Chappell Roan Sparked an Online Hunt for a Perfume That “Smells Like Lipstick”

Let Chappell Roan’s latest Instagram post be a reminder that the internet will always excel at answering questions with the bare minimum of information. Over the weekend, the “Pink Pony Club” singer shared a photo of her new strawberry blond hair color, and while the new hue is a pretty big departure from the thick and curly burgundy strands we’re used to seeing on her, it was what she put in the photo’s caption that caught everyone’s attention and caused a stir.

“Will the girl who I just met at the perfume store please comment the perfume you recommended I wrote it down and just deleted it on accident,” she wrote. “The world [sic] ‘girl’ was in the brand name & you said it smelled like lipstick. Thank you.”

The word “girl” is in the name of quite a few different fragrances but there aren’t many out there that claim to “smell like lipstick,” so that’s a bit of a tough ask. Still, it only took a few hours for Roan’s comments section to become filled with suggestions—and according to a viral TikTok, fans may have actually been able to pinpoint the scent she was after. Some people assumed that she must have been referring to “Good Girl” by Carolina Herrera, but per a product description (and my own personal experience wearing that scent), that’s a floral fragrance with key notes of jasmine, tuberose and tonka bean. Most of the commenters appeared to come to the conclusion that the actual perfume Roan was looking for is called “Girl of the Year” by indie fragrance brand Thin Wild Mercury.

In the aforementioned TikTok, Thin Wild Mercury’s founder shares that her sales mysteriously went through the roof over the weekend, and after doing some digging, she realized that the attention was coming from thousands of fans name-dropping her brand underneath Roan’s viral post. While she’s obviously unsure who the girl in the perfume store was and if they were actually recommending her scent, she did confirm in the video that one of the top notes of “Girl of the Year” is in fact lipstick.

Leave it to Chappell Roan to unintentionally influence thousands of people buy a single product. The scent appears to be sold out at the moment, so hopefully she’s been paying attention to her comments and was able to snag one before then.