Most perfume counters still split the room in half: "for her" on one side, "for him" on the other. Niche perfumery mostly ignores that line. A lot of the best releases of the last few years were built from the start to work on any skin, any gender, any wardrobe, with notes chosen for how they smell rather than who they're "supposed" to be for.
That's also why unisex fragrances are one of the easiest categories to get wrong by committing to a full bottle. A scent built to be worn by anyone can still read completely differently on your own skin chemistry, so it's worth testing before you decide it's "you." That's the whole idea behind a ScentPrint: instead of guessing from a description, you try a decant first and let your skin settle the question.
Here are six niche fragrances built to work across the board, all available as 1, 3, 5, and 8 ml decants.
1. Creed Millésime Impérial
The oldest bottle here by two decades, and still the clearest argument that unisex is not a recent marketing idea. Olivier Creed and Pierre Bourdon built Millésime Impérial in 1995 around sea salt and fruity notes up top, Sicilian lemon, bergamot, iris and mandarin in the heart, and a base of sea notes, musk and woods. The salt is the trick: it keeps the fruit from reading sweet, so the whole thing lands clean and mineral rather than fresh-for-men or fruity-for-her. Thirty years on, it still gets worn by people who have no idea it was built before the category had a name.
2. Creed Virgin Island Water
Creed's take on a beach holiday, built around coconut, lime, white bergamot, and Sicilian mandarin up top, ginger and jasmine in the middle, and a base of white rum, sugar cane, and musk. It was created by Olivier and Erwin Creed and first released in 2007, and it's stayed in rotation as one of the house's most worn warm-weather scents precisely because it never tips into being too sweet or too masculine. It smells like a cocktail, not a dessert.
3. Ex Nihilo The Hedonist
Composed by Jordi Fernández and released in 2021, The Hedonist is the most stripped-back fragrance on this list: bergamot and ginger up top, Akigalawood and cedar in the heart, vetiver, tonka bean and musk underneath. Akigalawood is a Givaudan material made by fractioning patchouli oil, and it is doing most of the work here, giving the woods a peppery, slightly smoky edge that a plain cedar never has. Bright at the start, dry and a little smoky by the end, with no sweet phase in between.
4. Xerjoff Erba Gold
Erba Gold started life in 2016 as a Selfridges exclusive, a warmer reworking of Xerjoff's best-selling Erba Pura, and only later got a worldwide release. Brazilian orange, Calabrian bergamot, Sicilian lemon and ginger open it, the heart brings melon, pear, green apple, cinnamon, Guatemalan cardamom and cloves, and it lands on white musk, Madagascar vanilla, amber and woody notes. Xerjoff doesn't credit a perfumer publicly for this one. The fruit is what people notice first, but the cinnamon and cardamom underneath are what keep it from reading as a summer-only bottle, and what make it work on anyone.
5. Fragrance Du Bois Lucius
One of the newer additions here, Lucius launched in 2024 from Fragrance Du Bois, a house that built its name on sustainably sourced oud and agarwood. Pink pepper, bergamot, and mandarin open it, cedarwood and orange blossom carry the middle, and it settles into amber and vetiver. It's woodier and quieter than the other scents on this list, which makes it a good pick if citrus-floral unisex scents feel too loud but you still don't want anything overtly "cologne."
6. Initio Musk Therapy Extrait
Initio built its whole catalog around the idea that scent should work on any skin, and Musk Therapy is one of the clearest examples. Released in 2021, it combines white musk and musk accords with blackcurrant, bergamot, mandarin orange, magnolia, white sandalwood, and hedione, a molecule prized for making florals feel diffusive and skin-like rather than sitting on top of the skin. The result is soft, slightly sweet, and close-wearing, built more to be noticed up close than across a room.
Try Initio Musk Therapy Extrait
Why decant first with unisex scents
Unisex doesn't mean "smells the same on everyone." Musk, in particular, can read completely differently depending on skin chemistry: soapy-clean on one person, powdery on another, nearly imperceptible on a third. The only way to know how Millésime Impérial or Musk Therapy actually behaves on you is to wear it for a few hours, which is a lot easier to justify at decant size than at full-bottle price. You can browse the full range in the Unisex Fragrances collection, or start with a ScentPrint if you're not sure where to begin.
Sources: Fragrantica (Creed Millésime Impérial, Creed Virgin Island Water, Ex Nihilo The Hedonist, Xerjoff Erba Gold, Fragrance Du Bois Lucius, Initio Musk Therapy Extrait).