Once near-universally overlooked and underloved, the scent of banana is popping up all over all over beauty shelves, from Rhode to Glossier, Prada Beauty (who dedicated a whole Selfridges pop-up to the fruit last year) and countless fragrance brands across both ends of the retail spectrum. Meanwhile, on Tiktok, creators are “banana-hunting” in the wild, trialling banana-scented fragrances and lip products, mocking up speculative banana-themed products on Canva and uniting with fellow “banana girls”.

It comes as part of a broader trend towards “gourmand”, or sweet, edible, scents in the beauty space, with the global market value of gourmand fragrances worth more than $35 billion in 2025 and dessert-themed fragrance launches up 24% year over year. Food-first beauty marketing designed to alight the senses is everywhere, with Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, for example, drawing constant inspiration from sweet treats across its campaigns. The rise of so-called “scent-snacking” has been linked to the resurgence of diet culture within the mainstream, with “foodified” fragrances offering an olfactory substitute for food-based pleasure, and, according to scent technology expert Olivia Jezler, acting on the the same reward centres of the brain that GLP-1 drugs act on.