The classic rules of perfumery are officially unravelling. For decades, the beauty industry relied on a rigid blueprint: wood and musk for men, soft florals and gourmands for women. But as modern consumers reject binary marketing, scent is following fashion’s lead into a boundary-breaking era.
Samarpita Yashaswini is a Content Producer for Fashion (HT Shop Now) at Hindustan Times Digital. She has five years of experience in lifestyle writing, specialising in fashion, beauty, and trend-led commerce content. She covers everything from seasonal must-haves and wardrobe essentials to brand reviews and styling edits that make everyday dressing easier and more exciting.
CUNIN is putting personality before gender
Leading this cultural shift is CUNIN, a newly launched culture-led lifestyle brand built around scent-as-personality rather than traditional gender labels. CUNIN has also launched a range of Carryable Perfume Accessories, which turns the perfume bottle into a visible part of your look. Over the years, she has interned with Times Internet and Desi Martini, and worked with Pinkvilla and Schbang, building a strong foundation in digital storytelling and audience-first content. At HT Digital, she writes and creates fashion affiliate content for both the website and social media, blending trend awareness with shopping practicality. Her work sits at the intersection of style and strategy combined with equal parts aesthetic and analytics. A self-confessed fashion enthusiast, Samarpita has a sharp eye for colours, prints, silhouettes, and textures. She notices the fall of a fabric, the mood of a palette, and the difference a good cut can make. Her expertise lies in translating trends into wearable, relatable style and helping readers shop smarter, not louder. She later completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Advertising and PR from MICA, Ahmedabad. Samarpita believes fashion content doesn’t need to be complicated or overly eloquent. It should be simple, fun, and genuinely helpful, guiding readers through daily style decisions with confidence and joy. Gender-fluid fragrances are rapidly shifting from a niche movement into the industry baseline. As lines continue to blur across fashion, beauty, and wellness, CUNIN’s launch highlights a major evolution in consumer behaviour. The concept is actually quite simple: a fragrance doesn’t need to be assigned a gender for you to enjoy wearing it. Anyone can wear a woody perfume. So can a rose-heavy fragrance, a smoky oud, a sweet gourmand or a citrus scent. Walk into a department store, and you are often directed toward a men’s or women’s section before you even get to the actual fragrance notes. Gender-fluid fragrance challenges that starting point. This is where CUNIN’s debut becomes an interesting example of the shift. Rather than naming its fragrances around conventional fragrance categories or marketing them specifically towards men or women, the brand has built its collection around six personas. DIS-Loyal, DIS-Respectful, MIS-Placed, MIS-Aligned, IM-Mature and IM-Perfect all play with the idea that identity doesn’t always fit neatly into a box. The names are deliberately unconventional, too. They suggest contradictions, imperfections and different sides of a personality — which is arguably closer to how people actually experience themselves than a simple gender label. And the idea extends beyond the scent itself. The collection includes HOOK, CANNY, DANGLE and CHAIN, designed to attach the fragrance to an outfit, bag or belt. It’s an unusual concept, particularly in a category where perfume bottles are generally tucked away in a handbag or left on a dressing table until you need them. Here, the bottle becomes something closer to an accessory, another detail you can choose to reflect your mood or personality. The accessories are also refillable, adding a practical element to the idea. Yes, and that’s where the terminology needs some context. A traditional unisex fragrance generally suggests that anyone can wear the scent. The idea of gender-fluid fragrance takes the conversation further by questioning whether gender needs to be part of the fragrance-selection process at all. It is less about creating one scent that works for everyone and more about giving individuals the freedom to choose based on their own preferences.
She began her writing journey in 2020, but her love for fashion started long before that. She studied at Delhi Public School and graduated from Miranda House, University of Delhi in 2019, where she also wrote for the college magazine.
Instead of relying on outdated “his or her” tropes, CUNIN’s debut line introduces six genderless scents designed around psychological archetypes and human quirks: DIS-Loyal DIS-Respectful MIS-Placed MIS-Aligned IM-Mature IM-Perfect By naming scents after personality traits rather than ingredient notes or gender expectations, the brand taps into a broader shift across modern luxury and beauty: perfume as an emotional uniform. Modern fragrance enthusiasts are no longer shopping for an objective standard of “masculine” or “feminine”, they are looking for scents that reflect who they actually are. Instead of asking “Is this a men’s or women’s perfume?”, the more relevant question becomes “Do I like this? The brand’s philosophy, called the “World of Antonyms”, is centred around questioning expectations and playing with opposites. “Unisex”, “gender-neutral” and “gender-fluid” can overlap, but they aren’t necessarily being used to communicate exactly the same thing.
Yet fragrance marketing has historically used gender to help consumers navigate what can otherwise be an overwhelming category. Today’s fragrance lovers no longer choose a bottle based on target demographics; they buy based on raw emotion, mood, and personal identity.
Why does this feel like the next step for fragrance?
8 picks to rock this style Classic yet trendy: Shop chain handbags you’ll carry for years Tried and Tested: I wore these 3 W for Women sets and here’s my honest review Disclaimer: At Hindustan Times, we help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and products. We shall not be liable for any claim under applicable laws, including but not limited to the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, with respect to the products. Because it is inherently personal, fragrance is particularly well suited to this change. The idea that a particular scent should belong to a particular gender can therefore feel increasingly restrictive. Because you’re in the mood for it, you might want something clean and fresh for work, something warm for dinner or something completely unexpected simply.
The shift isn’t happening in isolation. Fashion has spent years moving towards more fluid dressing, with consumers mixing silhouettes, colours and pieces that were once rigidly associated with one gender. Beauty has followed, with skincare and makeup increasingly being discussed around individual needs rather than simply being divided into men’s and women’s categories. Unlike an outfit, perfume isn’t immediately visible. It becomes part of the way you experience yourself and can evoke memories, moods and places. You can love a traditionally feminine floral one day and a smoky, woody scent the next. There doesn’t have to be a contradiction. Perhaps the biggest appeal of this movement is that it allows fragrance to become more playful. Some mornings call for tailoring; others call for oversized clothes and sneakers. We change our outfits depending on our mood, plans and where we’re going. Why shouldn’t fragrance work the same way? The fragrance becomes an extension of your mood rather than a label attached to you. CUNIN’s launch comes at an interesting time for the fragrance category. As consumers become more comfortable questioning traditional ideas around gender and identity, perfume has an opportunity to become less prescriptive and more personal. That doesn’t mean traditional men’s and women’s fragrances are disappearing. If you love them, there is no reason to stop wearing them. The change is simply that the choice is becoming wider. And perhaps that is the real appeal of gender-fluid fragrance. It doesn’t ask you to abandon the old categories. It simply suggests that you don’t have to stay inside them. Balloon Pants: Fashion risk or the coolest trouser trend right now? Hindustan Times has an affiliate partnership, so we may get a part of the revenue when you make a purchase. The products listed in this article are in no particular order of priority.
We don’t dress according to one personality every day.
