The bizarre rise of scented water in hydration culture

"The best thing to happen to water since rain."

- Helen Coffey, The Independent

This line is written in big, bold letters on a poster plastered across the London Underground wall. Even without any context, I find it vaguely irritating. There's just something so... smug about it. The advert, I can only assume, is pushing yet another player in the ever-growing hydration market. The past few years have seen the quotidian act of drinking water given a trendy glow-up, complete with expensive accessories and sold under the guise of being a “lifestyle” choice rather than a base-level requirement for sustaining human life.The Stanley cup has long been the big dog in this arena after going viral on social media for surviving a car fire in 2023. These oversized receptacles cost top dollar and have become stock-in-trade for the modern wellness influencer - a status symbol that shows you don’t just get your two litres of H2O a day, you look impossibly chic while doing it. I initially imagine that Air Up, the brand being plugged while I patiently await the next Northern Line service, is merely the next in a long line of Stanley pretenders.

Not so, as it turns out, when a promotional email (the first of many) coincidentally hits my inbox a few days later. Air Up has, in fact, taken things a step further, pioneering the next hydration innovation that no one asked for: aroma-flavoured water.