MICHAEL KORS | From Clothes for Living to Fragrance for Every Day

Fragrance is probably the most intimate thing I will ever create. It’s my fingerprint.

Michael Kors

MICHAEL KORS began by looking at the lives of the people wearing his clothes. Glamour and ease, the attraction of travel and the usefulness of everyday pieces: these interests also inform his approach to bringing fragrance into daily life.

Contents

At a glance
The founder and the beginnings of the brand
The brand’s approach
References

At a glance

Founder: Michael Kors
Fashion label established: 1981, United States
Fragrance milestone: Michael launched in 2000
Fragrance licensee: EuroItalia
Website: Michael Kors

The founder and the beginnings of the brand

His mother’s jeans and his grandmother’s travel wardrobe

Kors grew up in Merrick on Long Island, near New York City. At five, he advised his mother Joan to remove the bows from the dress for her second wedding. She did. He was already considering what suited the wearer and deciding to simplify the garment.

My mom was all about no fuss.

Michael Kors

His mother wore jeans and packed lightly. His grandmother, a high-school principal, travelled with shoes and matching jewellery. The gifts and stories his grandparents brought home from Europe, Mexico and Morocco opened a window onto distant places.

He remembered both the glamour of the women around him and the casual beach life of Long Island. Dressing up and the freedom to move belonged within the same experience of everyday life.

From the shop floor and windows to a collection of his own

While attending New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Kors took a part-time sales job at Lothar’s on 57th Street. After leaving school, he came to manage the shop, dress its windows and design the clothes sold there.

Bergdorf Goodman’s fashion director Dawn Mello noticed pieces in the window and invited him to show his line to the buyers. He did not yet have a collection, but quickly put one together. It became the opening for a business under his own name.

Bergdorf’s was my first account.

Michael Kors

He officially launched his label in 1981 and held his first runway show in 1984. His starting point involved presenting and selling clothes as well as designing them. When discussing American sportswear, Kors identifies luxury, versatility and ease as its essential qualities.

The 2000 fragrance and the three styles of 2013

His first fragrance, Michael, arrived in 2000, almost twenty years after the fashion label. Scent joined a lifestyle world that expanded to include bags, shoes and watches.

In 2013, Sporty Sexy Glam took its starting point from the three adjectives Kors used for his clothes. Co-developer Trudi Loren, then responsible for designer fragrance development at Estée Lauder, described testing his instinctive responses to unidentified raw materials. His enthusiasm for patchouli surprised her. She used materials including mandarin, jasmine, sandalwood and patchouli across all three scents. The series connected three styles through a shared palette.

A new collaboration with a specialist

The fragrance business operates through a specialist licensing partnership. A fifteen-year agreement making EuroItalia the exclusive worldwide licensee for men’s and women’s Michael Kors fragrances was announced in 2021. That licensing relationship remains in place as of 2026.

EuroItalia dates the collaboration’s start to 2022. After handling the established Gorgeous!, Wonderlust and Sexy Amber lines, it launched Pour Femme and Pour Homme in 2024. The fashion label’s foundation, the start of its perfume business and the new partnership’s creations mark different stages of the same expanding world.

The brand’s approach

Special-occasion dressing and a fragrance for ordinary days

Discussing Gold in 2011, Kors compared perfume with a wardrobe: the dependable black dress comes before ball gowns.

You need a fragrance you can wear every day.

Michael Kors

He called it everyday glamour.

Connecting chain links, bottles and scent

For 2024’s Pour Femme and Pour Homme, the chain-link motif used in his jewellery, bags and clothing became part of the bottles. Kors had long been attracted to its metallic shine and graphic impact.

The theme is strength and sexiness.

Michael Kors

At the launch, he connected that intention with both the bottle and fragrance notes including jasmine, patchouli, bergamot and sage. The pair places a fashion motif and scent within a shared aesthetic.

Pour Femme and Pour Homme: shared design, different points of focus

Pour Femme Eau de Parfum combines mandarin, jasmine and rose with vanilla, musks and patchouli. Pour Homme Eau de Parfum places bergamot, a marine accord and clary sage over vetiver and grey amber. Within the shared chain-link design, flowers and citrus offer one approach to glamour; herbs and the sea offer another.

Different landscapes and combinations within familiar names

Pour Femme Absolu and Pour Homme Absolu extend the range, with the feminine Absolu turning to pear, Damask rose and vanilla. The current range includes Violet Sunset, Pink Horizon, Green Infinity and Blue Dusk. Titles such as Pink Horizon, which evokes daybreak, bring colour and landscape into the range’s different expressions.

Gorgeous!, Wonderlust and Sexy Amber continue alongside the newer pair. Gorgeous! wraps white flowers in a tobacco accord and woods, while Wonderlust uses flowers and spices to explore the idea of travel. Each offers a different point of departure for considering what kind of glamour to bring into an everyday wardrobe.