The present work reports the fabrication of a fragrance delivery system using nanofibres by an electrospinning method. Fragrant oils are volatile essential oils that easily undergo degradation and evaporation. Nanostructured fibres of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) were prepared by an electrospinning process. In this study, l-carvone was used as a model fragrant oil, and it can be used as an air-freshening agent. l-carvone (5wt%) loaded PVA solution (10wt%) (C-PVA) and PCL solution (13wt%) (C-PCL) were electrospun into nanofibres. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed that the incorporation of essential oil l-carvone in PVA and PCL solution caused the resulting as-spun fibre to be non-uniform, and the average diameter was found to increase from 100-190nm to 230-400nm for the PVA mat and from 300-500nm to 390-800nm for the PCL mat. The functional group, crystallinity and thermal stability of prepared electrospun nanofibres were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) measurements. The degree of crystallinity of electrospun PVA, C-PVA, PCL and C-PCL was found to be 10.46%, 7.4%, 56.16% and 53.41% respectively. The in vitro release of l-carvone from the prepared electrospun fibres was conducted at 30 +/- 0.2 degrees C for 24h by both the encapsulation and imbibition methods. The maximum release of l-carvone (5wt%) was observed to be 61% and 64.1% from PVA nanofibres and 36% and 48.4% from PCL nanofibres by the encapsulation and imbibition methods respectively. These results show the potential of the prepared electrospun l-carvone-loaded PVA and PCL nanofibrous membrane in the fragrance delivery system. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.