For most of its modern history, the Indian perfume aisle has been organised the way department stores have always organised it: a blue side and a pink side, with a narrow, often overlooked middle ground labelled “unisex” almost as an afterthought. That divide is starting to look dated, and Jaipur-based fragrance house Shriex has been one of the more deliberate voices arguing that Indian consumers are ready to leave it behind.
The brand’s own writing on the subject is unusually direct about this. “Why stick to old ‘male/female’ fragrance rules?” reads a recent piece on the Shriex journal, which goes on to frame scent choice as a matter of “vibe, climate, occasion, and personal comfort” rather than the gender printed on a bottle. It’s a small shift in language, but it reflects something real happening in how younger Indian consumers — moving between cities, jobs and social circles more fluidly than previous generations — are shopping for fragrance.
A Category Built to Be Shared
Shriex’s unisex range, viewable in full on its unisex perfume collection, is not a token line sitting apart from the “real” men’s and women’s fragrances. It’s one of the brand’s largest and most actively developed categories, spanning fruity-floral compositions like Seduction — built on strawberry, black currant and cassis over peony and pink jasmine, settling into amber wood and vanilla — through to fresher, aquatic-oriental fragrances like Exotica, which opens on yuzu and saffron before moving into jasmine, oud, vanilla and ambergris.
What’s notable is that these aren’t neutral, lowest-commondenominator scents designed to offend no one. They’re built with the same structural ambition as the brand’s gendered lines — layered top, heart and base notes, designed for eight-to-ten-hour wear — just without the assumption that complexity or sensuality needs to be assigned a gender at the formulation stage. RUH, another unisex fragrance in the line-up, leans into resins and woods with what the brand describes as an aim to “define your aura” rather than fit a category.
Why This Resonates in India Specifically
The unisex fragrance conversation isn’t new globally — international niche houses have been blurring gender lines in perfumery for well over a decade. What is comparatively new is seeing an Indianformulated, India-tested brand build a genuine business around it, rather than treating unisex as an imported aesthetic borrowed wholesale from European niche perfumery.
Part of this is generational. Indian consumers in their twenties and early thirties increasingly shop for fragrance the way they shop for playlists — around mood and moment, not around who a bottle was “supposed” to be for. A scent worn to the office might be reached for again on a flight, at a friend’s wedding, or shared between partners without a second thought. Shriex’s trial and gift formats, available through its trial packs and gift sets collection, lean into exactly this behaviour — mixed sets that pair men’s, women’s and unisex scents together, implicitly inviting buyers to sample across categories rather than stay within one.
A Quiet Correction, Not a Manifesto
To be clear, Shriex isn’t building its identity solely around gender-fluid marketing — its broader positioning still rests on climate-tested formulation and accessible pricing. But the unisex line is arguably where the brand’s underlying philosophy shows up most clearly: fragrance as something personal and situational, not something assigned. In an Indian retail landscape that has spent decades defaulting to strict gender segmentation almost out of habit rather than genuine consumer demand, that’s a quietly significant correction — one likely to look less like a trend and more like common sense within a few years.
