Rice Perfumes Are the Unexpected Trend Replacing Gourmands This Summer

Though rice is famously an integral part of a bland food diet, there really isn’t anything boring about it. It has a super rich history, with early (as in first cultivated 13,000 years ago) origins in the Yangtze River in China. You can also trace the cultivation of rice along the Ganges in India as early as 6500 BC or look into African rice, another species called oryza glaberrima that was domesticated in the last 3,000 or so years.

Seriously—if you’re up to the research it could be a fun afternoon project. Set your Zojirushi and hit the books! Or, if you’d like to experience the wonders of the grain in a more sensual way, you could get in on the rice perfume trend?

“I like to think of rice as an interesting take on gourmand. For myself, rice also feels like home—I grew up eating rice every day. Even though it’s more nouveau, there is a familiarity to it as well. Most people know what rice is and what it smells like,” explains Bee Shapiro, founder of Ellis Brooklyn.

Ahead, discover everything there is to know about rice perfume—including the best scents to shop.

Why Rice Perfume Is Trending

Though rice is certainly trending this summer, it’s not a new note. Borntostandout perfumer Jun Lim first thought of the idea for his rice fragrance, Dirty Rice, back in 2020.

“If rice is having a moment now, I think it reflects a broader desire for fragrances that feel more human. People may be moving away from gourmands that are aggressively sweet, edible, and almost cartoonishly indulgent, toward something quieter, more tactile, and emotionally familiar,” the expert explains.

Shapiro adds that there’s a cozy and textural element to rice that works really well with some of the creamy and lactonic notes we’ve seen trending recently.

“The Rice note itself doesn’t have much sweetness to it so it can actually go in many directions,” she says.

What Rice Perfume Smells Like

According to Lim, Rice smells “less like a dessert and more like a life.”

Super soft and comforting, the note features a warm, subtle milkiness that isn’t overtly sweet and can be played up or down as the perfumer wielding it sees fit.

“It can remind you of warm skin, steam rising from a kitchen, clean fabric, or being at home without necessarily smelling ‘clean.’ It offers intimacy rather than instant gratification,” he says. “Maybe after years of all these gourmand fragrances shouting, people are ready for something that sits a little closer to the body and speaks more softly.”

The Best Rice Perfumes

As the rice trend expands, Lim is hoping perfumers continue to riff on the note, treating it more as an artistic material than a familiar scent.

“Rice can be fermented, toasted, burnt, powdered, soaked, spoiled, distilled, or transformed into alcohol. It can represent comfort, poverty, ceremony, domesticity, sensuality, or decay. There is an entire emotional and cultural universe around it,” he says. “The future should not be about asking, ‘Does this smell exactly like rice?’ It should be about asking, “What can rice become?”

I think the following scents do a good job of this—while also retaining some of that photorealistic, steaming bowl of rice energy some people might be searching for.

Ellis Brooklyn Vanilla Rice Eau de Parfum

Described by the brand as “coy, charming, and milky sweet” Ellis Brooklyn’s Vanilla Rice takes a sweetie’s approach to the note (their rice is toasted!) with the addition of sugary-floral Sakura blossom, vanilla, coconut milk, mandarin, freesia dew, and jasmine nectar.

“I grew up in Seattle as a first generation immigrant. When I was young, I always felt like I was struggling to be heard, struggling to be seen. I’ve come to a point in my life now where I can reflect back and see that part of that longing was internal—that part of it was about being comfortable with myself and knowing that I was worthwhile all along,” says Shapiro. “Vanilla Rice, with its rice and cherry blossom notes, is a nod to my Asian American roots. But it’s also a perfume expression of soft power, a scent that doesn’t need to shout to be heard.”

Borntostandout Dirty Rice

No, not Lousiana style. Dirty rice as in rice that’s a little sexy. Warm and sheer, this fragrance (Lim developed it alongside Olivier Cresp back in 2020) opens with bergamot and almond before Basmati rice comes in along with peony and milk. At the base: santalwood, vetiver, and an “animalic musk.”

“I began with rice because it felt like one of the most conservative, familiar, and unmistakably Korean materials I could choose. Rice is humble. It is domestic. It is almost too ordinary to be considered provocative. So naturally, I wanted to corrupt it,” the founder says. “We paired that familiarity with extreme sensuality: warm skin, musk, milkiness, and something almost bodily. The idea was to take a symbol of purity and comfort and make it feel intimate, rebellious, and slightly improper. That contrast became an early blueprint for the brand. Take something culturally familiar, emotionally safe, or seemingly innocent, and reveal the desire hiding underneath it.”

Maddie’s Secret Eau de Parfum

Inspired by John Early’s brilliant (and now streaming!) movie Maddie’s Secret, Maddie’s Secret features notes of night-blooming jasmine, chocolate milk, toasted rice, saffron, and sichuan pepper. And though I would normally put in a request for more movie-promoting fragrances after seeing this one come to fruition, I don’t think anyone could do it better than Marissa Zappas and Early. Hey Maddie, don’t you ever get tired of being such a good smelling girl?

D.Grayi Ceremonial Rice

The newest offering on this list, Ceremonial Rice by D.Grayi (a fragrance brand that “creates olfactive art rooted in Vietnamese and Korean origins reimagined through a queer, contemporary lens”) focuses on celebrating rice in multiple forms. It opens with notes of rice wine, betel leaf, betel nut, and jasmine rice before the heart of lotus tea, orchid, tuberose, and sticky rice makes itself known. Then, at the base: agarwood incense, silken musk, and tapioca mungbean cake.

Floraïku Paris One Umbrella For Two

I’ll share my umbrella, but I’d like my own side of rice please and thank you. In this fruity, sweet gourmand fragrance, you’ll find rice as a top note—and puffed—alongside blackcurrant absolute. The heart has cyclamen accord and Genmaicha tea extract (yum, and also quite trendy) while the base boasts musks, woody notes, vanilla accord, and cedarwood essence.

Ormonde Jayne Champaca Parfum

A longstanding star in the rice perfume realm, Ormonde Jayne’s soft, floral Champaca has been boasting a Basmati rice note since 2002. Its name comes from a variety of magnolia flower that’s widely cultivated in India, which features at the fragrance’s heart alongside the aforementioned grain.

d’Annam White Rice

What’s in a name? “A tribute to Vietnam’s cultural symbol of livelihood,” of course. “Rice’s aroma is beautiful, yet so delicate,” explain d’Annam’s perfumers on their website. “To emphasize its sweetness and unique essence, we incorporated milky and floral notes such as pandan, jasmine, and white musk. Unlike the amorphous softness of cotton candy, rice grain has structure to it, which we underscored by adding a hint of nuttiness from orris and woody tones.”

Diptyque L’eau Papier

Like rice, paper is an excellent canvas for creativity. Diptyque’s musky L’Eau Papier was crafted to celebrate the power of the imagination and the moment in time when ink meets paper, utilizing rice in a particularly creative way with an accord of rice steam that evokes the grain of a fresh sheet.

Oddity Naked Dance

Oddity’s Naked Dance was created to honor life at home, where we’re free to dance naked and cook as much rice as we please. Its top notes are all about “warm, intimate, comforting, sun warmed skin” with notes of orange blossom, bergamot, and green tea. Rice comes in at the middle alongside clay, lily, iris, and “a drop of Turkish rose” and base notes include white musk, incense, sandalwood, vetiver, tonka, and guaiac wood for a fragrance that stays “musky, milky, powdery, a little soapy, and bitter.”