Forget Smelling “Clean” — I Want To Smell Like My Culture

When I was a child, my home was an adventure in scent — fragrant spices and heady incense that I could explore without limits. I loved the smell of the bakhoor that my mother would light every Thursday night to spiritually cleanse the home, and how it lingered until bedtime. The smell of cardamom that overtook our home whenever my mother baked cookies was more comforting than the cookies themselves, and my father’s habit of spraying oud cologne before heading out to both the masjid and to buy groceries seemed like a natural extension of his confidence. I associated strong, complicated scents with spirituality and with the noise of family. 

I still gravitate towards those powerful scents nowadays, but I've noticed how rarely my head turns in recognition when I’m running errands, or how infrequently I recognize a powerful bottle of a Middle Eastern perfume like Omanluxury Nasaj on TikTok or Instagram. Instead, most It Girls and influencers tend to buy a different type of perfume. It’s minimalist and musky and smells soapy or like fresh linen instead of sandalwood, oud, or saffron.

To be clear, “clean” scents are nothing new. According to fragrance writer Jessica Murphy, aka the Perfume Professor, “clean” has been used to describe perfumery for decades: “In the 1980s, the word ‘clean’ usually appeared in connection with affordable citrus splashes that were available at the drugstore,” she tells me. During much of the 20th century, clean fragrance meant universal appeal and mass consumerism.

There have been several updates since then, including the 2003 launch of the fragrance brand Clean Perfume. Founder Randi Shinder has since said she was inspired to create a perfume with “that universal fresh-out-of-the-shower scent”. The fragrance Escentric Molecules Molecule 01 — built around the aromachemical Iso E Super — helped bring the idea of subtle skin scents into the mainstream. At the same time, Juliette Has a Gun Not a Perfume and Le Labo Another 13 also boosted the scent profile. 

In one respect, the boom in popularity for clean-smelling perfume is predictable. After years of heavy, sugary gourmands dominating the shelves, there was bound to be a collective craving for something lighter and fresher. Nowadays, entire Reddit threads and Instagram posts are dedicated to clean fragrances. But by 2026’s standards, marketing around these soft, skin-like scents often leans on notions of purity and cleanliness.  

As Hsuan L. Hsu, a professor at University of California Davis, observes in the 2020 book, The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics, the idea of smelling clean is both inherently racialized and a class-marker; to smell clean is to signal proximity to whiteness and wealth. Fragrance influencer Aamna Lone, aka @perfumeconnoisseurz on Instagram, connects today’s clean fragrance fascination to the “clean girl” aesthetic, which has been widely criticized online for being both racist and elitist. In other words, the clean girl — almost always white — doesn’t smell like oud or saffron. She’s inoffensive and crowd-pleasing — made for the mass consumer and never meant to elicit a strong response. So what happens to the women — Arab women like me — who didn’t grow up with this specific brand of femininity?  

Nothing was quiet about the luxuries that raised me. Oud demands to be noticed, and saffron lingers longer than anybody expects. Sparkling gold bangles that clacked with elegant wrist-swishes, the strong earthy smell of Eid henna that lingered like its dark stain, the sugary sweetness of rose water, and smoky incense that brings you close to God —  all these experiences were loud, precious, and everything I associate with womanhood. It was incredibly difficult to become this woman when I was growing up in Kentucky, where whiteness was the norm, and where I was expected to minimize the parts of myself that were “too loud,” too heady, or too fragrant. Over time, I began second-guessing my affinity for the rose and oud fragrances that I associated with my family and myself. 

Clean-smelling perfume is seemingly at odds with the fragrant world I grew up in. If clean is limited to a specific perfume profile, what does that suggest about the scents outside of that world, and the cultures that celebrate them? I’m not alone in feeling like the scents of my childhood are often frowned upon. A cohort of third-culture, Gen Z, Arab American women is also reconciling those feelings in real time. When I asked members of student groups at my alma mater, the University of Louisville, Yaara, a 21-year-old neurology student, said that there’s a “kind of honesty” in the traditionally Arab fragrances we both grew up around and now gravitate towards. “There is a carried cultural identity that comes with it. [It] makes me consider why I haven’t worn them more frequently and [instead] allowed myself to succumb to what’s socially acceptable.”

Lone recognizes the heritage inherent in bolder scents: “This idea of bold notes like oud being ‘loud’ or excessive is largely a Western idea,” she says, adding, “In many non-Western cultures — particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, and parts of Africa — strong, long-lasting fragrances are deeply valued and embedded in tradition.” Amina, a 20-year-old pre-dentistry student, feels proud of the way oud makes her stand out. “People often respond to them with a look of curiosity or surprise,” she says. “I’ve never considered the difference something to hide. Instead, I see the value of how these scents express who I am without the need for an explanation.” 

The tension between “quiet” skin-scents and “loud” scents spans centuries — way before TikTok trends and Reddit threads belying racism as ignorance. In one thread, one commenter asks, “Has anyone noticed that the popular Arab perfumes smell very cheap?” It’s common to associate Western perfumery with luxury while looking down on Middle Eastern perfumes as cheap dupes at best — or with blatant xenophobia at worst. Dozens of similar threads exist; some shield their ignorance by focusing on the “cheap” aspect, while others are explicitly anti-Arab.  

Never mind that this is ironic, really. The technology that underpins modern perfumery was significantly advanced in the medieval Middle East centuries ago, when Muslim men, women, and children used fragrance during prayer, on holy days, and as a marker of personal hygiene. Steam distillation — used to extract scent from rose, sandalwood, and jasmine — was perfected by the Persian polymath Ibn Sina, laying the groundwork for modern alcohol-based perfumes. These materials entered Europe via Arab trade routes long before they became central to French perfumery.

Since then, plenty of heritage fragrance houses have kept the tradition alive with distinctive and enduring perfumes. Amouage, founded in 1983 by the Sultanate of Oman, creates luxury blends of spicy, woody, and floral notes that reflect Oman’s rich history as a critical exporter of incense and myrrh, while the Turkish brand Nishane’s Saffron Colognisé is a stand-out given its mix of citrusy grapefruit, cedrat notes, and saffron. And yes, while Vanilla 28 shot Kayali to the top of Sephora’s bestseller list, founder Mona Kattan’s Oudgasm collection most clearly points to the brand’s Middle Eastern roots. I particularly love Chocolate Oud for its gourmand twist. 

This isn’t to say that Western brands ignore these heritage notes entirely, but I’ve often found their interpretations to be watered down, leaning on Middle Eastern imagery — gold filigree or desert landscapes, for example — rather than paying true homage to the cultural history behind them. 

For Sumaya, 24, a pre-law student, some Western interpretations feel more like exploitation than celebration: “I’ve noticed that colonialism and appropriation are increasingly at play when it comes to Arabic perfumes, and even candles,” she notes. “You’ll see major corporations and luxury designers releasing fragrances that smell nearly identical to traditional Arabic scents and profiting from them.” She also takes issue with who is allowed to profit from the advertising, and who the algorithms prop up as the spokespeople: “On TikTok, instead of seeing Arab faces marketing these perfumes, you’ll mostly see Western influencers promoting them. It’s part of the same cycle: capitalism, appropriation, and stereotyping.” 

For most of my life, I’ve been the only Arab woman in the room. I often felt faced with a choice of downplaying my cultural identity to fit in with my peers, ace the job interview, sit more comfortably in the restaurant, or take ownership of my culture. When I set aside Marc Jacobs Daisy or Kate Spade Sparkle in favor of Lush’s Sticky Dates or Salt & Stone’s Black Rose and Oud, I am making a much bigger choice. I’m choosing to set aside smelling clean because smelling like my culture is more important. 

When I think back to my first-grade self, I wish I could address the little girl who was so enamored by the scents of her home. I’d tell her that the smells of spices that made her “different” were never the problem. They’d tie her to a sense of belonging in a world that would pull her in a million directions — and remind her that the world has much more to offer than smelling clean.