An independant publication on the cultural life of fragrance.
AUGUST 20, 2026
FANTASIZING THE MUNDANE WITH NORMACCORDS
BY KATIE MOORE-GILLON
From OG houses like Demeter, to emerging indie darlings like Nostos, Normaccords are on the rise.
When I was 12, my signature scent was Lacoste’s Touch of Pink. Despite being the benchwarmer on my middle school soccer team, this scent helped me tap into a fiercely athletic part of my inner self. At 13, I graduated to Victoria’s Secret PINK Body Mist (with a splash of Fresh + Clean, another beloved VS fragrance). This helped me dig deep, connecting to a cozy, chic, and put-together disposition that contradicted my actual environment (crumbs in the bed, frizzy side bangs, etc). Turning to various aroma molecules was a trend that continued throughout the years, allowing me access to some sort of idealised version of myself.
Recently, however, the fantasy has shifted. I find myself drawn to a different kind of profile: one that smells like a parking lot, or a computer screen. Over the past two decades, a growing trend in perfumery shows the rise of fantasy fragrance accords that spotlight quotidian experiences. I call these Normaccords. Like traditional fantasy accords such as cotton candy and amber, Normaccords recreate smells that can’t be distilled or extracted in nature. But instead of evoking romance or escapism, they turn toward the mundane.
It’s hard to pin down when exactly Normaccords entered the fragrance scene, but their first wave seemed to emerge in the late 90s. Up to this point, designer houses dominated the marketing landscape with advertisements set against sparkling beaches, celebrity subjects in the foreground, and copy that promised endless attention and adoration once the scent was worn. However, in the latter part of the decade, as these over-the-top aesthetics of the 80s faded into the background, grunge and minimalism emerged across mediums, including fragrance. While Normaccords certainly weren’t mainstream, they now had some cult-like appeal.
It was in 1996 that the indie perfume house Demeter Fragrance launched in New York City. Their mission was to capture “everyday” scents and turn them into fine fragrances. After the success of their first three perfumes–Dirt, Grass, and Tomato–they went on to build a library of over 300 scents, including ones titled Baby Powder, Turpentine, and Play-Dough. In an interview in 2010, the brand’s CEO and head perfumer, Mark Crames, explained the reasoning behind this had to do with nostalgia: “Our sense of smell evokes our most powerful sense memories. Consequently, making fragrances inspired by real objects and experiences would be emotionally powerful, and choosing such a fragrance uniquely personal.”
When I reflect upon the tender snapshots of my life that I miss dearly, I’m taken aback at just how microscopic they are. While the old-school noses from Grasse exult in their childhoods spent in lavender fields or under canopies of orange blossoms, my nostalgia is a bit different. I think of sitting at my family desktop, under our broken air conditioner, mining away for hours on end for rare gems on Webkinz. I also think of curling up on my friend’s leather couch to watch High School Musical 2 (again). Or of my sweaty Hot Topic tank top and shutter shades after the first school dance. Or just waiting for the bus in the morning. I’m trying to materialize this grief for a time I’ll certainly never get back: I don’t have my Webkinz password, my friend has moved to Philly, my Hot Topic tank is in a landfill, and I don’t take a school bus anymore. And with a crop of millennial and Gen-Z indie perfumers coming onto the scene, their new creations show me that I’m not alone.
Nostalgia works as a type of fantasy– and one that’s foundational to much of olfactory storytelling. But traditionally, commercial and designer brands seek to play up the joyful parts of nostalgia. Our melancholic longing is pushed aside and deemed unmarketable. However, it seems that indie perfumers and creatives, who don’t run into the same marketing limitations as mainstream brands, seek to explore this more taboo, melancholy aspect of yearning for the past.
I spoke with Jackie Mayol, the founder and creative behind Nostos, an indie perfume darling that saw a frenzy of excitement around the striking-yet-sentimental line, perfumed by Marissa Zappas. While a joyful reminiscence is an important piece of the brand ethos, so is mourning. Jackie explains, "Nostalgia is such a complicated emotion, and […] sadness kind of comes hand in hand with it. I think we talk about nostalgia in a really, like, playful way, but it can actually really sting.” In her fragrance, Shiver, Mayol sought to capture a discomfort and stillness that comes with nostalgic, liminal spaces: “Shiver is this still kind of, observant perfume. And maybe there's sadness in the fact that we're not observing as much anymore […] It's almost like our memories as children are so much more visceral because we are taking them in.”
Social media gives us instant access to fantasy, and its addictive qualities lure us into a headspace where digital escapism feels like second nature – and so is untethering from what is actually in front of us. Thus, reality becomes a new fantasy. In their study, Ward et al. (2017) demonstrated that the mere presence of a smartphone can increase our cognitive load, even when we are not using our phones. That means our smartphones are taking up space in our psyche that could have otherwise been dedicated to consciously processing our surroundings– doing things like looking at the sky, feeling the breeze on our skin, or smelling our environment gets discarded in our process of being.
Mason Hainey, the founder and perfumer of M.HAINEY Studio, describes the inspiration for his latest perfume, ETHERNET:
“I’m thinking about landscapes, and I'm like, man, what's gonna happen in 20 years? What's gonna be our relationship with nature? Is everything gonna turn into data centers? Are we going to have landscapes anymore?” ETHERNET captures the imaginary, digitized landscape of the classic Windows Computer screen. He explains that the draw to this specific image also connotes a time when our view on technology was far more optimistic than it is now, and this is an olfactory wish to return to this space. ”I’m an idealist […] I believe we can find a balance. I don't know how exactly we get there […], but I believe there's a way in which we can live in harmony with technology. I think we have to because it's not going anywhere.”
Mason is a millennial, Jackie a cusp, and I’m just over the border into Gen Z. Through our conversations, I realized that what the Normaccords did for each of us was to lull us back into a time where we had a healthier relationship with technology, reality, and sense of home. For the most part, technology was genuinely a resource and not an all-consuming presence. And when it wasn’t an all-consuming presence, we felt more connected to our material reality. When we felt more connected to our material reality, our memories were inherently richer. My broken air conditioning unit dripping on the clunky family desktop feels much more abundant than whatever images were fluttering around my Instagram Explore page.
As I comb through the current indie fragrance houses experimenting with this same artistic inclination , I see many perfumers from these generations reaching for the same analog escape. Clue Perfumery, a house founded in 2022 by Lauren Oberwetter and Caleb Vanden Boom, boasts a fragrance line full of accords like burning dust, melted wax, pollen, and crushed porcelain. agar olfactory by artist agustine zegers explicitly explores our landscapes amidst our past, current, and hypothetical future states of ecological collapse. Their fragrance Cero references the year 1999, right before the impending Y2K boom: a stage is set for an imagined office full of tattered wires and burning computer carcasses.
With a reverence for reality, the rise of independent perfumery, and an unscratchable itch for deeper memories we once felt in our childhood homes, I suspect Normaccords will break out into the mainstream any day now. When I think about the fantasy I’m trying to embody, I suppose the draw makes sense. I’m not really looking to be athletic, or sophisticated, or particularly sexy at this point in my life. I just want to feel sane. As Mason and I were discussing what the fantasy for mundane experiences came down to, it was “emotional regulation and a stable nervous system,” he said, smiling, “That’s the new facelift!”