L'Oreal targets Gen Z with affordable NYX hair and body mists

L'Oreal widened its push into lower-priced fragrance on June 29 with a NYX-branded line of hair and body mists aimed at younger shoppers, pricing each 80-millilitre tube at about $15. Fabrice Megarbane, who runs L'Oreal’s consumer products unit, said it was the company’s first attempt to approach fragrance in a more accessible and more fun way, with the mists already on sale in Europe and the United States.

The launch lands in the middle of a sharp split in beauty spending. Circana said U.S. mass-market fragrance rose 15% in dollar terms in 2025, while prestige fragrance increased 5%. In the first half of 2025, Circana said the U.S. prestige beauty market grew 2% to $16 billion, while sales at mass merchants climbed 4% to $34.6 billion. That gap helps explain why brands are leaning harder into cheaper sprays, mists and body products as luxury perfume prices climb beyond what many younger shoppers want to pay.

L'Oreal is already the leader in luxury fragrance, but the faster growth is in mass-market channels, where it faces brands such as Estee Lauder and Coty. The company’s own consumer products unit, the largest in its portfolio, posted sales of €16.09 billion last year, giving Megarbane a broad platform to chase growth outside the prestige aisle. Reuters said the NYX line has been performing well on TikTok, where social video can turn a low-cost scent into a fast-moving impulse buy.

The strategy also fits Nicolas Hieronimus’s effort to accelerate growth through a beauty stimulus plan introduced after L'Oreal posted its slowest growth rate in several years. Earlier this month, on June 18, L'Oreal said it would acquire a majority stake in Innovist, a digital-first Indian personal care house of brands, underscoring how aggressively the Paris-based group is still looking for new engines of expansion. The NYX push points to the same bet: that Gen Z loyalty may start with a viral $15 mist and expand from there, rather than with a prestige bottle on a department-store counter.