Marshmallow Laundry: The 2025 Gourmand Trend

Q: Who is the gourmand laundry trend for?

If you've ever bought or wanted to buy Love Don't Be Shy, Heavy Cream, Marshmallows, Lost Cherry, Cheirosa 62, Vanilla 28, or anything in the broader sweet-warm fragrance category — you're the buyer. Gourmand-laundry is also a soft-on-skin choice for sensitive-nose households where heavier traditional detergent fragrances feel chemical.

Q: What's coming next in gourmand fragrance?

Whowhatwear and other industry watchers are flagging 'savory gourmands' for 2026 — rosemary brioche, salted caramel, miso, even tomato-leaf. The neo-gourmand wave is also moving toward smokier and oudier interpretations: marshmallow with oud, vanilla with leather. Expect the laundry industry to take another four to six years to catch up.

By the QLEAN Editorial Team · Last updated May 14, 2026 · ~7 min read

Marshmallow on the lift. Honeyed citrus underneath. A vanilla so soft it reads as skin. The 2025 perfume year quietly belonged to one note — and laundry hasn’t caught up yet.

Vanilla had its moment in 2024. In 2025, marshmallow stole the headline. Whowhatwear made the call official back in March: “If Vanilla Perfumes Defined 2024, Marshmallow Perfumes Will Define 2025.” Phlur shipped Heavy Cream. Ellis Brooklyn dropped Marshmallows. Killian’s Love Don’t Be Shy — the original orange-blossom-and-marshmallow icon — sold out three times in one quarter. Search interest on “marshmallow perfume” doubled year over year.

And yet. Open the laundry aisle, and it’s still mountain breeze and ocean fresh and a thousand variations on “clean cotton.” Nobody’s built a marshmallow detergent. Almost nobody’s even tried.

We did. It’s called Sweet Summer Love. More on that in a minute — first, the trend.

tl;dr — the gourmand laundry moment, in 5 lines

2025’s biggest fragrance trend was marshmallow — soft, milky, slightly toasted, never saccharine. Whowhatwear, Vogue, Cosmopolitan all called it.
The gateway perfumes are Killian’s Love Don’t Be Shy, Phlur’s Heavy Cream, Ellis Brooklyn’s Marshmallows, Kayali’s Yum Boujee Marshmallow 81, and Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry for the cherry-gourmand cousin.
Gourmand notes (marshmallow, vanilla, honey, almond, caramel) wear better on fabric than on skin — cotton holds them for days, not hours.
Zero major laundry brand has built around marshmallow. Sweet Summer Love is the first proper attempt at a gourmand-laundry SKU in the U.S. mass market.
Layer it for 48-hour wear: detergent sheet + in-wash booster, both in the same scent profile. Recipe at the bottom.

what is a gourmand fragrance?

A gourmand is a perfume built around edible-smelling notes — vanilla, caramel, marshmallow, honey, almond, cocoa, sugar, milk, coffee, fig. The category was invented in 1992 when Thierry Mugler released Angel, a chocolate-patchouli-praline thing that horrified the perfume establishment and then spent the next thirty years quietly becoming the bestselling fragrance category in the world.

Gourmands aren’t literal. Love Don’t Be Shy doesn’t smell like an actual marshmallow you’d roast over a fire — it smells like the idea of one, abstracted and softened with orange blossom and amber. Same way Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry isn’t a maraschino bottle. The note is a gesture, not a literal flavor.

What gourmands share is a particular kind of warmth — edible warmth, the kind that reads as cozy, sensual, and slightly indulgent. Perfumers call this the “skin-scent halo.” Most fragrance categories sit on top of you. Gourmands sit against you, which is why they’ve become the dominant trend for the past decade. Sales of gourmand fragrances grew faster than every other olfactive family between 2020 and 2025.

the 2025 marshmallow moment

Vanilla owned 2024. By the end of last year, every major brand had a vanilla in the lineup — Phlur Vanilla Skin, Glossier You Doux, Kayali Vanilla 28, Sol de Janeiro Cheirosa 62. The category got crowded fast. So the perfumers reached for the next note over.

Enter marshmallow. Whowhatwear’s March 2025 piece quoted Bee Shapiro, founder of Ellis Brooklyn:

“It’s such a bouncy and fun ingredient, but also, in fragrance, it’s very lovely to work with. There’s a spun-sugar quality and also a natural milkiness that’s very much a cousin to vanilla in that way.”

The releases stacked up fast. Phlur’s Heavy Cream opens with marshmallow, lemon sugar, and orange — Bella Hadid wore it in a viral June TikTok. Ellis Brooklyn’s Marshmallows went the salty-spicy direction, with caramel accord, lemon, and amber woods. Kayali’s Yum Boujee Marshmallow 81 leaned full Vegas. YSL released Black Opium Glitter, basically Black Opium with a marshmallow-fluff hat. Even Dior reissued archival marshmallow-leaning compositions in their Maison line.

Behind all of this is one originator: Love Don’t Be Shy, launched by Killian Hennessy in 2007. The note pyramid: bergamot and pink pepper on the lift, orange blossom + jasmine + marshmallow + iris in the heart, vanilla + caramel + civet + labdanum at the base. It was the first “gourmand-floral” and remains the template every modern marshmallow perfume copies. Rihanna wore it on her wedding day. Demand has outstripped supply for two consecutive holiday seasons.

If you’re hunting the trend at fragrance counters, the shortlist looks like this:

Killian, Love Don’t Be Shy — the OG, $295 / 50ml. Marshmallow + orange blossom + vanilla.
Phlur, Heavy Cream — the cult viral, $99 / 50ml. Marshmallow + lemon sugar + whipped cream.
Ellis Brooklyn, Marshmallows — the salty-elevated take, $96 / 50ml. Caramel + lemon + amber woods + milky musks.
Tom Ford, Lost Cherry — the cherry-gourmand cousin, $410 / 50ml. Black cherry + bitter almond + tonka.
Kayali, Yum Boujee Marshmallow 81 — the bombshell, $130 / 50ml. Marshmallow + raspberry + amber.

what does marshmallow actually smell like?

In perfumery, marshmallow is built from a small handful of synthetic and natural materials — benzoin resin (the “melted-sugar” backbone), ethyl maltol (the cotton-candy molecule, also responsible for Angel’s signature), heliotropin (almond-vanilla powder), and sometimes a hint of musk to keep the whole thing from collapsing into pure sugar.

What you smell, when it’s done well, is:

Soft sweetness — not sugary like fruit, not sticky like caramel. Pillowy.
A faint toasted edge — like the slight char on a marshmallow that just touched the campfire flame.
Milky warmth — lactonic, almost like warm steamed milk in a coffee.
A powder finish — the way confectioner’s sugar leaves the air after you spill a bag.

It pairs with almost everything: orange blossom (Love Don’t Be Shy), citrus (Heavy Cream), cherry and almond (Lost Cherry), salt and spice (Marshmallows), oud (the moodier neo-gourmand wave Whowhatwear flagged for 2026). It works as a top note (lifting and bright) or as a heart note (rounding everything else).

The reason it’s outpacing vanilla isn’t that it smells radically different — the two are first cousins. It’s that marshmallow has more texture. Vanilla is a pour. Marshmallow is a pillow.

why marshmallow works in laundry (and why nobody’s done it well yet)

Here’s the part the perfume industry hasn’t figured out yet, but the laundry industry should have noticed years ago: gourmand notes wear better on fabric than on skin.

Spritz Love Don’t Be Shy on your wrist and you’ll get four to six hours, max, before the marshmallow dissolves into a faint sugar haze. Spray it on a cashmere scarf and it’s still there a week later. The science is simple: skin metabolizes fragrance molecules quickly — sebum, body heat, and pH all break the perfume down. Cotton, wool, and linen don’t. Fabric is a mostly-inert substrate. The molecules sit in the fiber and slowly release as you move.

This is why your favorite hoodie still smells like the laundry detergent you used three washes ago, even after you’ve worn it twice. It’s also why the smartest play for the marshmallow trend isn’t a $295 perfume — it’s a $14 detergent that smells like one.

The reason the laundry industry hasn’t caught up is partly cultural inertia (laundry has been “mountain breeze” for forty years) and partly formulation difficulty. Gourmand notes are heavy. They have a tendency to overwhelm cleaner fragrance frameworks, and they don’t play nicely with the optical brighteners and synthetic surfactants in most mainstream detergents. You need a clean base — a plant-based formulation without competing chemical signals — to let the gourmand notes breathe. Most brands haven’t bothered.

A few have brushed against it — Snif’s Sweet Ash tried, but it stayed firmly in the perfume-spray category. Laundry Sauce did a French Saffron with cherry and tonka that flirted. Caldrea’s Sweet Pea went floral-sweet but never gourmand. Nothing built around marshmallow. Nothing built around the Love Don’t Be Shy framework. Until now.

how to build a gourmand laundry stack

If you’ve ever wondered why your friend’s sweater smells incredible six hours into a dinner and yours doesn’t — it’s probably the stack. Single-product laundry leaves a faint scent ghost. Layered laundry leaves a signature.

Here’s the recipe perfumers use when they’re building a fabric scent profile that needs to last more than 48 hours:

Detergent sheet (the foundation). Goes in first, dissolves in the drum, deposits the bulk of the fragrance into the fiber on the wash cycle. This is your base note delivery system. Sweet Summer Love handles this layer for the gourmand stack.
In-wash scent booster (the lift). Beads dissolve mid-cycle, deposit a second wave of micro-encapsulated fragrance that keeps releasing for 48+ hours. The Sweet Summer Love In-Wash Booster doubles the marshmallow concentration without adding any cleaning agents.
(Optional) Dryer sheet. If you tumble dry, this adds a third top-note pass — the brightest, most volatile molecules in the fragrance get refreshed in the heat. Skip it if you air-dry.
(Optional) Linen spray, after fold. A spritz on sheets and pillowcases extends the cycle by 2-3 weeks for items you don’t wash often.

For the marshmallow profile specifically, the LDS + ISB combination is the sweet spot. The detergent lays down marshmallow + bergamot + orange blossom + honeysuckle + amber + airy vanilla on the wash cycle. The booster amplifies the marshmallow and amber-vanilla base on the same notes — not a different scent, the same scent intensified. (Layering across different fragrance families is where laundry gets musky and weird. Stay in one family.)

sweet summer love: our take on the gourmand-laundry idea

Sweet Summer Love is built around the Love Don’t Be Shy framework — not a dupe, but a translation. Same olfactive territory, designed for cotton instead of skin.

The full scent stack:

top: marshmallow · bergamot — honeyed sweetness lifted by sun-warmed citrus.
mid: orange blossom · honeysuckle — white florals at golden hour, soft, never sharp.
base: amber musk · airy vanilla — skin-warm vanilla wrapped in clean musk. Inviting and impossible to leave.

The three-word fingerprint is soft, warm & lit-up. The wear time on a cotton t-shirt, washed in cold and air-dried, runs 36-48 hours from the detergent alone — closer to 72 with the booster layered in.

Underneath the fragrance, it’s the same plant-based, biodegradable sheet formula we run across the rest of the line. PVA-free. PVOH-free. No phosphates, no parabens, no optical brighteners, no 1,4-dioxane. Septic and greywater safe. Cold-water effective — we tested it down to 60°F. Plant-derived enzymes do the cleaning; the marshmallow does the rest.

It comes in three pack sizes — a 10-load travel pack for trying it, a 40-load household refill, and the canonical 120-load box. The full Sweet Summer Love line stacks the detergent, booster, and (eventually) dryer sheets.

5 ways to layer marshmallow scent at home

If you’ve fallen for the trend and want it everywhere — not just your shirts — here’s the surface map:

Laundry first, always. The wardrobe is the highest-leverage surface. Five wash cycles with Sweet Summer Love and your closet smells like one continuous scent moodboard. Detergent + booster as covered above.
Pulse points. If you have Love Don’t Be Shy, save it for collarbone and inner wrists — the fabric carries the rest. If you don’t, Phlur’s Heavy Cream body mist is the sub-$100 stand-in. Spritz before dressing so the perfume mingles with the laundry scent on the way up.
Bedding. Marshmallow + vanilla notes belong on pillowcases. Wash sheets in Sweet Summer Love every 7-10 days; spritz a linen mist between washes if you want to extend.
Drawer sachets. Drop a spent dryer sheet (or a small muslin pouch with a few unused detergent sheets) into the underwear drawer. Re-scents every garment that touches it.
Candle, last. Skip if you can — combustion plus food-note candles can read as cloying. If you must, a single soy candle in vanilla or honey, lit 30 minutes before guests arrive, is the upper limit.

The principle: fabric is the canvas, perfume is the highlight. Build the scent on your clothes and home textiles first; reserve the spritz for the moments that matter.

faq

What exactly is a gourmand fragrance?

A gourmand is a perfume built around edible-smelling notes — vanilla, caramel, marshmallow, honey, almond, fig, cocoa. The category was invented in 1992 with Thierry Mugler’s Angel. It’s now the fastest-growing fragrance family in the world. Marshmallow is the breakout note of 2025; vanilla owned 2024.

Does Sweet Summer Love actually smell like marshmallow?

Yes — specifically the perfumery interpretation of marshmallow, not a campfire-roasted one. Soft, milky, slightly toasted, with bergamot citrus on the lift and orange blossom in the heart. The base is amber musk and airy vanilla. If you’ve smelled Killian’s Love Don’t Be Shy, it’s in the same olfactive family.

How long does the scent last on clothes?

36-48 hours from the detergent sheet alone, washed in cold and air-dried. Closer to 72 hours when layered with the Sweet Summer Love In-Wash Scent Booster. Hot-water washing reduces longevity by roughly 20% because heat volatilizes the lighter top notes; cold preserves them.

Is gourmand laundry a daytime or nighttime scent?

Both, but the wear changes. In the morning, marshmallow + bergamot reads as fresh and bright — the citrus does the lifting. By evening, the amber musk and vanilla in the base have warmed into a soft, sensual finish. It’s the same scent doing different work depending on body heat and time of day.

Who is the gourmand laundry trend for?

If you’ve ever bought (or wanted to buy) Love Don’t Be Shy, Heavy Cream, Marshmallows, Lost Cherry, Cheirosa 62, Vanilla 28, or anything in the broader sweet-warm fragrance category — you’re the buyer. Gourmand-laundry is also a soft-on-skin choice for sensitive-nose households where heavier traditional detergent fragrances feel chemical.

Can I layer Sweet Summer Love with my regular perfume?

Best results come from staying in the same olfactive family. Sweet Summer Love layers cleanly with vanilla, marshmallow, honey, amber, and orange-blossom perfumes. It clashes with green-citrus, aquatic, and leather-tobacco profiles — the gourmand base will fight them. If your daily perfume is Killian, Phlur, Kayali, Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry, Sol de Janeiro, or anything Glossier You-adjacent, you’re in the same family.

Is the formula sensitive-skin-friendly?

Yes. Sweet Summer Love uses the same plant-based, hypoallergenic-friendly base formula as the rest of the QLEAN line — PVA-free, no optical brighteners, no dyes, no phosphates. The fragrance is perfumer-composed and free of the most common irritants. If your skin reacts to fragrance generally, start with the 10-load travel pack to test.

What’s coming next in gourmand fragrance?

Whowhatwear and other industry watchers are flagging “savory gourmands” for 2026 — rosemary brioche, salted caramel, miso, even tomato-leaf. The neo-gourmand wave is also moving toward smokier and oudier interpretations: marshmallow with oud, vanilla with leather. Expect the laundry industry to take another four to six years to catch up.

Try the trend:

Sweet Summer Love Laundry Detergent Sheets — the foundation. Marshmallow + bergamot + orange blossom + honeysuckle + amber + airy vanilla.
Sweet Summer Love In-Wash Scent Booster — the amplifier. 48+ hour wear when layered.
The full Sweet Summer Love line — both, plus subscribe-and-save.
Curious about the science underneath? Read how QLEAN’s bio-enzyme formula works in cold water.

Sources cited in this article: Whowhatwear, “The Best Marshmallow Perfumes of 2025” (March 2025) · Fragrantica, Love Don’t Be Shy by Killian · Phlur, Heavy Cream · Tom Ford, Lost Cherry.

Why Your Laundry Should Smell Like Marshmallow in 2026