Bvlgari’s Le Gemme Tygar Extrait named 2026 Fragrance of the Year (Hollywood Beauty Awards)

The Hollywood Beauty Awards' Fragrance of the Year distinction has honored some high-pedigree choices over its 11-year run: Clive Christian, Maison Francis Kurkdjian for Baccarat Rouge 540, and the Britney Spears fragrance collection, among others. For 2026, the award went to Bvlgari Le Gemme Tygar Extrait, which the HBA announced on April 1st, ahead of its black-tie ceremony scheduled for April 10 at the Taglyan Complex in Los Angeles.

The Extrait is a 2025 release, a higher-concentration reinterpretation of the existing Le Gemme Tygar Eau de Parfum. Master Perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, who also created the original Tygar in 2016, deepened the composition considerably for the extrait version. Italian grapefruit remains the opening accord, but the base shifts toward rare ambergris and dark patchouli, with Peru balsam adding a balsamic, resinous underpinning the EDP doesn't have. The Extrait carries a unisex classification, covering the full Le Gemme spectrum rather than skewing masculine the way the original Tygar did.

The Le Gemme collection takes each fragrance's identity from a gemstone, and Tygar draws on the tiger's eye, the golden-brown stone tied to Kerala, India, a region Bvlgari describes as the Spice Garden of India. The stone's Latin root, tigris, connected ancient civilizations to solar and terrestrial energy; the fragrance translates that mythology into an olfactory contrast between brightness and depth, citrus against warmth. In the Extrait, that duality sharpens. The grapefruit holds its luminosity against an ambergris base that adds a salty, almost oceanic finish.

At around $410 retail, Tygar Extrait sits below the upper tier of the Le Gemme line but well above the range where fragrance gets given without thought. For gifting purposes, the HBA recognition does real work: it places the bottle alongside Baccarat Rouge 540 in the award's lineage, which is exactly the company a gift wants to keep when the box is opened. The 11th Annual Hollywood Beauty Awards ceremony takes place April 10, 2026, under the theme "The Beauty of Spring ~ La Beauté du Printemps," with proceeds benefiting Helen Woodward Animal Center for the ninth consecutive year.