My first perfume swap party took place in late February 2024 inside a packed, hot-pink-walled art gallery in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood. I squeezed into the room, which was lined with photos of cult-classic perfumes from the early ’00s, shot by artist Elizabeth Renstrom of @basenote_bitch, and placed a full bottle of DKNY Be Delicious Orchard St. on a table already crowded with fragrance. Vials from well-known houses, like Giorgio Armani, Chanel, and Frederic Malle, immediately caught my eye, plus bottles from more obscure labels that I hadn’t yet smelled. Hosted by Renstrom and Perfume Room podcast host Emma Vernon at Olfactory Art Keller, the swap had just two rules: Pay a $10 admission fee, and arrive with a perfume to give away that is at least 80% full. From there, you could place your unwanted bottle on the table and swap it for another scent that sparked your interest.
Surrounded by fellow fragrance enthusiasts, I felt a mounting sense of excitement that I had never experienced when shopping in a department store or boutique. I could smell and spray with abandon, without the pressure to drop $100 or more on a scent I had just sampled. The swap gave me a thrill similar to thrifting, only instead of combing through racks of vintage Levi’s and slip dresses, I was sorting through bottles of eau de toilettes and extraits. I left with a baby pink bottle of a now discontinued Nanette Lepore perfume and HC7 Bergamota from Perfumérica, a Mexico City–based brand that’s almost impossible to find in stores in the US.
While #PerfumeTok, a hashtag with around 1 million posts on TikTok, is one of my go-to methods for discovering fragrance trends, no amount of vocal or written description can stand in for the experience of actually smelling a perfume. As of mid-June 2025, there have been nearly 4,000 new perfumes launched, according to fragrance database Parfumo. That evens out to about 25 perfumes per day. Swaps help demystify the process of finding a signature scent, without feeding into the urge to blind-buy every bottle or sample set that appears on your For You page.
“I feel like a perfume swap brings the fun of spontaneous conversation into the real world and creates a two-way chat instead of passive consumption,” says Asia Grant, perfumer and host of Scent Social Club, an “fragrance tour” company. “Without any brand representatives or paid influencers in a room, everyone can enjoy feeling equal and honest in their passion for perfume,” says Jessica Murphy, a fragrance writer and art historian who creates scented museum tours. “It’s a very democratic, low-pressure space.”
According to Murphy, the concept of fragrance swapping isn’t exactly new. “In many ways, these swap events remind me of the swapping culture of the online message boards in the ’00s,” she says. “We listed our swap items online, arranged one-on-one trades, and mailed little packages to each other. Brands and e-commerce sites weren’t selling samples yet, and decant services didn’t even exist, so we created our own aromatic economy.”
TikTok content
TikTok content
Since my first perfume swap party in February, I’ve attended four more, at local bars and inside friends’ living rooms. Tickets have ranged from free to $50 (I left the latter with full bottles of Trudon Vixi and Courreges L’eau Pâle Eau de Parfum). For less than the price of some of the most affordable perfumes, I’ve walked away with full-size niche, designer, and vintage scents.
I mostly hear about upcoming swaps through fellow enthusiasts like Murphy. She and I met at a non-fragrance-related event over a year ago, but we were online friends first because of our mutual obsession with perfume. I also learn about swaps through podcasts such as Perfume Room, Smell Ya Later, and Nose Candy. I keep up with creators like Nadia Kadri of @perfumeversenyc, who shares fragrance-related events and hosts guided perfume tours throughout the city, and Grant, who recently hosted her first-ever swap. PerfumeTok is a great resource too; search “perfume swap” on the app, and you’ll find swaps popping up in cities all over the US, from Brooklyn to Seattle. Then there’s the private Facebook group Fragrance Swaps, Trades, & Sales, which boasts 59,000 members. While the forum is mostly used for buying and selling bottles online, some members also use it to organize IRL swaps in their cities.
“If you’re attending one, just go ready to have fun, bring a bottle you think other people will get excited about, and know that the best part will be the socializing, so don’t get too bummed if you don’t bring home the bottle you were eyeing,” says Christina Loff, founder of perfume-review substack “The Dry Down Diaries.” “There is nothing better than being in a room packed with fragrance nerds.” Loff plans to host her own swap in the Bay Area sometime this year.
At my latest swap, hosted by Smell Ya Later podcast hosts Sable Yong and Tynan Sinks, I didn’t worry about taking home a new bottle for my collection. Instead, I spent the time chatting with friends and asking them about their hauls. This was the biggest swap I’ve attended so far, with more than 80 people swarming inside a Brooklyn brewery to exchange everything from Guerlain to Fine’ry. The energy was infectious; almost everyone I spoke to was walking away with a new treasure or two. Toward the end of the night, I spotted the same bottle of Be Delicious I had left at Vernon and Renstrom’s swap sitting in the middle of the table—only this time it had a considerable dent in its hot pink juice. Even though I left empty-handed, my social cup was filled.
“Whether it’s a perfume launch or a swap, I think that’s the real draw—sharing space with people who get it, especially if you’ve been Internet friends for a while,” says Loff. “These kinds of third spaces feel more important than ever right now, and fragrance events offer such a good excuse to gather.”
Ariel Wodarcyk is a beauty writer and editor with bylines in Elle, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, and more.
