If you want to know what the Marie Claire Beauty Team has been up to over the past few months? Well, here are the SparkNotes. We were each tasked with spraying, wearing, and evaluating nearly 1,000 fragrances on a mission to discover exactly which scents (and body products and home scents) would bring in the most compliments, last the longest, and spark tremendous joy. The result: an expertly edited list of the 62 best scents of 2026, otherwise known as the Marie Claire 2026 Fragrance Awards.
But what’s the point of an award if you’re not going to celebrate it? That’s very much a rhetorical question, and precisely why we gathered nearly 200 of the biggest names in the fragrance world at Nine Orchard Hotel in New York City last Thursday, June 4, to honor each and every well-deserved winner. We had noses responsible for creating our favorites in attendance (and yes, we obviously picked their brains about upcoming fragrance trends), as well as marketing executives, brand founders, and freelance writers.
