Ten years is a long time to leave the feminine side of your fragrance counter quiet. Jean Paul Gaultier is ending that silence with La Favorite, announced as a full fragrance pillar — not a limited edition, not a flanker — launching now, per WWD Beauty. The timing is deliberate: the brand is in the middle of a genuine reset, with Dutch designer Duran Lantink at the creative helm, and Le Male is having an unexpected cultural moment. Gaultier clearly decided this was the right window to build something new on the feminine side rather than keep coasting on its masculine catalog.
The name itself does some work. “La favorite” was the official title for the king’s mistress at the French royal court — a position of real power dressed up in silk and discretion. That’s a sharp reference point for a fragrance house that has always been interested in gender, performance, and the costume of identity. It also syncs with Lantink’s debut couture collection, which pulled heavily from Marie Antoinette: enormous gowns, drain-pipe protrusions, the whole spectacle of taking up space. La Favorite is, at least conceptually, dressed for that same room.
What It Actually Smells Like
The source details on the full pyramid are limited at this stage, so specific note breakdowns should be taken with some caution until the fragrance is more widely available for testing. What we know is that this is positioned as a pillar — meaning Gaultier intends it to anchor a family, not exist as a one-off. That usually signals something built to project and last, with enough personality to spawn flankers down the line rather than disappear quietly after one season.
Given the Marie Antoinette and royal court framing, expect something that leans into powdery florals, white flowers, or something with a baroque richness — iris, rose, and musks are obvious candidates for a concept this steeped in historical femininity. But that’s reading the brief, not the bottle. Until there are confirmed notes, the smartest move is to wait for early reviews from people who’ve actually smelled it before committing.
(Full note pyramid will be updated once confirmed by the brand.)
Where This Fits in the Gaultier Story
To understand why La Favorite matters, you have to understand what’s been happening with Le Male. The original 1995 masculine — lavender, vanilla, mint, that torso bottle — has been surging again. It’s one of those fragrances that somehow keeps finding new audiences: Gen Z discovering it for the first time, older wearers returning to it, a consistent presence on “best of” lists that never fully went away. When your masculine catalog is generating that kind of energy, it makes sense to ask whether the feminine side is pulling its weight.
The answer, for the past decade, has been: not really. Classique, the feminine counterpart to Le Male, has been around since 1993 and remains a solid rose-amber, but the house hasn’t built anything new and significant for women since then — nothing with the same pillar ambition. La Favorite is the correction to that.
This is also happening at a specific moment in the brand’s history. A new creative director always resets the commercial roadmap, and Lantink’s arrival gave Gaultier an obvious moment to relaunch its fragrance ambitions alongside its runway identity. La Favorite isn’t just a perfume — it’s the brand signaling that the feminine side of the counter is back in play.
Buy, Wait, or Skip
Wait — but with genuine interest.
The 10-year gap and the pillar positioning make this worth watching. Gaultier has proven it can build fragrances with real staying power (Le Male is over 30 years old and still relevant), so La Favorite isn’t coming from a house that doesn’t know what it’s doing. The concept is strong, the moment is right, and the brand has something to prove.
That said, “wait for reviews” is honest advice here, not hedging. The note pyramid isn’t confirmed, and a fragrance built around historical fantasy can go several directions — genuinely beautiful and complex, or heavy and theatrical in a way that doesn’t wear well. The royal mistress concept has teeth if the juice backs it up. If it smells like the brief, it’ll be worth buying. If it smells like the concept was more interesting than the execution, Le Male remains one of the best buys in the Gaultier catalog regardless.
Check back once La Favorite is in stores and people can actually smell it. That’s when this one becomes a real decision.
