Bath & Body Works: Scenting Skin and Everyday Life in Collaboration with Perfumers

Every fragrance I create for Bath & Body Works has a story and a strong personality.
Honorine Blanc, on the launch of Gingham, 2019

Bath & Body Works is a body-care and home-fragrance brand founded in the United States in 1990. From perfumes and mists worn on the skin to candles that scent a room, it has brought fragrance into many different moments of everyday life.

Behind its fragrance creation is collaboration between the brand’s developers and perfumers. Who should use a scent, and how should they feel when wearing it? Questions like these are translated into combinations of ingredients, becoming a finished creation through trials and customer responses.

Key Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
The Brand’s Commitments
An Aside…
References

Key Information

Brand launched: 1990
Origins: Began as a business of The Limited, whose founder was Leslie Wexner
Country of origin: United States
Official website: Bath & Body Works

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

1990: A Fragrance Brand Begins within a Clothing Retailer

Bath & Body Works has its roots in clothing retail. Wexner, who built The Limited, worked in his parents’ store in the early 1960s and saw business potential in women’s sportswear. He started his own company in 1963 and expanded its specialty clothing-store business.

Bath & Body Works began in 1990 as a business within that retail company. It started with a small number of fragrances. Sharing customers’ tastes and feelings about scent, it developed an in-store experience of enjoying fragrance. By fiscal 2000, the business also included White Barn, which sold candles.

The retail entrepreneur who built the company and the perfumers who create the scents themselves play different roles. Looking at Bath & Body Works’ creative work reveals how the brand’s image of its users meets the olfactory expressions proposed by perfumers in specific creations.

2006: A Cherry-Blossom Scent Shaped by Customer Testing

Japanese Cherry Blossom was created in 2006. Camille McDonald, who was leading the brand’s creative work at the time, asked its perfumer, Harry Fremont (in Japanese), for a more complex fragrance. She wanted it to reach not only young women, but also their mothers’ generation.

When Fremont recalled McDonald’s request in 2026, the name of Guerlain’s perfume Shalimar appeared in his account.

She said, “I want to create our Shalimar.”
Harry Fremont, recalling Camille McDonald’s words, 2026

Fremont therefore added sandalwood, musk, and an aroma molecule reminiscent of cooked basmati rice. After tests with customer groups, however, the development team came back with a response: perhaps it was a little too sophisticated. Fremont restored apple and pear notes to the opening. Giving it depth while keeping it familiar: the creation took shape through adjustments between the two.

The creation sought to portray the moment when spring begins, bringing together the lightness of blossoming cherry trees and winter’s lingering warmth. In 2026, the original fragrance’s twentieth anniversary, Fremont described that contrast as follows.

There is an unexpected contrast: radiant fruit and delicate flowers meet musk and sandalwood.
Harry Fremont, on Japanese Cherry Blossom, 2026

Gingham in 2019, and a Corporate Turning Point in 2021

Gingham arrived in April 2019. It was created by Honorine Blanc (in Japanese), then a master perfumer at Firmenich. She sought to express a connection with customers and nature, and the brand’s bright, optimistic mood, through scent. Its composition at launch added the sweetness of the citrus fruit clementine to freesia and violet petals.

Japanese Cherry Blossom involved adjusting the contrast between flowers and a warm background. Gingham built a bright mood with flowers and citrus. Sharing different aims with perfumers for each creation has broadened the brand’s world of fragrance.

A major corporate turning point came in 2021. Parent company L Brands separated its Victoria’s Secret business and changed its name to Bath & Body Works. The brand that had grown since 1990 was now structured to continue as an independent publicly traded company.

The Brand’s Commitments

Extending Fragrance Across Perfume, Body Care, and the Home

Bath & Body Works develops a single fragrance into products worn on the skin, used for everyday care, and enjoyed in indoor spaces. From its launch, Gingham came in multiple forms: eau de parfum, fragrance mist, body care, candles, and Wallflowers home fragrance.

Japanese Cherry Blossom also began with body care and expanded into candles and home fragrance in response to customers’ requests. The same world of scent can be experienced on both skin and in a room. This development reflects the brand’s distinctive way of connecting fragrance with daily habits.

Carrying the Original’s Enveloping Feel into a New Cherry-Blossom Fragrance

Forever Cherry Blossom, added for the twentieth anniversary in 2026, is a separate creation that interprets the original in a contemporary way. Perfumer Patricia Hidalgo of fragrance company IFF worked on it. What she sought to preserve was the original’s enveloping background.

At the heart of the original are femininity and a comforting, enveloping background.
Patricia Hidalgo, on creating Forever Cherry Blossom, 2026

Forever Cherry Blossom combines cherry-blossom petals, magnolia, and juicy pear with creamy sandalwood and warm musk. It refreshes the expression of flowers and fruit while carrying forward the comfort of the background. Deciding what to keep and what to change reveals an approach to working with a long-lived creation.

Making Products with Partners and Designing for Each Fragrance

The work of bringing fragrance into everyday products also involves partners responsible for manufacturing and containers. Beauty Park in New Albany, Ohio, is a hub of suppliers supporting research and development, formulation and product manufacture, and packaging production. Collaboration close to the headquarters is one of the ways the brand responds to changing customer tastes.

Adjustments for the way a fragrance is delivered extend to candle wicks. Wicks are chosen from cotton, cotton and paper, and rayon after checking how each fragrance burns. For products that spread scent through a room, the mechanism that burns it is part of the design, alongside the combination of fragrance ingredients.

Bottle Design with Blue Glass and a Checked Pattern

The current Gingham eau de parfum pairs a rounded blue-glass bottle with a dark-blue cap. A blue-and-white checked ribbon is tied around its neck, and the fragrance name appears on the front in a handwritten style. A scent inspired by a bright mood takes shape as a bottle with color and the texture of fabric.

An Aside…

The places where people try fragrances are changing, too. In the new Gingham+ store format introduced in 2025, some stores were fitted with scent bars where customers could try candles, Wallflowers, and fragrance mists. The store design thus reflects customers’ desire to try products before choosing them. The dialogue between fragrances and their users continues not just during development, but on the shop floor.