t smoke — it’s seduction.

This is the version of tobacco that’s climbing the charts — warm, plush, and crowd-pleasing. But not everyone’s looking for the sugar high. “In its rawer form, greener and bitter, the tobacco note can please authentic perfume lovers,” says Chabot. “It’s more differentiating.” This is the side of tobacco that pairs well with resin, with leather, even with regret.

And regret has always smelled expensive.

Historically, tobacco has shown up in some of perfumery’s most iconic works — Tabac Blond (1919), Habanita (1921), D&G Pour Homme (1994), and later, Ambre Narguilé (2004), which Chabot calls “the godfather of current tobacco creations.” Today, it’s still evolving. Fruits, spices, smoke, flowers — the note plays well with others, even when it’s stealing the show.

But let’s talk about Tuberose. Chabot’s own creation smells like someone kissed your neck while holding a cigarette between their fingers. “I wanted to illustrate an intimate moment,” he says. “The aftermath rather than the foreplay.” That tension between white floral and smoke — connected by a clever twist of galbanum — creates something almost cinematic. You don’t wear it. You remember it.

And that’s exactly the point. Headspace, the brand, is built around the idea of scent as memory — not fantasy. “The vision is carpe diem, enjoy the moment,” Chabot notes. “Perfume can freeze an instant in our memory. Tobacco is part of that… the relief, the sigh, the act of breathing slowly.”

It’s also a little bit rebellious. In an age of wellness, tobacco in fragrance flirts with the edge. “Just like sugar in the 2000s,” Chabot adds, “tobacco in perfume allows people to defy a taboo.” It’s not about smoking — it’s about scent as defiance. As pleasure.

So yes, tobacco is trending — but that doesn’t mean it’s temporary. “As long as perfumers continue to explore it,” Chabot says, “it could become a classic note of its own — like fig did.”

And if you’re still stuck on the idea that tobacco is a ‘masculine’ note? Try again. The whole idea of gendered scent is fading fast. “So many men are wearing fruity and gourmand scents now,” Chabot says, “while 15 years ago, that was for teenage girls.” The real flex today is range.

Whether you wear it for the thrill, the throwback, or the theatre of it all, tobacco doesn’t ask for permission. It lingers. It remembers. And this season, it just might smell like you.