Perfume has no sex. Perfume is SEX. The gender construction through the scent is one of the most fascinating subject and offers today, after more than 150 years of modern perfumery a lot of perspectives to study. What is the olfactory notion of gender through different ages and generations? What is considered masculine / feminine by their creators? How does a certain notion of gender evolve in 10-20 years? If marketing would love to make you believe that gender is a visual construction and scent follows advertising, things are more complicate and the type of scent in the context of other perceived scents has also a very important contribution. Subject is not easy because people tend to speak intellectual stereotypes and not scents. I was looking yesterday through the early posters of H&R masculine genealogies and I noticed that 95% of the perfumes and their types are discontinued, some of them leaving no trace on the shelves today.
In fact the perfumes are migrating from one sex to the other, then, for a period of time they represent the embodiment of a specific cultural notion and after, they start again to migrate and mutate. It is only for a determined period of time (5-15 years) that a specific olfactory shape represents something clear. This allows the perfumer to transform an existing perfume into something new by eliminating the obvious notes that represents the opposite sex in that period of time. You are what you wear and the gender of the perfume is ephemeral and related to what is new and fashionable. I was testing the other day a selection of vintage Avon perfumes pre 1965 when I suddenly noticed that one, an aldehydic spicy sweet sandalwood (Sonnet) was actually the European after shave I was using in the late 90's, just with several modern notes and less flowers. The main accord in Tabu, the voluptuous patchouli oriental from the 30's was used up to the mid 1980's in strong masculine notes where several ingredients with character were added. Maybe only Pino Silvestre and Acqua di Selva were not borrowed from the boudoir. Lavender, tarragon, basil and other notes which became very "masculine" with Eau Sauvage and Azzaro were used a lot in oriental feminine perfume of the 20's and 30's and even in floral types. Both Aromatics Elixir (Clinique, considered a leather chypre perfume at least 10 years by H&R) and Eau du Soir (Sisley) were sharing many facets with masculine creations of the same decade and after. What made the difference however, were the "characteristic" notes assigned to each gender in that decade, and less the structures. Only perfumes with a strong personality (and good sales) will generate types harder to be transformed. But again, if a feminine perfume becomes popular and copied, its scent is easier to be transformed in a masculine note because it is familiar. Only a contrasting note is needed. That's how Eternity, Escape and Eau d'Issey have influenced many masculine notes and later, the fruity honeyed feminine creations determined what is now considered the new testosterone type with a woody amber overdose.
A fundamental rule of harmony says that the new masculine bestsellers, bought by the young generation because of their scent, have to match on an unconscious level with the feminine creations of the day. For several reasons some perfumes fail to "fit" the new olfactory space, the complex zeitgeist that defines a period of time, and they will gradually disappear. Pino Silvestre is a very beautiful creation but it doesn't "fit" the room where women wear J'adore like creations today. Fragrance creation is always aesthetic research and new horizons but sometime, when this horizon brings you too far, some scents will simply disappear or will not be fine fragrances anymore. Because perfumes are made to be loved and worn for love they cannot be conceived in unrelated conditions male/female, and historically they never were, even if this process was not conscious. A masculine bestseller has only one definition - it is the other side of the feminine creation, it is what makes it full. It is not simply a variation but in some cases finding the "missing partners" recquires many years though this process is not conscious.
Building the masculine perfume of the day starts always with defining the feminine type. Then, there are 2 options. If the feminine perfume is a complex harmony of contrasting shades from all the olfactory spectrum, the masculine creation would start by reversing the accord. If the feminine creation is a specific type, the masculine creation will complete the olfactory spectrum to reach the entire scent space in the same tonality. The entire history of perfumes is a balance between perfect marriage, divorce and new alliances.
Here you have some couples you could test for your amusement how they can match or generate harmonious blends:
Opoponax (Roger & Gallet) + Eau de Cologne Impériale (Guerlain)
Le Parfum Idéal + Fougère Royale (Houbigant)
L'Heure Bleue and Knize Ten
Shalimar (Guerlain) and l'Eau du Coq
Je Reviens (Worth) and Pour un Homme (Caron)
Tabu (Dana) and Old Spice (Shulton)
Chanel No5 extrait and Chanel Pour Monsieur
Calèche (Hermès) and Men's Club (Rubinstein)
Aromatics Elixir (Clinique) and Kouros (YSL)
Coco (Chanel) and Zino Davidoff
Nina (Nina Ricci) and One Million (Paco Rabanne)
When a "feminine" fragrance finds its perfect "masculine" perfume usually a new note appears and this is translated (unconsciously) by a perfumer into the next big hit. The history of perfumes in the XXth century is not 2 different genealogies but always a tango where each creation is searching the ideal partner and the measure of this perfection assures the longevity of a creation on the market. One of the reason for the success of Terre d'Hermès is that it contains what the feminine bestsellers do not have today - woods, mosses, some spices - because they are usually floral (J'adore type) or gourmand fruity. With Terre d'Hermès (which contains vetiver, oak moss and tree moss), the feminine creations based on patchouli and light lactones (but not mosses though called neo chypre) can rich a perfect form - the ideal chypre. The true chypre is an olfactory shape of an universal beauty which means that is loved by most of the people in the world. The problem is that you cannot sell it today because chypre is hardly a seductive note in the first 5 seconds. For this reason and taking advantage of the huge patchouli bergamot rose hedione that is in the air today (think Coco Mademoiselle), the creation of Jean Claude Ellena is able to create a very beautiful scent by interaction - a holographic chypre. The beauty is that the mixture acts on a subliminal level. We are not aware. In fact the great "romances" of perfumery are ideal shapes found by intuition and cut in 2 by the God of Perfumes. In some cases, this ideal form would later become itself a perfume. In some cases, when the feminine creation is very original or particular, it is not easy to "find" the masculine partner and the correspondent olfactory shape would appear many years later on the market (the prototype of the note). This explains why some original and beautiful creations never became strong bestsellers. On the other hand, keep in mind something essential: brands that are not able to develop masculine / feminine creations that compliment each other will never be successful. This is the secret of Guerlain. Also, brands that are not able to develop perfumes that are original, with common facets when their scents produce a general harmonious blend in the boutique will not sell. This is the secret of Lutens.
Now, let's go back to the 80's when something unique happened. After Chloé and Giorgio the level of orange flower molecules, essential for the tuberose note, became bigger and bigger until the huge success called Poison. This was a dramatic change because this note has never been overdosed that much on a large scale. On the other hand, a masculine perfume structure that goes well with Giorgio and Poison is not easy to find. In fact, what happened in the 80's with the masculine creations is the appearance of a woody spicy note based on 2 synthetic sandalwood molecules that go extremely well with the orange flower molecules. But the result, at least in a mixture, is an olfactory bomb. What happened around 1988-1990 was that the space was filled with something very oriental heavy, though actually people noticed only the feminine. Both perfumers and consumers were overdosed with 2 drydown notes, pleasant and sensual, and this exposure came from all places, not just from the personal perfume. It was because of this that the new transparency, playing much higher in terms of volatility, was so well received. The success of Calone has also something unique. It's the only thing that lasts enough to compete with the "bomb" caused by the successes of the previous years. Early 90's did not need Cologne freshness and lightness. They needed tenacious freshness because both Schiff Bases and molecules like polysantol were very tenacious. I believe that Angel did not sell well in the first years for a very simple reason - you cannot replace aurantiol - oranger crist - sandalore - polysantol with patchouli - ethyl maltol. To test this, try on several blotters Poison and Egoiste and then Giorgio and Zino Davidoff. Smell them and the combination with attention for 10 minutes and then try to smell Angel. I bet you'd love a Calvin Klein break. The next challenge for chemists in 10 years will be a molecule to fight Karanal and Ambroxan. There would be many other things to explain about harmonious blends, how / why some molecules match and how to search them with maths, but this would make this post too technical.
Now, if this post was quite long, I propose you some exercises or a creative reflection based on the things I've exposed:
- what is the note than can be brought inside Mitsouko to expand its shape?
- what is the masculine type of scent that fits Joy (Jean Patou)?
- what is the feminine harmonious answer to Fahrenheit (Dior)?
- what masculine perfume would seduce the Carnal Flower (Frédéric Malle)?
- what is the modern perfume to make the perfect rendez vous with Terre d'Hermès?
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
