From the great lip gloss resurgence to arguably the entire “clean-girl” aesthetic, Summer Fridays has sparked some of beauty’s biggest moments. But with the label’s foray into fragrance, debuting this month, it’s also willing to capitalise on a boom already in progress.
“Gourmand was having such a massive moment,” said co-founder Lauren Ireland of the decision to launch scent. “For fragrance, we’re such vanilla girls. We’ve been wearing it for a long time.” The new Summer Fridays Sunlit Vanilla eau de parfum has base notes of creamy musk, tonka bean amber, and yes, vanilla, tapping into the sweet scent craze that has dominated the fragrance industry.
With a striped bottle evoking a ritzy resort’s poolside towels, Sunlit Vanilla also pays homage to Summer Fridays’ hero Lip Butter Balm that kicked off the lip-gloss-skincare-hybrid trend.
“The original one was vanilla in 2020,” co-founder Marianna Hewitt said. “As people really came to know us for scent and flavour with Lip Butter Balm, it made sense.”
Launched in 2018 with its hero Jet Lag Mask, Summer Fridays started as an edited skincare label. That shifted with the debut of the Lip Butter Balm, which was such a hit with its skincare-adjacent positioning that the line has pushed further into makeup. It came out with blush last year and lip liners and stains in February. (A collaboration with Gap came in between.) With the launch of fragrance, the label hopes it can be all things to all beauty lovers.
The brand saw double-digit retail sales growth in 2025, the founders confirmed, with bets on new categories and international expansion expected to keep the momentum going. While the founders declined to discuss new figures, an industry source familiar with the business said that annual retail sales have reached approximately $500 million.
“We really think of Summer Fridays as the next modern, global legacy brand,” said Hewitt.
Following the Fragrance Boom
At $82 for a full-size 50 mL bottle and $30 for a portable 10mL, Summer Fridays’ new scent is aimed to be an entry-level fragrance that can both entice millennials and draw younger shoppers to add fine fragrance to their hoard of body sprays.
“This could be the first time that a customer is buying a perfume. Maybe they’re trading up from a mist to a true perfume for the first time,” said Hewitt, who enlisted the help of perfumer Caroline Sabas to develop the scent.
Other skincare brands like Drunk Elephant have turned their backs on Gen Alpha customers after a sales boom and then bust, but Hewitt and Ireland see young shoppers as an opportunity for cultivating a multi-generational brand. When moms come to Sephora to buy Lip Butter Balms for their daughters, sales associates are trained to introduce them to their broader skincare range for their own routines.
With TSG Consumer Partners a majority investor since 2024, further growth is necessary to make the brand attractive to potential buyers. The fragrance category has proven promising for other “no-makeup makeup” labels like Glossier, whose You fragrance became the brand’s bestseller.
“For a long time it was about licensed brands,” said Colin Welch, managing director at TSG, of the premium fragrance market. “The category has evolved as indie beauty brands increasingly launch fragrance as a natural extension of successful makeup and skincare brands.”
While Hewitt and Ireland declined to disclose whether more perfumes are imminent, they highlighted the brand’s strategy of franchise-building on successful products such as its Jet Lag collection.
“As lifestyle creators before starting Summer Fridays, we always talked across categories – hair, fragrance, body, makeup, skin, all of it,” said Hewitt. “It never felt random for us to enter a new category.”
Setting the Clean-Girl Standard
A wider question for not just Summer Fridays, but all minimalist brands, is how dramatically beauty is shifting back to full-face looks. Bolder makeup is making its way into the lineup. In early Feb. 2026, the brand launched lip liner pencils and pen-like stains, sold individually or in 2016-style lip kits.
Wearing a deep combination of the brand’s lip liner in “Cinnamon” and stain in “Almond” herself, Hewitt noted that the new makeup products are still rooted in the brand’s easygoing ethos.
“The lens at which we look through everything with Summer Fridays is ease and effortlessness,” she said.
With the lip balm remaining the brand’s top seller, the new products are also helping to create a rounded lip franchise in a now-crowded category. When Rhode launched its Peptide Lip Treatment two years after the Lip Butter Balm, the floodgates opened for new products by nearly every skincare and makeup brand on the market. Laneige recently expanded from its night lip mask to a viral gloss-like treatment product. Dior and Kylie Cosmetics were among those unveiling “lip butter” tubes in 2025.
Expanding its lip segment, too, means embracing existing trends rather than starting them. Case in point: The brand’s new pen-like lip stains are intended as a clean-girl alternative to TikTok’s viral peel-off lip-liner masks.
“Now there’s so many flavoured lip balms,” said Hewitt. “People want more from us.”
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