We couldn’t tell what time of day it was. Between an early call time and the blur of clouds and downpour, the hours in the studio had definitely stretched. But inside the set of an Allure Philippines digital feature with Pinoy Big Brother alums Bianca de Vera and Kai Montinola, every light on set imitated sunlight, equipment was carefully positioned across the room, soft and airy fabrics swayed faintly as they waited to be used, and hints of floral, grass, and citrus drifted through the studio from time to time.
In the middle of it, during a quick production break, 19-year-old Kai brings up a fact she learned about scent and memory. “I think it’s scientifically proven that scent, or, like, smelling something, can evoke memories.” She relates this to how people who take exams keep an inhaler in hand while studying so that they’ll remember rote information on the day of the test.
She’s not wrong. Scientists have traced why: unlike sight or sound, smell signals have particularly direct connections to the amygdala and hippocampus, the brain’s emotion and memory centers. Odor-triggered memories also tend to reach further back, often to childhood, than those triggered by a photo or even a song. Scent, the way the two actresses talk about it, was never only about a bottle on a shelf. It’s on skin, worked into clothes, left behind in a room—the parts of getting ready no one has to actually see happen.
Ask Bianca what people notice about her; she pauses, looking up and down, propping a throw pillow on her lap. She talks about how skin care comes first in her own account of it—her “canvas,” her “base.” But the layer she comes back to before anything else is scent. The 24-year-old recalls her time in the Pinoy Big Brother house and how her housemates learned to clock her by fragrance alone. “Every time I pass by, they don’t just remember me. Lagi nilang sinasabi sa akin na naaalala nila yung memories.” She calls it scent “an invisible accessory,” and one line says it plainest: “Nandyan na si Bianca.”
Kai’s version of the same idea works differently, less a fixed scent and more a wardrobe she reaches into depending on the day. On off days, she prefers a white tee and jeans, adding accessories to make the ensemble truly hers. “I like to go with my signature scent for something personal, stronger scents when I go to events.” And for performances, it’s something she doesn’t mind switching up. “I would like to wear something else now na pwede ko lang i-spray all over, like a body mist.”
Neither of them is talking exclusively about perfume, either—it’s whatever’s closest: a body mist, or a freshly washed top that leaves a trail of scent wherever they go.
That instinct—building scent in layers instead of leaning on one bottle—is exactly where the wider industry is only just catching up. Pinterest flagged “scent-stacking” as one of its top trend predictions for 2026, and Sol de Janeiro’s global CMO described the shift as fragrance’s “remix era,” where fragrance is less about a single defining scent, and more about something that changes with mood and how the day unfolds. Bianca and Kai were already doing this, just without the label attached to it.
Underneath it all, both of them trace scent back to something further back than any bottle. For Bianca, the memory has a specific address: her childhood kitchen. “When I was younger, my mom was in culinary [school]. My dad was into pastries. With my dad, especially, he used to make this cake that always stuck with me called Chocolate Lychee Mousse.” She still chases that scent today, no matter the medium: something with a note of lychee, always. Growing up an only child meant she was steeped in it constantly, she says: “Different scents come to you every day, every morning, [and] every night.”
Andrea Beldua
Andrea Beldua
Kai’s relationship with scent and memory runs the opposite direction, less something that happens to her, more something she builds on purpose. She identifies the people in her life by smell before anything else. “Kapag naman baby powder, na parang lotion, I know it’s my mom. If it’s a woody, smoky scent, I know it’s my dad.” And she’s engineered her own memory triggers deliberately: a scent reserved only for special occasions. One in particular she only saves for her birthday, a floral lavender alongside notes of mandarin oil, petitgrain, black currant, jasmine, and vanilla. “I have scents I would use now and then para maalala ko yung memories ko nun.”
Andrea Beldua
Bianca also doesn’t see scent as decoration but as a baseline. “I can go out of the house without any makeup on or just, you know, a plain white T-shirt and jeans and flats. But as long as I smell good, I really feel good.” The inverse is a genuine pet peeve for the It’s Okay to Not Be Okay actress: clothes that smell kulob get pulled off and rewashed immediately, no exceptions.
Kai learned the same lesson the hard way at a Girl Scout camping trip, with no proper washing tools (or even a fabric conditioner) in sight. The memory sharpened into a rule she still lives by: “Despite the environment, despite the circumstances, [dapat mabango] ka pa rin.” For both women, confidence isn’t something they have to work at; it’s what’s already there once the scent is right or effortlessly elevated.
Andrea Beldua
Here’s where fabric conditioner comes in. After all, scent clings to clothes longer than it does to skin, which is why it keeps the wearer smelling fresh for longer. In some ways, that’s how the two Gen Z stars are rewriting the rules on what a signature scent is: it can be something as simple as a new fabric care product in your laundry routine that leaves clothes fragrant long after the wash.
Both actresses keep circling back to the comfort that comes from within—the kind that starts with something as small as clothes. For Bianca, it’s how “my scent really makes me feel the most confident.” For Kai, it’s the small relief in hearing “ang bango mo pa rin,” even when everything else about the day has passed.
Seen that way, even in the room they sat in for this shoot, the trail of scent they leave behind starts to look like more than habit—it’s a small, ongoing gesture toward how they want to be remembered. Bianca puts it this way: “I know that I love people to the fullest and I just want to be remembered with the type of love.” Kai furthers this thought through the idea of ease. “I would want them to remember the comfort I bring to them.”
And for these Gen Z stars, that’s the real signature. It’s not just a scent at all, just a person leaving a mark—stitched quite literally, into whatever they happen to be wearing.
Photographed by Andrea Beldua, video by RS Films, art direction by Jann Pascua, makeup by Jake Galvez (Bianca de Vera) and Remcy Santarin (Kai Montinola), hair by Rj Dela Cruz (Bianca de Vera) and Brent Sales (Kai Montinola), styling by Adrianne Concepcion, set design by Ar-j Madarang of Jagger Studios, nails by Elina Jung, produced by Shaun Peregrina, creative production associate Chloe Madlangbayan, multimedia artist Karla Morales, talents: Bianca de Vera and Kai Montinola
