The King of Smellmaxxing

My earliest scent memory is of Davidoff Cool Water—a clean, oceanic fragrance that seemed to hang in the air at every family wedding I attended in New Delhi, where I grew up. Those nights were full of life, with cousins racing around banquet halls, aunties dancing, uncles laughing. Even now, one whiff of Cool Water takes me straight back to being a happy kid surrounded by people I loved.

I wasn’t allowed to wear cologne back then, or after my family moved to Winnipeg when I was 12. Of course, that only made me want it even more. When I was 16, my mom took me to Costco and let me pick out three bottles: Versace Eros, Versace Dylan Blue and Dior Sauvage. That’s when my obsession began. I saved every bit of pocket money for new scents and studied the fragrance craft, learning how to tell my top notes from my dry downs.

Related: The Mayor of the Manosphere

When I was 17, I launched a TikTok account under the handle @thecologneboy. My first videos were nothing fancy—just me unboxing bottles and chatting about packaging and fragrance notes. Looking back, they were full of beginner mistakes, awkwardly filmed and poorly lit. But maybe that’s what made them relatable. I wasn’t pretending to be an expert; I was learning in real time, and my excitement was genuine. I was just a kid discovering a new obsession, and people related to that. 

I was ahead of the curve. Toward the end of 2023, colognes suddenly exploded in popularity among teenage boys, a lot of them even younger than me. Everyone was talking about smellmaxxing, a trend that’s all about taking scent to the next level. The trend took off when TikTok creators began hyping Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male Elixir, a sweet, boozy blend of vanilla, honey, lavender and tobacco. The bottle, shaped like a sculpted male torso, was bold and eye-catching—perfect for social media algorithms. 

Smellmaxxing grew out of looksmaxxing, where young men rate each other’s facial features and share self-improvement tips online. There was also another ingredient in the rise of smellmaxxing: the “mog” trend. “Mog” is derived from AMOG, or “alpha male of the group,” popular among guys who use their looks to achieve alpha status. On TikTok, models like Francisco “Chico” Lachowski became a “mog” reference point. People would make slideshows of Chico and speculate what fragrances he’d wear. The most common choice, of course, was Le Male Elixir. 

Gone is the era of teenage boys drenching themselves with Axe. Now they’re hunting down niche designer fragrances that can cost hundreds of dollars per bottle. According to a report by investment bank Piper Sandler, American teenage boys increased their annual spending on fragrances by 26 per cent between spring 2023 and 2024—right when smellmaxing took off. Why the sudden viral obsession with smell? The biggest reason is TikTok: the app has turbocharged consumerism for kids and teens. They see something they didn’t even know existed, immediately decide they need it too and then snatch it up online—all within a couple of minutes. It’s also shared by content creators like me—real people who feel more organic than the models in perfume ads and celebrities in magazine spreads. I’m not some model in a glossy campaign; I’m a guy filming myself in my home, talking honestly about scents I love.

Like all TikTok trends, smellmaxxing can go too far. Some teen boys stay up until the early hours of the morning to pre-order pricey new international launches before they sell out. That’s pure FOMO. TikTok can lead to great discoveries, but sometimes it just pushes people to buy things they don’t need. I try to tailor my recommendations to different budgets: if someone can afford a $500 bottle, great. If they can only spend $30, I’ll recommend a dupe fragrance that gives them something close to that same experience.

As the smellmaxxing trend exploded, things started snowballing for me too. Viewers wanted more reviews and more recommendations. Two years after starting out, I’ve hit 2.2 million followers on TikTok, nearly a million on Instagram and more than 230,000 on YouTube. These days, I film with professional lighting and a DSLR. I’ve turned the spare bedroom in my parents’ Winnipeg home into a studio. I have about 5,000 bottles, some given to me by luxury houses like Roja Dove. One of my favourites, Lost in Paris, is worth about $2,500.

Since graduating high school a year and a half ago, I’ve made smellmaxxing my full-time job. My mom manages all the contracts, brand deals and media requests so I can focus on creating. I work with companies like L’Oréal to produce sponsored posts and earn commissions on scents I genuinely love. If I don’t like the fragrance, I don’t recommend it. Brands also fly me around the world for fragrance conventions and launch events; I’ve gone to Dubai, New York and back home to India.

Right now, I’m working on launching my own scent line. I travel regularly to Dubai, a global hub for perfumery, to test hundreds of samples. I’m working toward a fragrance DNA crafted to capture what my audience and scent lovers everywhere respond to most. If all goes well, my first release should be ready by next year.