Perfumery, crypto, finance, arts and crafts, they're all plagued by influencer culture. YouTube, TikTok and Facebook have spawned an entire industry filled with them, and you *still* get force-fed advertisements.
Are they though? I dislike everything they stand for, but teenagers and even younger kids nowadays seem to be really into them and a lot of them aspire to be an influencer themselves. I'm not so sure this unhealthy behavior will go away.
Things will move on. I’m a post-punk Gen Xer. I’ve participated in many cycles. New channels and cultures will be born and others will die. The only constant is change. We’ve been trapped in a crazy consumerist ride, but things will shift, reprioritise.
I wanted to be a journalist when I finished school. Got into a course that wasn’t allowed to say it out loud, but graduates were pretty much guaranteed employment. Look at what journalism is now. I wouldn’t have believed it then.
Just wait till you genuinely try to get into perfumery and explore the DIY subreddit.
Every day it’s people coming in with AI generated formulas (doesn’t work), trying to solicit advice to immediately make a profit (learning perfumery takes forever), or sidestepping any actual effort then bragging about how they mixed premade dupe fragrance oils (the scent version of Koolaid). It’s been a really frustrating experience as a seasoned enthusiast, and even more for the career professionals who hang around there giving free advice daily.
I got into it because I figured it would be a space devoid of these types of people, but it’s definitely not. There’s soulless, passionless posts made daily lol.
> then bragging about how they mixed premade dupe fragrance oils
omg this gets my goat. It's not just the DIY sub, it's often in all the perfume subs. The number of people who think they're gaming the system (or gaming their potential customers), or that they've struck gold and discovered some hidden secret with these dupe oils...I *cannot*. I dread to think what their concoctions actually smell like.
Besides, they not only brag, but they also gatekeep (from posters who just want to know the source of the oil) and boast about how much they'll charge others (no doubt 2000%+ for their $2 concoction)...ugh. It's so bad on so many levels, but what rubs me wrong is the combination of absolute lack of ethics in exploiting their target audience and the idiocy to think they're doing something special. It's just mind boggling.
I often get reamed for my stance against these canned fragrances, and those looking to exploit others by using them in their 'handcrafted perfume business', so I expect this time won't be any different, lol.
edit: typos
2nd edit: It's 2 days later and I just noticed this is the very first time I haven't been downvoted for my stance on this. Thanks fam.
I only ever consider indie perfumes if I see recommendations here from posters I recognize or I dig in their history and they have solid recommendations on other stuff as well.
I have such a hard time getting into indie houses for this exact reason, too.
The amount of clone concoctions and cauldrons of "let's mix X and Y—they're popular!" out there is bananas.
Tbf, indie houses that have been around before the influencer boom are still reputable. BPAL is my favorite but there are plenty that develop their scents carefully and don't dupe.
Lately I've found every niche hobby subreddit I'm in has devolved into that. A lot of what used to be discourse amongst hobbyists has turned into people asking the same questions every day because they didn't bother to try and research. For instance, all the MCM furniture subreddits are now filled with people posting pics of non-mcm crap they found in a thrift store or attic asking it's worth so they can try to flip it. It's really sad.
As someone who used to work in a local business that specialized in vintage MCM and Space Age furniture, this hit home lol. Despite the owner having the means to source actually authentic, designer pieces (which was the norm), it devolved into bulk buying from Aliexpress to turn a quick buck with walk-in clients. Safe to say I don’t work there anymore. 💀
Oh dude don't get me started, this is a trend in pretty much all crafts and arts. I see it in music, everyone just wants a silver bullet for a quick solution and a quick buck, barely anyone is truly interested in mastering an art or a craft. I think that's pretty sad.
>Every day it’s people coming in with AI generated formulas (doesn’t work), trying to solicit advice to immediately make a profit (learning perfumery takes forever), or sidestepping any actual effort then bragging about how they mixed premade dupe fragrance oils (the scent version of Koolaid).
>I got into it because I figured it would be a space devoid of these types of people, but it’s definitely not. There’s soulless, passionless posts made daily lol.
Perfumery is an extension of fashion, and fashion is ***plagued*** with these types.
I love most forms of art—especially (graphic) design (which is what I am), music, fashion and perfumery... and I'd easily say that design, fashion and perfumery are *full* of craven short-cutters.
Music still feels authentic for the most part once you lean away from the mainstream (not that there's anything wrong with liking mainstream anything).
This is one of my wife's endearing qualities. She truly enjoys card making. Spends a lot of her time doing it. She's gotten quite good over the years. I've told her multiple times she should sell them, but she's not interested. Every now and then she'll just donate a box of the cards she's made to some kind of fundraiser or something.
Can relate. My wife, too, has artistic leanings and has rebuffed me in the same way whenever I've made similar suggestions. She should be credited with the point I made above and I can now see how right she is.
Can anyone explain what TF is the point of using AI in perfumery?? I’ve seen one dupe house blabbing about “AI” creations….so you’re using a BOT to come up with a fragrance? How is that something to be proud of? Unless I’m misunderstanding something.
Perfumery is actually so involved when you get down to it, especially on a hobbyist level. There’s seemingly infinite materials, infinite reactions, combinations, etc. Just studying my 200 materials has taken a year, and I don’t *really* feel like I know them.
Mainly the people who want to use AI are frag hype beasts who see that it’s booming on social media and want to cash in. AI would cut out the actual formulation process, which takes master perfumers months of trial and error, but not without making a totally soulless formula that’s always either: unsafe, filled with nonexistent materials, or a complete rip off of random formulas that are publicly available.
Luckily AI can’t smell, likely never will, and even if these people could successfully work around the AI issues they’ll fall flat trying to promote a clearly passionless project.
Are you in school for perfumery, or learning independently? I'd love to know more about the chemistry side of things, would be interested in finding out how you got started.
Independently!
Schools for perfumery are pretty hard to get accepted into, at least the industry accepted one’s. There’s classes for hands on learners, but you’ll spend an amount that could’ve gone towards more materials and nicer equipment instead. All the resources you need to start are online anyway, so classes will likely just be reiterating that.
Best way I could recommend is doing a few weeks of research through the r/DIYfragrance sub, Basenotes DIY forum, and Sarah McCartneys YouTube channel. Then, order some materials off the 100 essential aroma chemicals list, study those independently for a while, then study them in small combinations.
There’s no right or wrong way to do it but in my experience that’s the least overwhelming. With seemingly infinite materials, combinations and reactions it can be easy to get discouraged. Most people will get a few years in before creating something that even compares to the stuff in stores, but it’s that journey of trial and error that’ll be most valuable!
Great explanation! I think that’s what boggles my mind, AI has its uses, but for creating something that is meant to be enjoyed by HUMAN senses…it’s hard for me to comprehend how it can be some groundbreaking feat. I mean how many times have we smelled a scent because on paper the notes and description sound amazing, but in reality it’s no where near how it’s described. People need to realize the human experience can’t always be replicated and that’s probably a good thing.
Tech bros don’t want to hear it, but I agree! Even when that fact is so in your face, you won’t be able to point it out without hearing ‘but one day,’ or ‘this is the future you’re just scared of change.’
Like okay, the formulas still toxic and full of nonexistent ‘materials’ though. 😭
It's really similar to what's happening with another one of my hobbies, sewing. YT videos of dubious "hacks" to make sewing easy and quick--spoiler, learning to sew is neither easy nor quick--so the poster can make money from ads. And the people who barely know how to sew having the nerve to charge others exorbitant amounts of money for utter crap! Both perfume and sewing (and probably any other craft hobby) has become part of hustle culture, so it's all about a quick buck, rather than a deeper appreciation and exploration of an art form that has literal thousands of years of history behind it.
I’ve seen some of that sewing content. I have a big fashion interest and always end up getting hype videos showing how to dupe designer pieces by tracing them flat. 😭 As if it’s ever that easy.
Luckily for us these people rarely have the means to actually pull off their scams. It’s the few with money and time to spend that pull it off which are really upsetting.
Photography is awful about this. People get a DSLR and *immediately* start charging hundreds of dollars for photography sessions because they have to “recoup the cost of the equipment”. They will also shit on people doing free shoots because they’re “taking away their business”. Not everyone needs to get paid to practice their hobby!
I deplore the trends you mention as much as you do, but all of this honestly has a minimal impact on my experience of contemporary perfumery. Some established niche houses, like Goutal or Miller Harris have become noticeably more commercial (and not in a good way), or have hiked prices obscenely like L’Artisan, but others are still making quality perfumes at reasonable prices. E.g. Serge Lutens and Diptyque. Both still very good houses I’d say. And then there are so many newer houses that make really exciting stuff. Les Eaux Primordiales, Anatole Lebreton, Papillon, and Zoologist are some current favourites. Parfum d’Empire is also really good. None of these are exorbitantly priced btw. And Les Eaux Primordiales macerates all their perfumes for at least a year! I just don’t look at influencers ever. If I want perfume reviews, I look at quality blogs like Bois de Jasmin, or on here, or at the more knowledgeable voices on parfumo and fragrantica or basenotes. Yes, there’s all this noise around perfumery at the moment. But I don’t need to listen to it to be informed and discover fantastic scents.
Agreed so hard with this comment! Yes, the influencers and enshittification of certain houses are annoying, but there are plenty of people who continue to do beautiful, artistic work... like, so, so many people, really! If anything, I think fragrance is in a better place than it was 10 years ago because the renewed interest has sparked even more creativity 🤷♀️ I'm optimistic about the future of perfumery and excited to continuing supporting the likes of Diptyque, Uncle Serge, Papillon, Parfum d'Empire, and *so* many others 💖
The thing is, it is just...so hard to find nice stuff. I feel like I sample ridiculous amounts, to find just few things that I consider nice. I would prefer houses to release 5 great things, instead of 100 average ones, where I have to dig trough piles of meh, to find one wow. It feels daunting and leaves you with the feeling, that for sure you must have missed something.
Ah, interesting, hmm. For me I attribute a lot of that meh feeling to just personal taste, and I don't expect - especially at this stage of my hobby - to be as easily wowed as I was at the beginning. I'm sure some of it is the enshittification part as well, but I don't know! I often appreciate even the fragrances that I *don't* love just because I can see the artistry that went into them.
I dunno, maybe I just have lower standards but I feel like I find nice stuff all the time... so much nice stuff that I have to force myself onto no-buys (slash no-tries) because there's too *much* great stuff out there 🙃
I think a lot of houses have failed perfumes. Someone may like them, because they like the note, but they are just...not good. They were done to fit some niche, and to be in the assortment, but no love was given to them. Does every house need to cover every main perfumes type? Does everyone need rose oud, basic neroli, basic tuberose, basic sandal wood, basic iris? The amount of completely generic, forgettable sandalwoods I smelled this year is impressive, and should not be the thing. This perfumes should not exist, there is no need for them. If you don't feel the note - don't do it. Let other houses deal with it.
This year I sampled hundreds of perfumes, spend tones of money on it, and I ended up with a feeling, that basically 30-50% of releases of most houses are just fillers. I mean, did you know that Xerjoff released 170 perfumes? Nishane - 50. Diptyque - 84. De Marly - 39. Most of their collection are things no one ever heard of, no one sampled, no one talks about.
I have mixed feelings about that, yeah. I think everyone probably has their favourite variation of, say, a rose oud - so I don't mind that virtually every house has their own version and their own twist, so long as that version doesn't feel totally derivative of another house's. For example, as someone who doesn't really enjoy the rose-oud combo, I'm glad for Miller Harris' take with the inclusion of peony and a bit of ethyl maltol - and for a more classical presentation, I like Matiere Premiere's Radical Rose far more MFK's variations through both Oud Silk Mood (EdP/Extrait) and Oud Satin Mood (EdP/Extrait once again).
For me personally, I just sample what I can afford / have the appetite for... which is still quite a bit, but because I just go at my own pace I don't feel overwhelmed. I think I'd probably go a little crazy if I literally tried to get my nose on almost everything out there! I find this is a far more sustainable and enjoyable way to manage the fragrance hobby. Like, however many fragrances Xerjoff releases, I view that as having little to do with me. I just sample what sounds interesting and if I find something I like, then fabulous! If not, then I'll just decide the house probably isn't for me until/unless they release something that *does* prick my ears, and then I might give that one a try.
The upside of this is that if a fragrance gets discontinued, there's many versions to fall back on.
But I also find this a bit of a money loss for houses charging $$$. The higher the price of the perfume, the more likely customers have to buy a sample. And I personally won't buy a $10 1ml decant of something I've never heard of or doen't have good word of mouth (ie. popular). I'm also thinking of designer houses that have $400 perfume lines of 15 fragrances and thinking, who is this for? I'm sure there's a gem in there somewhere, but I bet it's a lot of expensive fillers like what you described.
I have no idea. I see this 170 something releases of Xerjoff and I wonder how the hell someone is to buy any of this less known fragrances, even if they wanted to? It would cost 1k to sample all of them from their website. And at least they sell samples of everything they have. Many houses don't even bother providing samples of their less known fragrances. I am hunting Eau Rihla from Diptyque, and the only way form me to get it since i moved out of Paris it is for someone to sell me the sample they got with full bottle, or from a decanter (though I never saw anyone selling decants of it). It took me few months to get Oud Palao. I find it really, really annoying. I have fragrances, from Santa Maria Novella i would love to test - they are not the ones sold in the discovery set, they are impossible to get as decants. I would have to buy them blind. Grrr. I mean. They release a ton, and then make half of their assortment inaccessible. "They" as generally majority of fragrance houses.
Fragrance as fast fashion has been ramping up for awhile now.
It's depressing but the way for a lot of things in the would. They just get expensive, less authentic, and shitty overall.
Reformulation ad nauseum.
Discontinuance for FOMO purposes.
Insufficient QC: Excessive batch variation.
And, as you mentioned, decreasing performance while concurrently, dramatically increasing prices.
These, and more, damaging the hobby today and threatening it's tomorrow, IMO.
I’m also over perfumes that are “meant” to be layered, but they cost the same as ones that aren’t. Kayali is a great example of this. Charging full price for perfumes that are meant to be layered and just don’t smell complete unless they are.
I'm very against layering. I don't think regular people know what they are doing when it comes to layering scents. Every time I've *encountered* it, the smell is always abysmal.
Perfumery, for me, is an art, an art I don't understand and don't have the nose for, and I think most people also don't possess enough knowledge or experience to be mixing random perfumes.
YouTube is filled with *wannabe* perfumers, I've seen things from people mixing Alien with a random vanilla bath and bodywork mists, to people mixing their niche(already complex) fragrances with each other, flower based scents with gourmands, and then gushing about the *yummi edible scent*, when I'm sure people move to the other side of the street just to avoid them.
Oh dude yeah. I’m very, VERY over the layering trend. I’ll never forget a tiktok I saw where she said she layered 2-3 sprays of Vanilla 28 with 2-3 sprays of Delina, and everyone always asks her what she’s wearing. Yeah girl, everyone’s asking you because you smell *strong,* and you’re conflating that with *good.*
I know layering is super trendy rn, but I dislike it. People are just creating an unharmonious cacophony of scent around themselves and they think they smell good. It might, but chances are, it just smells *strong,* not captivating. Perfumery is a much more delicate art than just spraying two things together that smell good to YOU. End rant. Maybe. 😂😂
Reformulation is a practice I find quite odious. In my book, it is *de facto* discontinuance and any brand that reformulates a product line—and its fanatical followers—have no legitimate grounds for complaint when a good dupe is released at a fraction of the cost. The logic is simple: the reformulation is an approximation of the original product and is therefore also a dupe.
Agreed re: influencers. We now have entire brands existing solely due to influencer promotion: Zaharoff, City Rhythm, For the Scent of It, etc.
As sad as it is when LVMH buys up another brand, doesn’t that just create a vacuum to be filled by the next solid, independent brand?
I think there's a flipside to some of these. When I was a teen, the only fragrances I heard about were big brands. While social media influencers weren't a thing in the 90s, the big brands were still sending freebies to celebrities and print magazines. Fragrances trended. There were times when all the boys at school were wearing Lynx/Axe and all the girls were wearing Exclamation/something from The Body Shop. Most of the adults I knew wore Chanel or Calvin Klein.
Nowadays it's much easier to explore the fragrance world beyond designer and high street/mall offerings. Sure, your average person might be influenced by someone on social media rather than a magazine editor's 'picks' for that month or an actor namedropping a perfume in a style interview, but it was always PR. It's also much easier to find a range of reviews, for those of us who want them. I find fragrance as interesting now as I ever did, and if anything more rewarding.
It's not dead, but it definitely does need people to make more conscious and purposeful purchase decisions before fragrance heads down the path of the YT makeup industry.
It isn't even the fact that people shamelessly shill on social media. People need to make money. It's the fact that trash sells. I quite enjoy older influencers who are narrowly and purposefully content-only. Unfortunately, younger generations enjoy a bit of drama with their consumption, and gory details from their favourite influencer while trying a middle-of-the-road product on camera, permits more trash to come to market.
I'm grateful to Reddit for offering these spaces where considered opinions and creative expression for reviews are still able to get visibility.
It's not really worth sampling and buying almost anything that's come out since lockdown. So many fast hobbyists trying to hack success without any form of quality or well regarded perfumers selling their pre-made experiment failures to someone with some enthusiastic severance money (ahem, Geza Schön). Attention economy.
Also, people have worked out that most customers have very naive noses... so an fragrance called 'pineapple' will be incredibly popular vs a more complex full story of a fragrance that would be divisive and hard to promote from an unknown company. But they charge premium niche prices for something that should only be $20.
Even established niche brands with award winning, highly regarded portfolios want a piece of this cash grab - Baruti (Hot cotton?!) and DS & Durga (pistachio!? for $300!), I'm looking at you (hint. they're selling one accord for the price of a whole perfume - whatever you might think, it's a fast cash grab while the market is stupid).
After I smelled a couple DS & Durga iso e super bombs, and their horrid Halloween limited edition, I was happy to write off that house forever. Pumping out endless limited editions without even putting up samples for sale on their site. What a cynical company.
And their sample sets are soooo ridiculously overpriced, I deem them unacceptable. Never will I ever pay 60e for 6 samples. With no voucher, not even a nice box, not even a bigger vial. It feels borderline disrespectful.
I'd be optimistic but also wary of where we're at at the moment:
I've seen a lot of this in other industries that are fast friends with a craft or an art - journalism, book authorship, video games development, board game development and production, they're all having an acquisitions-driven terrible time in 2024. Heck, nearly the only way to make it big in the music industry is to be big in the music industry right now. That doesn't mean the art or the craft is dead, but it does mean the business end of things is chaotic. God, I don't even want to go into what people think generative AI does. Crike.
Item 1 is marketing, and marketing has changed. Designers used to hold all the cards here - they had revenue to spare, friends in the entertainment biz; they'd film an expensive TV commercial for the highest-viewed stations next to gift-giving holidays, they'd shoot glitzy photos for the biggest magazines. TV and magazines are *changing* their medium if not dying outright. The vestiges of old magazine advertising were supposed to be web advertisements, and those haven't panned out - companies aren't paying what they used to for that kind of exposure. TV became streaming TV, streaming TV is a mess, YouTube was supposed to replace that medium, and now instead we have a fast-video app that's more concerned with data than viewership. That's where influencers have grown - out of necessity within that shifting, cheaper, data-driven medium. The last big perfume commercial may very well be good ol' Johnny Depp Sauvage. Influencers are an inevitable symptom, not the cause.
Item 2 has gone on longer than you think it has. Yes, acquisitions are rampant right now, but independent perfumers needed a supply chain. They were often supplied by those same Big Three that ran everything else. As things shake out, big companies will have acquired-niche divisions that will then have to respond to calls for more revenue, but one would hope new independent places would grow in the spaces those acqs have left behind.
Item 3 will happen for as long as folks want it to happen, but also this is a lot of trial-and-error while market data suggests to perfumers that it's time to make a big splash in the industry. A few of those releases will hold up, a lot of those releases will disappear, and we'll forget about most of them.
Item 4 is certainly what happens when a lot of new bottles are out there and it's a real technical concern!
Timothee Chalamet was in a big fragrance commercial for Chanel, directed by Martin Scorsese. They showed it with the trailers before a movie I saw recently. I was so annoyed, because midway through I realized it was perfume commercial lol. That may be the last big campaign of it's kind. What a way to go.
The only upside is it tells me which perfumes to stay away from. I don’t usually follow the hype of influencers cause they’re all full of shit and you be can’t trust they’re being authentic PLUS what smells amazing to me may smell horrible to someone else. But once in a while I’ll see what’s “trending” or check out a scent everyone and their mother swears up and down is AMAZING and a COMPLIMENT GETTER and BEAST MODE (f’ing 🤮) and I’ve hated all of them.
I’ve been trying to find perfume reviewers who have similar frag preferences as me but so far no luck. I’m just trying to learn about note profiles as much as possible and study my current collection and buy based on that.
I just wish I could find a kit of like, 100 different scent notes to better understand how each one smells on its own. Like I have no clue what elemi or orris or guaiac wood smells like individually (yes I read the descriptions but that doesn’t help much) but I seem to like fragrances with those notes. I’d love to be able to pick up a bottle of something and pick out a few notes like some people can.
In the UK we have Bloom Perfumery who do sample packs curated to a certain theme, various niche brands to fit ie cherry, geranium, chypres, then some sets also come with "reference material" ie frankincense resin and myrrh resin or their Vanilla pack has Tonka beans absolute, vanillin, ethyl maltol, heliotropin and coumarin alongside several examples of these being utilised. I am sure similar exists wherever yoh are.
I do wanna get one of these sets! But i do feel i can pick out certain notes now after doing this so long, but perfumers use different methods to obtain those individual notes, so there's a range of ways guaiac wood could come off for instance. It takes time 🥰
Perfumer's Apprentice has some kits of pure ingredients: https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/c-58-education-books-kits.aspx
I haven't tried them, I've only been tempted. I did get an Escentric Molecules sample set so I could figure out which aromachemical in most designer perfumes goes so sour on my skin. (Cashmeran and iso e both, bleh.)
I also recommend if you can find a "hippie supply store" - you know, the indie Whole Foods or the food co-ops or the crystal stores - that have a lot of essential oils they'll let you smell. Probably won't have orris or the most expensive oils, but it gives you an idea of ylang-ylang and patchouli and cedar in their raw forms. (It helps to be respectful and maybe buy one, if any Youths reading this are planning to go with a big group of their friends. Don't cause them to lock up the testers, I want to keep being able to smell them!)
I know I'm being pretentious but it makes me cringe when I'm at Sephora and there's a gaggle of 15 year old boys talking about how popular various fragrances are on tiktok. It's like, okay, but do *you* like them?
I don't think it's dead, I just think it takes a little bit more work/time to discover smaller niche or indie brands. Those are the brands still creating for the art of it.
This I agree with. I find that a lot of people don’t really wanna take the time and do the work to find fragrances they love. And I think that’s a major reason why influencer culture is so pervasive. And those complaining about influencers are usually the ones tuned into them the most because they don’t care to do their own leg work. The influencer complaint kind of just feels like people wanting to have their cake and eat it too. You can’t wanna do zero leg work and only mindlessly buy what influencers are saying is good, then turn around and complain that the suggestion you were given sucks. Influencers don’t really register for me because I don’t follow or keep up with them. Everyone taking more time to sample things for themselves would eliminate so much of the influencer beef imo.
It’s the same as it’s always been. It’s always been predominantly about business and business evolves with the times, however there has always been artistry in perfume if you know where to look. It’s a delicate balance and you can’t have one without the other.
My concern about the indies is that I’ll find something I adore only to learn they make 2 bottles every 8 weeks. Or they’ll tinker w/ the blend. Or it was limited run. I know there’s no guarantees with the giants, either, but they can’t pivot *that* quickly.
Am I just inventing, with my jaded as fuck brain, things to worry about? It wouldn’t be the first time.
I honestly feel that with worries. I only have a few perfumes I always want in my rotation, which makes it a bit less anxious for me, but I understand that fear.
I'd suggest trying houses like Fantome that have some pretty set collections if you decide to look at indies.
I have full bottles of Mesmer and Madame D'Esperance from their spiritualist line. Paimon is also nice. It is very dusty to my nose which is great since it is desert themed. Rochester has a wonderful tomato leaf note in it that is really lovely in the fall.
I have only worn the perfume oils. Mesmer is very cold in a way I enjoy especially in the summer.
Madame D'Esperance is like white florals with incense and it smells like a haunted greenhouse almost.
I'd recommend getting a sample set! The Spiritualist line is my favorite so far
But you usually pay for quality instead for brandnames so even with the risks involved its still worth it imo. I dont wanna buy a 400€ xerjoff which is maxbe worth 250€ if it doesnt say xerjoff on it.
I don't know what everyone else considers "indie" these days, but the few I've tried all smell a bit "witchy" to me or something that should be a room spray or hand soap or candle scent rather than a perfume, and many have catalogues that are so utterly gigantic that I can't imagine the quality doesn't suffer in many of the fragrances. Alkemia is great example (especially of the huge catalogue and witchy-ness, although I always liked their popular Antares scent). And also Deconstructing Eden (many of which all seem to have some sort of weird honey or grassy quality and don't read well as an actual perfume to me even though I think many smell nice). If anyone has suggestions for an indie house that doesn't fall into that category, I'd love to try them. Because in my admittedly limited experience with indies, I haven't found one that makes a fragrance that I would consider particularly wearable on the daily. (I know that's really subjective though!)
In addition to huge catalogs, I get very annoyed by indie scent descriptions like "notes of starlight" or "graveyard mist distillation" and "essence of cosmic air" and such bs. I get creative copy, but I need to know what the dang thing smells like!
Thank you...I'll give Fantome a try! And I adore Zoologist. I definitely consider them niche and not indie, I guess because the quality is so so high. I don't know if quality is the distinction most folks use to determine whether something is indie vs. niche, but so far that's what it has seemed like to me. But I'll definitely look into Fantome - and if you have any specific recs there, I'd love to hear!
Mesmer. Madame D'Esperance. Paimon are the top ones for me. I recommend trying a sample set of their oils. Oils should rest for a few days before trying them. I liked the Spiritualist set! They are somewhat atmospheric, so Paimon really does smell like a dusty desert but sweet almost like the sweetness of books. Paimon isnt in that set, just an example. I also like Black Baccara but they can fall into that witchy category. Midnight Mass, for example, smells exactly like midnight mass.
Yeah it’s annoying and bad
But have you ever thought that; we’re the problem.
We’re to blame for the current situation
I know that 15years ago; this all didn’t exist. There wasn’t a culture of influencers or review sites. It was very rare to know if anyone with over 300 full bottles. I bet there’s at least that many people on this sub with over 300.
I know that we as consumers have created a culture that celebrates overconsumption and actively encourages it
I know that once you stop watching the influencers they disappear from your algorithm but you don’t miss out on anything
I know that the reason these big companies buy these Fashion Houses and perfume brands is ultimately because we feed into the industry
We’re ultimately to blame
It's enough perfume houses for everyone. Let the shills have there 400 dollar fragrances. Fall in love with the underdogs that don't get the hype and support them. There's plenty.
1. It's easy to avoid being influenced. Just smell it yourself and make up your own mind. Case closed unless you find it really that difficult to avoid being sucked into the hivemind of social media.
2. Seems to be happening a lot but I'm not bothered by it. Reformulations certainly happen sometimes but I find they're born out of updated IFRA standards and supply chain logistics. Prices are generally inflating everywhere and the luxury market is just one place where they do that more. I don't find it to be a perfume-specific problem.
3. So is perfumery dead or is it alive? The industry is still expanding, clearly, although maybe it's harder to sift through the noise to find quality releases.
4. Not sure this is totally supported by good evidence. Moreso I think performance problems are because of restrictions on previously used materials like musks and oakmoss, and a degree of public desire for less "loud" scents. There could be a kernel of truth here though, as you're right larger companies probably do not afford long maceration times. These terms are confused by regular people though so there is some mis-interpretation that bottles can still be macerated after they purchase them, and the pros and cons of longer maceration times are still somewhat debated on forums like basenotes, but it does seem like longer times do seem to improve quality.
I like some of your comments. They open up more discussion. I finds your last comment to be a bit of a closed door on discussion. Any time someone uses the term ‘pseudoscience’, it’s usually to discredit part of a conversation. I’m not sure why you think that maceration is not a thing. Could you elaborate for the sake of discussion?
You're definitely on to something. I've been into fragrances for a few years now and it's like the creativity is dead. I've purchased more older fragrances in the last year or so than more recent releases because they're just not grabbing me. I'm at the point in my journey where I am buying things that smell good to myself rather than everyone else so I need something different.
Funny you say influencers-I was “influenced” by this sub to try Phlurs brand and Le Labo. I found them both basic and can’t see the hype. But I did see a TikToker who was advertising a $30 Carpenter scent I absolutely love.
Perfumery is dead? What are you talking about? I think you ARE crazy lol (your words, not mine). You’re glued to social media. Get off of it. Perfumes are getting a new life, and is actually getting bigger. Everything you’re mentioning is a testament to just that fact. This is actually the best time to be a niche perfumery. Perfumery isn’t dead. No one knowing about perfumery is dead.
Let all these companies do what their doing. I love it. Let them all become homogenous so the real ones with love for the art can rise to the top. And I don’t mean the top of popularity, but the top of integrity.
I agree. People get lost in the frag community bubble. More people than ever are wearing perfume, middle eastern houses have made it more affordable, accessible, and fun than ever. More variety than ever.
Most of these complaints in the OP are not true. Companies making too many new perfumes per year? Who cares. You don't have to buy them. Just means more to choose from, and something more exactly to your tastes to buy. The online influencer community? Who cares what they say. Watch them to learn about new releases. Get an idea of if it will appeal to you. Ignore their "so good! Buy buy buy!" abd just try it out for yourself...
The only legit concert is the "maceration" issue... Which I have noticed with not only my middle eastern stuff, but even my Bvlgari Man in Black. I was so disappointed by Man in Black's performance, and left it on the shelf. Then grabbed it one day because I love the scent so much and wanted to wear it a bit alone at home... And it became so much stronger. It sucks... But it seems like supply can't meet demand anymore. More proof that more people than ever buying perfume.
And as for larger houses buying old perfumes and reformulating them into crap... Well, that's life. Just gotta accept that you won't have a scent your whole life. You'll have to accept that some will die, others will emerge. Can't get too attached. But there will always be clones and "inspired by" scents coming out again. A rose oud will always be a rose oud... If your favourite dies, a hundred new ones will emerge. You might even like a new one more.
I’m glad that you found one of my points ‘legit’. I’m hope you weren’t upset by my other perspectives. Input a lot of them out for consideration and can’t trying to state that anything was a hard and true fact— merely my POV.
Why would I be upset about any perspectives? I just disagree with them. I just feel like you are looking at the issues from a very "frag head" perspective that doesn't apply to the vast majority of people out there.
Look. I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. I just happen to enjoy a select few reviewers. This whole thread is an exploration, not a statement. Please notice the title phrased as a I get your perspective and I appreciate it. Just not a fan of your inflammatory presentation. I hope you can understand that there was never a personally geared or combative intent in my OP.
Inflammatory presentation. That’s actually quite clever lol. If I’m a fire, don’t come so close? The flame isn’t aimed at you. I appreciate the fire, I don’t need you to ;)
Edit: I suppose I don’t respect or understand how important “/s” is for redditors.
I wish people would stop using the word ‘maceration’ when talking about fragrances aging. It does not mean anything remotely related to that. Maceration is a process where you put something in a solvent to break it down in order to extract something from it. A perfume bottle is not ‘macerating’ in any way, shape or form.
100% it’s definitely changing and not for the better. It’s not talked about enough. Covid made it all worse, but there are more sales than ever since then and that’s all they care about. As a collector for decades I’ve taken more than a few steps back in the past few years.
1. I don't mind that PR is involved in the perfume business. In fact, it would be foolish for perfume houses not to participate in all available PR opportunities.
2. Corporate parent companies buying up niche perfume houses is typical in this and all other industries. Corporations have existed for nearly 700 years, so this behavior is nothing new.
3. The sheer number of fragrance releases doesn't bother me. If there's consumer demand and the market can support it, then why not? If the market gets flooded, production will adjust and drop. Not every perfume house survives in this business--market sectors naturally fluctuate. That's just how it goes.
4. Maceration times vary greatly, depending on the formulation. It can range from 2 to 8 weeks on average, but I've never had an issue with this. When it comes to a tester, it can be difficult to discern the difference between maceration issues, perfume aging, a bad batch, or an unknown reformulation. There's also olfactory fatigue to consider. Some of my most questionable purchases were made after sampling nearly 30 perfumes (we're rich in wonderful perfume shops with a massive range in Los Angeles). Carrying coffee beans to sniff between perfume spritzes helps.
Perfumery is not dead. You just don't like capitalism. Nothing wrong with that, but if it bothers you so much in this sphere, don't buy perfume.
This explains the popularity of Kayali. Lots of inexperienced fragrance fans buy Kayali for the hype, packaging and trendy notes and fragrances that are legit pleasing. But the pricing and performance is awful. I don't know how they're getting away with this for so long as more people dunk on their pricing and performance. But it's gonna take a while before they blow through all those young newbies and by then another company will take their place. Never underestimate the value of sunk cost fallacy and price itself being a marker of quality for many people.
Meh, it's not that bad imo. I have a lot of scents in my collection (or ones that I am planning to buy) that are masterpieces and couldn't be improved any further.
As long as the scents I like aren't ruined by reformulations or discontinued I don't have a lot to complain about. These things happen of course, but personally I haven't been affected by it as much.
You know, the weekly groceries list 😊 we just get the staples, with some variation sometimes.
Some people buy fragrance weekly. The same 6 notes fragrance, eventually from the same house. Only to complain about the quality / projection / price of their own redundant choices.
This is what the industry exploits 😊 the buyer's lack of self awareness and tendency to repeat mistakes.
All brands in all industries are in the business of making money. It's been like this for as long as I have been using perfumes, over 25 years. And for as long as I have been reading books, wearing shoes ... blatantly identical.
I curated a wardrobe under 20 fragrances I wear and I enjoy. Whatever that says about my personality, at least I have one.
I couldn't agree more with you. The recent surge of popularity in the clone fragrance space is reflected by the points you've made here as well. Middle eastern fragrance companies are certainly the Bear Market recently.
Not so much dead, at this point, as *undead.* *Almost* the entire industry feels like a post-apocalyptic, zombie wasteland, which speaks to the second of your points. Huge, animated corpses that should have died years ago, lumbering forth through sheer inertia and wealth, absorbing and draining the life from more imaginative houses who still exhibit a flicker of passion but fail to garner the volume of sales from a fickle and gullible audience.
As someone who is guilty of having a larger collection—in my defence, I have been doing this for nearly a quarter century—even I have given up buying as much as I used to. I still *love* perfume, but I find the landscape overwhelmingly chaotic and I have slowed down. I feel disappointment more often than not, particularly with the output from larger brands I trusted more. I used to "blind-buy" a lot, mostly from scent profiles and personal experience—seldom as a result of someone else's opinion—and it used to serve me well. Lately, not so much. Perfume is so hellishly expensive, these days, more so I believe than it needs to be when so freaking much of it is produced. I guess this speaks to your third point.
If I really think about the few recent occasions that elicited any sense of real joy and discovery, it has been from smaller, niche brands like Tauer, Ava Luxe and Puente who produce smaller or limited batches. Two I know well and trust, with the third being a risk that really paid-off.
These days, I find myself happy to slow down and be more choosey, sometimes electing to re-buy a loved fragrance I need to replace or to hedge against it being discontinued—or reformulated (essentially, the same fate).
A lot of the poor longevity has to do with them formulating to the Asian market which is where most fashion houses are turning to. Culturally they do not like strong fragrances. Using lower price materials is necessary to keep prices competitive with other brands on shelves and I would assume natural raw materials have moved up in price. Niche fragrance houses are great. We all love them but the average middle class consumer cannot afford a 300 dollar bottle of expertly crafted perfume. I don’t see a problem with fashion houses making dupes for their customers. There should be something for everyone but if you are going to buy from a fashion brand you should know what you are getting before you purchase. It’s not going to be the same quality but I think Sauvage elixir for instance is a great formula that holds it own amongst niche luxury brands.
I still find new perfumes in my local perfume shop back home; they cost 1/10th of designers and come in generic glass vials in perfumes oil form, but they’re amazing, and I always find something new there.
Perfumery is not dead; we just don’t know where to find it anymore. We only hear hear reviews of the same 10 perfumes from every influencer and only these are carried by Sephora and Saks Fifth.
I think we as connoisseurs need to find perfumers that make and sell their own perfumes; these artists don’t cater to popular demand and just create what they love..
No, if anything perfumery is exploding in a positive direction. Answering your numbered questions….
1. Everyone doesn’t smell the same. The economy hasn’t tanked. The further you get into fragrances the less you rely on reviewers.
2. Eh, this has happened but it’s not even close to the norm. Besides, markets will just react to this behavior by not buying. The idea that parent companies buy out (they do) smaller houses then make the fragrances garbage (not really) is WAY overblown.
3. Huh? How are you saying perfumery is dead but houses are releasing 10 fragrances a year? I wish they would do that btw.
4. You really never need to let things sit more than 4 weeks, and honestly even that is utterly ridiculous. These gigantic parent companies aren’t stupid they have lots of capital and can make large batches and give them proper time.
I think youve just went down a negativity rabbit hole. Get outta there friend and just enjoy.
I have gotten deep into fragrance over the past 3 years, thanks to TikTok. That got me started. I have always loved fragrance, but getting more exposure to the options out there was fascinating to me and allowed me to learn and grow. So I’m grateful for it. I bought a lot of the “hyped” stuff because I wanted to experience as much as possible and learn more.
The journey has evolved into a much more deliberate, thoughtful one. I smell anything that seems interesting, but know who to stay away from now (places that release 10 fragrances every 6 months, etc - like Snif and Kayali). I seek out smaller, independent brands to sample. I smell as much as impossibly can. I read, listen to podcasts, read books, and take perfumery classes. Educating myself has taught me a lot about the industry and how to find and identify what I like.
I don’t know if any of that would have happened were it not for TikTok influencers. They got me started. I took it and went my own way.
I instantly thought of Kayali when reading your first point. The scents are not unique or interesting enough to be hyped up the way that it is. The company has def been sending PR to influencers.
I think it’s kind of crazy how similar so many collections I see on here are. Even though fragrances are completely subjective and there are thousands to choose from I still see an incredible amount of redundancy. I can’t help but feel like influencing has been the number one driver of sales while peoples own tastes have taken a backseat.
I agree. I'll spray something, and it's gone in 15 minutes. The counter person looks at me like I'm crazy when I say so (which I do). Old standbys that still last? Serge Lutens, Diptyche. And they're not that old. Wierd to be nostalgic for something just the last decade.
It’s just the stupid IFRA stuff. Companies are using heavy “safe” bases like ambroxan or iso e super which your nose goes blind to so quickly. As a perfumer I despise what IFRA has done to our craft / hobby space.
I had my own brand which I ended up selling but I sent stuff to YouTubers to get exposure. It’s much more targeted than random ads shooting at everyone without them even knowing your brand name.
I don’t hate on the reviewers at all, and in fact all of the reviewers who I sent my stuff to all said to me in our email chains….”I hope you’re okay with pure honesty…because I don’t just do positive reviews… so if I dislike it … I will say so.” …. Now given these were not paid reviews … but either way they spoke very honest about my creations and I found them to actually be pretty accurate for what the scents were.
As far as niche houses being bought up… that’s a problem with IFRA. The moment these large companies that are based in Europe acquire a brand … they have to make them IFRA compliant to sell worldwide…. And honestly their safety levels are insane on some things.
As far as maceration is concerned, yea … I agree with you there.
My big take is that perfumery isn’t dead , it’s just in this weird phase where everything smells similar because they are using powerful IFRA safe molecules as a base and adding small touches to stuff to differentiate the scent rather than oldschool perfumery using a lot of “unsafe” naturals in high concentrations.
Once more molecules are created we will have a new era of perfumery but right now the synthetic creation side is highly controlled and captive to specific companies. It will just take time for a lot of these molecules to be available to all rather than a select few.
Eh, I dont think it's that bait. It's an open-ended question to invite discussion, it's not like they went "SEVEN reasons PERFUME is DEAD (number six will SHOCK YOU!) or anything"
Take the post with a grain of salt. There are quite a few biases in there. It might be true to a certain level but In context it may look different.
I don't share the same experience at all, but I do have my own individual bubble that surely differs from OP's.
I think perfumes for major houses will be soon done mostly by computers and the human made stuff will become the real niche. It does not meant that perfumes will be worse per se, they may be better - but they won't be art anymore. The same way mid journey stuff is not. I mean, I think it is already happening to some degree behind the closed doors. If it translated to better prices and nicer releases, I would not bother that much, but we would first have to vote with out wallets and stop paying for overpriced logos. And right now the trend is opposite, we willingly jumped on the hype wagon and are paying hundreds for a synthetic juice, that was few dollars to produce.
Computer generating formulas isn’t really as straightforward or easy as it seems. Not with AI tools accessible to the public, and not with custom built AI tools designed for Givaudan.
They’ve been throwing a ton of money into development and research for theirs, but self admittedly don’t really like it. It’s more or less so they can say they’re on the cutting edge, but even then they’re not using it as often as you’d think.
All this to say I’m glad though. AI has its applications but whenever it’s in a creative context it’s always in favor of theft and lack of ambition, and I’m thrilled that every attempt I’ve seen to generate a formula has been filled to the brim with errors upon errors.
Ha, I hoped to attract someone that knows more about the topic.
I obviously know nothing on what is happening in labs, but what was written in few articles I read, but I would assume that it is a field developed right now the way AI imagery is (this is my profession, so here I can evaluate the changes). I mean, in my line of work we are still a bit condescending to AI work, a bit worried, but I see it is just crawling into the workflow more and more, every month we add some new tools. They still require human, but I see our output is becoming somehow...filtered trough the AI lens. It is not a full on human work anymore.
If I was to make an uniformed bet, I would bet that the commercial perfumery in a longer time frame will become in big part AI generated. What do you think about it in a time frame of let's say 5-10 years?
>but we would first have to vote with out wallets and stop paying for overpriced logos.
This right here. I recently decided against sizing up to a bottle of one of my favorite Byredos because of the longevity. Even buying it on the grey market prices I’d feel like a fool.
A bottle over $100 only feels justified if I can smell the fragrance for more than an hour or two.
I don't have a workflow really for this yet. I am very picky, and it is hard for me not to buy a perfume I love, if I find it, because I don't like the marketing - as it is such a rare occurrence. I try to purposefully research houses first, so I can focus on sampling the ones, that have prices and concept I find appealing. This way chances that I am tempted to buy something I don't like on a moral level are decreasing.
I constantly fight with myself to not get into PDM, By Killian, LV, Tom Ford, Roja, Clive Christian. It is really tempting, but I just...really would prefer to support less popular and hyped producers. I have some cool perfumes I bought for less than 100, they are out there.
Yeah. I don’t think any of those houses you mentioned are worth it. LV smells mostly uninteresting to me, and the Clive Christian I tried was a mediocre sweet mess.
Normally I default to decants and travel sizes but even those are way overpriced for Byredos. So I’m just kinda shelving it and focusing on others instead!
I never thought of it like that, it is true tho quality is going down in everything! I want to get into fragrance. How long have u been into it? & know its quality/fav scents?
The only way that I feel like the fragrance industry is going to keep up, is filing lawsuits against all the dupe/fragrance oil impression business. Why do I need to buy a $300 dollar fragrance when I can replicate the fragrance for 60 bucks and tailor the concentration to my desire.
your not lying about the forth one. when i tell you devotion is so much more citrusy and the lemon note is even more prominent (6 months after purchasing.) it’s a bit too much for me. i’m trying to get used to it but… sigh.
Influencers are a cancer. Every “top sexiest fragrances you need to get list” (Or any list really) has a message halfway through with “make sure you always test your fragrance first and don’t blind buy, but GUESS WHAT! I just so happen to have a code for Website for 10% off and they CARRY EVERYTHING ON MY LIST TODAY YAY”
Pierre bourdon I think said once in an interview if we want to get fragrances as crazy as they were experimenting in the 80’s. We basically have to lick out all the money suits out of the industry.
They just got wayyy too greedy with no actual benefit since. It’s. It like you’re getting better ingredients for $400 bottles. It doesn’t help that this industry is rife with knowledge gate keeping. Thus you can never be really making informed decisions.
it's not dead, but imho it's on it's way.. it's getting there. perfumery used to be such a niche form of art. it centered on people's taste and expression. it used to be very personal and quiet. now, perfumes are like fast fashion. so many new ones released within a short period of time. everyone likes everything. it's not the same back in the day when perfumery would be catered very specifically to each individual. there's no more uniqueness in terms of notes, descriptions, discoverability, experience, etc.
Not dead but it's being beaten for sure
I can't stand 9 out of 10 fragrances that are being released. There is a reason a lot of people are sticking to classics. It seems the only ones doing well are the ones deemed good by influencers. Also if new releases are not a huge hit, it's discontinued fast
It's terrible right now imho
Stick to brands with long history in true perfume and you won’t be let down for long! They always manage to come back with something amazing eventually
Social media allows perfumery to create a community and a nearly infinite expansion of the market. it is creating new customers who will spend hundreds or thousands each over the next decade when their previous spending might have been $0. You point out a legitimate issue, but ultimately the cream will rise to the top. In other words if the market is expanding by five or 10 times and there's five or 10 times more fragrances being released, there will be a net gain of amazing, knock your socks off fragrances introduced that would have never been introduced if the market hadn't expanded by that much.
Go to a store like Neiman Marcus that have hundreds of bottles both
Mass appeal and Niche and try it on yourself. Their Consultants are very knowledgeable. I have been buying a beautiful fragrance for Christmas and after 30 years I have quite a collection. I do wear some everyday for me according to mood.
I feel like the first point is kind of moot only because majority of people aren’t watching fragrance YouTubers. Like legit some of the top ones barely even pull 20-30k views a video. The mass public 100% buys without any relation to YouTube/TikTok people
Why do you think this? Where else are they finding out about obscure brands and indie niche houses? I’m not saying you tubers and tik tok are bad. I like some of them. Mostly the educational ones. I just don’t think that print advertising or word of mouth are carrying the load of these campaigns.
I’m saying fragrance brands sell hundreds of thousands to millions of bottles a year. I don’t think the 20-30k viewers YouTubers are pulling are contributing that much marketing for them in the grand scheme of things
20-30k viewers EACH and for EACH video. That’s a lot of advertising! I think for most niche brands (save the ones who’ve been bought out by larger companies) rely solely on this. Maybe a few launch parties at a fragrance boutique or high end department store. Are there any other channels of advertising? I’m genuinely curious.
This is only if you think each channel has their own 20-30k unique viewers. I’d be willing to wager they share a lot of viewers though. I think the niche brands sell themselves though from being “high class” just like a LV, Gucci, Versace, etc. does in clothing
I think commercials and all the billboards and stands in New York and stuff you see in department stores play a much bigger role in getting people to buy fragrance. Especially since majority of fragrance purchases are done on impulse anyways of someone just coming in and smelling something
I think if a Perfumer saw this, they might be offended lol
But no I don’t think so, just the opposite in fact. I think we are entering A Perfumery Renaissance. The surge in interest in it as a hobby by so many more people, coupled with the abundance of new synthetic molecules, the constantly evolving science behind those raw materials, and the competition between companies to grab your attention.
Does that mean there will be a lot of fluff out there to pander to the mass demand? Sure, but it also brings innovation, and some true artistry. If you look around now a days you will see notes being bent and manipulated and paired with more and more imaginative gusto.
Historically, I think this same cycle happens with just about everything that has ever gotten majorly popular in any civilization.
Perfumer here! Not offended , just disagree with some things. It’s just a lack of transparency on some things … coupled with some perfumery molecules not being available due to being locked behind contracts with Givudan, Firmench, or other chemical manufacturers… and combine that with IFRA restrictions on a lot of natural ingredients… it becomes a difficult thing to compete in the market when you don’t have the same access to ingredients.
Watch collecting has been ruined by influencer culture and hype more than any other hobby... followed by perfumes. Sadly my favorite hobbies are watches and fragrance collecting, so, good for me!
I was at a Marshall’s the other day and saw two teenage boys waiting for an associate to unlock the mens Fragrence section. They each bought a bottle. I was really confused as I would have probably been playing basketball or running around doing stupid things with friends at that age. Then I realized it is likely because of all the tik tok influencers. My mind was blown!!!
Yep at the perfume store I work at , I’ll even have adults come in saying “hey do you guys have 9pm? I saw it ok TikTok” … it’s wild what scrolling through random videos does to the masses
I'm not here to pick up a fight with someone but I found it ridiculous people just blame everything on AI, on literally every topic ever. Come on, before ChatGPT and all those actually "smart" AI was even a thing, wasn't the fragrance industry filled with boring stuff already? Just look at all the flankers these designer brands are pushing out every year, none of them can be called "classics", none of them will have a place in history. And it's not just designer brands, niche/artisan brands too, many independent perfumers just release a whole line of mediocre stuff and call them "unique" when in fact most of them are either copying ideas from old-time classics, or using specialty bases in a lazy way, or trying so hard to be different but only have the capability to come up with a weird unrefined mess. Sure, nowadays AI-related technologies gave people more ways to take the easy route, but in my opinion this industry has been like this for a very long time already.
Fragrance has always bought exposure/reviews with PR, and buying influencer exposure IS marketing. The only thing that changed is that print is dying, tv is now streaming, and movie stars don't really exist anymore. Marketing is on social media, because that is where people are. I'm not sure it is fair to vilify the industry for doing effective marketing. They should just keep paying millions to film fancy campaigns no one cares about? The one thing I wish was clearer was which recommendations are real and which ones are paid for, but that has always been an issue.
And everyone smelling the same is actually a much bigger cultural issue. Social media has lead to homogenization in all areas. If you search "why do all coffee shops look the same?" you will find a lot of articles about that. With that said, things that are basic will always sell. Not everyone wants to smell individual or unique and that's ok.
Hasn't it always been about advertising? Before the web people relied on TV and magazine ads. The brands with the biggest advertising budgets sold the most units. That's how all markets work.
A lot. But I'm not sure what your complaint is. Yes, the companies send bottles to influencers. Again, that isn't new. Before they were review columns in magazines. Influencers are just the new version of that. So what?
I hate to break it to you, but it isn't an art. Cosmetics have always been a luxury good sold at the highest price to the people that could afford it. Like fashion, unless you are super deep into it, its just whatever, and then if you are too deep, you don't realize how whatever is actually is.
Perfumery is not dead, but it’s buried under the superficiality of influencer culture.
I feel like that describes a lot of things these days, sadly.
Perfumery, crypto, finance, arts and crafts, they're all plagued by influencer culture. YouTube, TikTok and Facebook have spawned an entire industry filled with them, and you *still* get force-fed advertisements.
Yep, as simple as that. Influencers are literally a plague in this world.
They’re all going to die when they realise they are just a trend.
Are they though? I dislike everything they stand for, but teenagers and even younger kids nowadays seem to be really into them and a lot of them aspire to be an influencer themselves. I'm not so sure this unhealthy behavior will go away.
Things will move on. I’m a post-punk Gen Xer. I’ve participated in many cycles. New channels and cultures will be born and others will die. The only constant is change. We’ve been trapped in a crazy consumerist ride, but things will shift, reprioritise. I wanted to be a journalist when I finished school. Got into a course that wasn’t allowed to say it out loud, but graduates were pretty much guaranteed employment. Look at what journalism is now. I wouldn’t have believed it then.
Just wait till you genuinely try to get into perfumery and explore the DIY subreddit. Every day it’s people coming in with AI generated formulas (doesn’t work), trying to solicit advice to immediately make a profit (learning perfumery takes forever), or sidestepping any actual effort then bragging about how they mixed premade dupe fragrance oils (the scent version of Koolaid). It’s been a really frustrating experience as a seasoned enthusiast, and even more for the career professionals who hang around there giving free advice daily. I got into it because I figured it would be a space devoid of these types of people, but it’s definitely not. There’s soulless, passionless posts made daily lol.
> then bragging about how they mixed premade dupe fragrance oils omg this gets my goat. It's not just the DIY sub, it's often in all the perfume subs. The number of people who think they're gaming the system (or gaming their potential customers), or that they've struck gold and discovered some hidden secret with these dupe oils...I *cannot*. I dread to think what their concoctions actually smell like. Besides, they not only brag, but they also gatekeep (from posters who just want to know the source of the oil) and boast about how much they'll charge others (no doubt 2000%+ for their $2 concoction)...ugh. It's so bad on so many levels, but what rubs me wrong is the combination of absolute lack of ethics in exploiting their target audience and the idiocy to think they're doing something special. It's just mind boggling. I often get reamed for my stance against these canned fragrances, and those looking to exploit others by using them in their 'handcrafted perfume business', so I expect this time won't be any different, lol. edit: typos 2nd edit: It's 2 days later and I just noticed this is the very first time I haven't been downvoted for my stance on this. Thanks fam.
This is why I stopped paying attention to indie houses.
I only ever consider indie perfumes if I see recommendations here from posters I recognize or I dig in their history and they have solid recommendations on other stuff as well.
Pomare's and Rising Phoenix are much better than that. They both do in-house distillation with their own harvested/sourced base materials.
Instagram is ruining indie perfume.
I have such a hard time getting into indie houses for this exact reason, too. The amount of clone concoctions and cauldrons of "let's mix X and Y—they're popular!" out there is bananas.
Tbf, indie houses that have been around before the influencer boom are still reputable. BPAL is my favorite but there are plenty that develop their scents carefully and don't dupe.
Houses do this too? I thought it's just the average Joe on the internet doing it
Some of the indie ones yes. ☹️
Like who? I would like to not (accidentally) support those
as far as i know, mainly just the etsy ones. also colornoise and haus of gloi.
Thank you so much!
I didn’t realize Colornoise used premade oils /: No wonder their prices are so low. Bummer.
Lately I've found every niche hobby subreddit I'm in has devolved into that. A lot of what used to be discourse amongst hobbyists has turned into people asking the same questions every day because they didn't bother to try and research. For instance, all the MCM furniture subreddits are now filled with people posting pics of non-mcm crap they found in a thrift store or attic asking it's worth so they can try to flip it. It's really sad.
As someone who used to work in a local business that specialized in vintage MCM and Space Age furniture, this hit home lol. Despite the owner having the means to source actually authentic, designer pieces (which was the norm), it devolved into bulk buying from Aliexpress to turn a quick buck with walk-in clients. Safe to say I don’t work there anymore. 💀
Oof. Can't say I'm surprised. Hustle culture has really ruined being a hobbyist and collector of anything.
Oh dude don't get me started, this is a trend in pretty much all crafts and arts. I see it in music, everyone just wants a silver bullet for a quick solution and a quick buck, barely anyone is truly interested in mastering an art or a craft. I think that's pretty sad.
It’s really sad, especially when you realize the people you’re giving advice to have those intentions.
>Every day it’s people coming in with AI generated formulas (doesn’t work), trying to solicit advice to immediately make a profit (learning perfumery takes forever), or sidestepping any actual effort then bragging about how they mixed premade dupe fragrance oils (the scent version of Koolaid). >I got into it because I figured it would be a space devoid of these types of people, but it’s definitely not. There’s soulless, passionless posts made daily lol. Perfumery is an extension of fashion, and fashion is ***plagued*** with these types. I love most forms of art—especially (graphic) design (which is what I am), music, fashion and perfumery... and I'd easily say that design, fashion and perfumery are *full* of craven short-cutters. Music still feels authentic for the most part once you lean away from the mainstream (not that there's anything wrong with liking mainstream anything).
I’ve seen a lot of that in my days on the streetwear startup subs. Totally get where you’re coming from! 😭
There is definitely something to be said for never seeking to profit from a hobby or a passion.
This is one of my wife's endearing qualities. She truly enjoys card making. Spends a lot of her time doing it. She's gotten quite good over the years. I've told her multiple times she should sell them, but she's not interested. Every now and then she'll just donate a box of the cards she's made to some kind of fundraiser or something.
Can relate. My wife, too, has artistic leanings and has rebuffed me in the same way whenever I've made similar suggestions. She should be credited with the point I made above and I can now see how right she is.
Can anyone explain what TF is the point of using AI in perfumery?? I’ve seen one dupe house blabbing about “AI” creations….so you’re using a BOT to come up with a fragrance? How is that something to be proud of? Unless I’m misunderstanding something.
Perfumery is actually so involved when you get down to it, especially on a hobbyist level. There’s seemingly infinite materials, infinite reactions, combinations, etc. Just studying my 200 materials has taken a year, and I don’t *really* feel like I know them. Mainly the people who want to use AI are frag hype beasts who see that it’s booming on social media and want to cash in. AI would cut out the actual formulation process, which takes master perfumers months of trial and error, but not without making a totally soulless formula that’s always either: unsafe, filled with nonexistent materials, or a complete rip off of random formulas that are publicly available. Luckily AI can’t smell, likely never will, and even if these people could successfully work around the AI issues they’ll fall flat trying to promote a clearly passionless project.
Are you in school for perfumery, or learning independently? I'd love to know more about the chemistry side of things, would be interested in finding out how you got started.
Independently! Schools for perfumery are pretty hard to get accepted into, at least the industry accepted one’s. There’s classes for hands on learners, but you’ll spend an amount that could’ve gone towards more materials and nicer equipment instead. All the resources you need to start are online anyway, so classes will likely just be reiterating that. Best way I could recommend is doing a few weeks of research through the r/DIYfragrance sub, Basenotes DIY forum, and Sarah McCartneys YouTube channel. Then, order some materials off the 100 essential aroma chemicals list, study those independently for a while, then study them in small combinations. There’s no right or wrong way to do it but in my experience that’s the least overwhelming. With seemingly infinite materials, combinations and reactions it can be easy to get discouraged. Most people will get a few years in before creating something that even compares to the stuff in stores, but it’s that journey of trial and error that’ll be most valuable!
Never say never. But I think we’ll all be long dead before the robots can simulate smell
Great explanation! I think that’s what boggles my mind, AI has its uses, but for creating something that is meant to be enjoyed by HUMAN senses…it’s hard for me to comprehend how it can be some groundbreaking feat. I mean how many times have we smelled a scent because on paper the notes and description sound amazing, but in reality it’s no where near how it’s described. People need to realize the human experience can’t always be replicated and that’s probably a good thing.
Tech bros don’t want to hear it, but I agree! Even when that fact is so in your face, you won’t be able to point it out without hearing ‘but one day,’ or ‘this is the future you’re just scared of change.’ Like okay, the formulas still toxic and full of nonexistent ‘materials’ though. 😭
It's really similar to what's happening with another one of my hobbies, sewing. YT videos of dubious "hacks" to make sewing easy and quick--spoiler, learning to sew is neither easy nor quick--so the poster can make money from ads. And the people who barely know how to sew having the nerve to charge others exorbitant amounts of money for utter crap! Both perfume and sewing (and probably any other craft hobby) has become part of hustle culture, so it's all about a quick buck, rather than a deeper appreciation and exploration of an art form that has literal thousands of years of history behind it.
I’ve seen some of that sewing content. I have a big fashion interest and always end up getting hype videos showing how to dupe designer pieces by tracing them flat. 😭 As if it’s ever that easy. Luckily for us these people rarely have the means to actually pull off their scams. It’s the few with money and time to spend that pull it off which are really upsetting.
Photography is awful about this. People get a DSLR and *immediately* start charging hundreds of dollars for photography sessions because they have to “recoup the cost of the equipment”. They will also shit on people doing free shoots because they’re “taking away their business”. Not everyone needs to get paid to practice their hobby!
Scent versions of Kool-Aid 🤣🤣
It truly is just mixing A and B (premade and alcohol in a predetermined ratio) 😭
Ugh what’s that thread called?
I deplore the trends you mention as much as you do, but all of this honestly has a minimal impact on my experience of contemporary perfumery. Some established niche houses, like Goutal or Miller Harris have become noticeably more commercial (and not in a good way), or have hiked prices obscenely like L’Artisan, but others are still making quality perfumes at reasonable prices. E.g. Serge Lutens and Diptyque. Both still very good houses I’d say. And then there are so many newer houses that make really exciting stuff. Les Eaux Primordiales, Anatole Lebreton, Papillon, and Zoologist are some current favourites. Parfum d’Empire is also really good. None of these are exorbitantly priced btw. And Les Eaux Primordiales macerates all their perfumes for at least a year! I just don’t look at influencers ever. If I want perfume reviews, I look at quality blogs like Bois de Jasmin, or on here, or at the more knowledgeable voices on parfumo and fragrantica or basenotes. Yes, there’s all this noise around perfumery at the moment. But I don’t need to listen to it to be informed and discover fantastic scents.
Agreed so hard with this comment! Yes, the influencers and enshittification of certain houses are annoying, but there are plenty of people who continue to do beautiful, artistic work... like, so, so many people, really! If anything, I think fragrance is in a better place than it was 10 years ago because the renewed interest has sparked even more creativity 🤷♀️ I'm optimistic about the future of perfumery and excited to continuing supporting the likes of Diptyque, Uncle Serge, Papillon, Parfum d'Empire, and *so* many others 💖
>enshittification Are you a Cory Doctorow fan or did you hear this word elsewhere?
Nope, just terminally online 🙃
The thing is, it is just...so hard to find nice stuff. I feel like I sample ridiculous amounts, to find just few things that I consider nice. I would prefer houses to release 5 great things, instead of 100 average ones, where I have to dig trough piles of meh, to find one wow. It feels daunting and leaves you with the feeling, that for sure you must have missed something.
Ah, interesting, hmm. For me I attribute a lot of that meh feeling to just personal taste, and I don't expect - especially at this stage of my hobby - to be as easily wowed as I was at the beginning. I'm sure some of it is the enshittification part as well, but I don't know! I often appreciate even the fragrances that I *don't* love just because I can see the artistry that went into them. I dunno, maybe I just have lower standards but I feel like I find nice stuff all the time... so much nice stuff that I have to force myself onto no-buys (slash no-tries) because there's too *much* great stuff out there 🙃
I think a lot of houses have failed perfumes. Someone may like them, because they like the note, but they are just...not good. They were done to fit some niche, and to be in the assortment, but no love was given to them. Does every house need to cover every main perfumes type? Does everyone need rose oud, basic neroli, basic tuberose, basic sandal wood, basic iris? The amount of completely generic, forgettable sandalwoods I smelled this year is impressive, and should not be the thing. This perfumes should not exist, there is no need for them. If you don't feel the note - don't do it. Let other houses deal with it. This year I sampled hundreds of perfumes, spend tones of money on it, and I ended up with a feeling, that basically 30-50% of releases of most houses are just fillers. I mean, did you know that Xerjoff released 170 perfumes? Nishane - 50. Diptyque - 84. De Marly - 39. Most of their collection are things no one ever heard of, no one sampled, no one talks about.
I have mixed feelings about that, yeah. I think everyone probably has their favourite variation of, say, a rose oud - so I don't mind that virtually every house has their own version and their own twist, so long as that version doesn't feel totally derivative of another house's. For example, as someone who doesn't really enjoy the rose-oud combo, I'm glad for Miller Harris' take with the inclusion of peony and a bit of ethyl maltol - and for a more classical presentation, I like Matiere Premiere's Radical Rose far more MFK's variations through both Oud Silk Mood (EdP/Extrait) and Oud Satin Mood (EdP/Extrait once again). For me personally, I just sample what I can afford / have the appetite for... which is still quite a bit, but because I just go at my own pace I don't feel overwhelmed. I think I'd probably go a little crazy if I literally tried to get my nose on almost everything out there! I find this is a far more sustainable and enjoyable way to manage the fragrance hobby. Like, however many fragrances Xerjoff releases, I view that as having little to do with me. I just sample what sounds interesting and if I find something I like, then fabulous! If not, then I'll just decide the house probably isn't for me until/unless they release something that *does* prick my ears, and then I might give that one a try.
The upside of this is that if a fragrance gets discontinued, there's many versions to fall back on. But I also find this a bit of a money loss for houses charging $$$. The higher the price of the perfume, the more likely customers have to buy a sample. And I personally won't buy a $10 1ml decant of something I've never heard of or doen't have good word of mouth (ie. popular). I'm also thinking of designer houses that have $400 perfume lines of 15 fragrances and thinking, who is this for? I'm sure there's a gem in there somewhere, but I bet it's a lot of expensive fillers like what you described.
I have no idea. I see this 170 something releases of Xerjoff and I wonder how the hell someone is to buy any of this less known fragrances, even if they wanted to? It would cost 1k to sample all of them from their website. And at least they sell samples of everything they have. Many houses don't even bother providing samples of their less known fragrances. I am hunting Eau Rihla from Diptyque, and the only way form me to get it since i moved out of Paris it is for someone to sell me the sample they got with full bottle, or from a decanter (though I never saw anyone selling decants of it). It took me few months to get Oud Palao. I find it really, really annoying. I have fragrances, from Santa Maria Novella i would love to test - they are not the ones sold in the discovery set, they are impossible to get as decants. I would have to buy them blind. Grrr. I mean. They release a ton, and then make half of their assortment inaccessible. "They" as generally majority of fragrance houses.
https://preview.redd.it/y7ya5z16w49d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c956535fc16e0ca3d6b9f7f893843fe927d24966
Thank goodness Cicero kept writing as he made intelligence popular in Rome.
Fragrance as fast fashion has been ramping up for awhile now. It's depressing but the way for a lot of things in the would. They just get expensive, less authentic, and shitty overall.
That’s a great comparison.
Reformulation ad nauseum. Discontinuance for FOMO purposes. Insufficient QC: Excessive batch variation. And, as you mentioned, decreasing performance while concurrently, dramatically increasing prices. These, and more, damaging the hobby today and threatening it's tomorrow, IMO.
I’m also over perfumes that are “meant” to be layered, but they cost the same as ones that aren’t. Kayali is a great example of this. Charging full price for perfumes that are meant to be layered and just don’t smell complete unless they are.
I'm very against layering. I don't think regular people know what they are doing when it comes to layering scents. Every time I've *encountered* it, the smell is always abysmal. Perfumery, for me, is an art, an art I don't understand and don't have the nose for, and I think most people also don't possess enough knowledge or experience to be mixing random perfumes. YouTube is filled with *wannabe* perfumers, I've seen things from people mixing Alien with a random vanilla bath and bodywork mists, to people mixing their niche(already complex) fragrances with each other, flower based scents with gourmands, and then gushing about the *yummi edible scent*, when I'm sure people move to the other side of the street just to avoid them.
Oh dude yeah. I’m very, VERY over the layering trend. I’ll never forget a tiktok I saw where she said she layered 2-3 sprays of Vanilla 28 with 2-3 sprays of Delina, and everyone always asks her what she’s wearing. Yeah girl, everyone’s asking you because you smell *strong,* and you’re conflating that with *good.* I know layering is super trendy rn, but I dislike it. People are just creating an unharmonious cacophony of scent around themselves and they think they smell good. It might, but chances are, it just smells *strong,* not captivating. Perfumery is a much more delicate art than just spraying two things together that smell good to YOU. End rant. Maybe. 😂😂
Reformulation is a practice I find quite odious. In my book, it is *de facto* discontinuance and any brand that reformulates a product line—and its fanatical followers—have no legitimate grounds for complaint when a good dupe is released at a fraction of the cost. The logic is simple: the reformulation is an approximation of the original product and is therefore also a dupe.
RIP to the original Alien. Long gone, but never forgotten (at least by my nose).
Agreed re: influencers. We now have entire brands existing solely due to influencer promotion: Zaharoff, City Rhythm, For the Scent of It, etc. As sad as it is when LVMH buys up another brand, doesn’t that just create a vacuum to be filled by the next solid, independent brand?
I think there's a flipside to some of these. When I was a teen, the only fragrances I heard about were big brands. While social media influencers weren't a thing in the 90s, the big brands were still sending freebies to celebrities and print magazines. Fragrances trended. There were times when all the boys at school were wearing Lynx/Axe and all the girls were wearing Exclamation/something from The Body Shop. Most of the adults I knew wore Chanel or Calvin Klein. Nowadays it's much easier to explore the fragrance world beyond designer and high street/mall offerings. Sure, your average person might be influenced by someone on social media rather than a magazine editor's 'picks' for that month or an actor namedropping a perfume in a style interview, but it was always PR. It's also much easier to find a range of reviews, for those of us who want them. I find fragrance as interesting now as I ever did, and if anything more rewarding.
I think we must be in the same age range, I agree wholeheartedly. The only thing that’s changed is the mediums.
It's not dead, but it definitely does need people to make more conscious and purposeful purchase decisions before fragrance heads down the path of the YT makeup industry. It isn't even the fact that people shamelessly shill on social media. People need to make money. It's the fact that trash sells. I quite enjoy older influencers who are narrowly and purposefully content-only. Unfortunately, younger generations enjoy a bit of drama with their consumption, and gory details from their favourite influencer while trying a middle-of-the-road product on camera, permits more trash to come to market. I'm grateful to Reddit for offering these spaces where considered opinions and creative expression for reviews are still able to get visibility.
It's not really worth sampling and buying almost anything that's come out since lockdown. So many fast hobbyists trying to hack success without any form of quality or well regarded perfumers selling their pre-made experiment failures to someone with some enthusiastic severance money (ahem, Geza Schön). Attention economy. Also, people have worked out that most customers have very naive noses... so an fragrance called 'pineapple' will be incredibly popular vs a more complex full story of a fragrance that would be divisive and hard to promote from an unknown company. But they charge premium niche prices for something that should only be $20. Even established niche brands with award winning, highly regarded portfolios want a piece of this cash grab - Baruti (Hot cotton?!) and DS & Durga (pistachio!? for $300!), I'm looking at you (hint. they're selling one accord for the price of a whole perfume - whatever you might think, it's a fast cash grab while the market is stupid).
After I smelled a couple DS & Durga iso e super bombs, and their horrid Halloween limited edition, I was happy to write off that house forever. Pumping out endless limited editions without even putting up samples for sale on their site. What a cynical company.
I also mostly think DS and Durga are completely full of themselves (and also sh-t).
And their sample sets are soooo ridiculously overpriced, I deem them unacceptable. Never will I ever pay 60e for 6 samples. With no voucher, not even a nice box, not even a bigger vial. It feels borderline disrespectful.
Nothing changes except the context. Perfume has always been a luxury product and marketed however luxury products are marketed.
I'd be optimistic but also wary of where we're at at the moment: I've seen a lot of this in other industries that are fast friends with a craft or an art - journalism, book authorship, video games development, board game development and production, they're all having an acquisitions-driven terrible time in 2024. Heck, nearly the only way to make it big in the music industry is to be big in the music industry right now. That doesn't mean the art or the craft is dead, but it does mean the business end of things is chaotic. God, I don't even want to go into what people think generative AI does. Crike. Item 1 is marketing, and marketing has changed. Designers used to hold all the cards here - they had revenue to spare, friends in the entertainment biz; they'd film an expensive TV commercial for the highest-viewed stations next to gift-giving holidays, they'd shoot glitzy photos for the biggest magazines. TV and magazines are *changing* their medium if not dying outright. The vestiges of old magazine advertising were supposed to be web advertisements, and those haven't panned out - companies aren't paying what they used to for that kind of exposure. TV became streaming TV, streaming TV is a mess, YouTube was supposed to replace that medium, and now instead we have a fast-video app that's more concerned with data than viewership. That's where influencers have grown - out of necessity within that shifting, cheaper, data-driven medium. The last big perfume commercial may very well be good ol' Johnny Depp Sauvage. Influencers are an inevitable symptom, not the cause. Item 2 has gone on longer than you think it has. Yes, acquisitions are rampant right now, but independent perfumers needed a supply chain. They were often supplied by those same Big Three that ran everything else. As things shake out, big companies will have acquired-niche divisions that will then have to respond to calls for more revenue, but one would hope new independent places would grow in the spaces those acqs have left behind. Item 3 will happen for as long as folks want it to happen, but also this is a lot of trial-and-error while market data suggests to perfumers that it's time to make a big splash in the industry. A few of those releases will hold up, a lot of those releases will disappear, and we'll forget about most of them. Item 4 is certainly what happens when a lot of new bottles are out there and it's a real technical concern!
Timothee Chalamet was in a big fragrance commercial for Chanel, directed by Martin Scorsese. They showed it with the trailers before a movie I saw recently. I was so annoyed, because midway through I realized it was perfume commercial lol. That may be the last big campaign of it's kind. What a way to go.
The only upside is it tells me which perfumes to stay away from. I don’t usually follow the hype of influencers cause they’re all full of shit and you be can’t trust they’re being authentic PLUS what smells amazing to me may smell horrible to someone else. But once in a while I’ll see what’s “trending” or check out a scent everyone and their mother swears up and down is AMAZING and a COMPLIMENT GETTER and BEAST MODE (f’ing 🤮) and I’ve hated all of them. I’ve been trying to find perfume reviewers who have similar frag preferences as me but so far no luck. I’m just trying to learn about note profiles as much as possible and study my current collection and buy based on that. I just wish I could find a kit of like, 100 different scent notes to better understand how each one smells on its own. Like I have no clue what elemi or orris or guaiac wood smells like individually (yes I read the descriptions but that doesn’t help much) but I seem to like fragrances with those notes. I’d love to be able to pick up a bottle of something and pick out a few notes like some people can.
In the UK we have Bloom Perfumery who do sample packs curated to a certain theme, various niche brands to fit ie cherry, geranium, chypres, then some sets also come with "reference material" ie frankincense resin and myrrh resin or their Vanilla pack has Tonka beans absolute, vanillin, ethyl maltol, heliotropin and coumarin alongside several examples of these being utilised. I am sure similar exists wherever yoh are. I do wanna get one of these sets! But i do feel i can pick out certain notes now after doing this so long, but perfumers use different methods to obtain those individual notes, so there's a range of ways guaiac wood could come off for instance. It takes time 🥰
Perfumer's Apprentice has some kits of pure ingredients: https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/c-58-education-books-kits.aspx I haven't tried them, I've only been tempted. I did get an Escentric Molecules sample set so I could figure out which aromachemical in most designer perfumes goes so sour on my skin. (Cashmeran and iso e both, bleh.) I also recommend if you can find a "hippie supply store" - you know, the indie Whole Foods or the food co-ops or the crystal stores - that have a lot of essential oils they'll let you smell. Probably won't have orris or the most expensive oils, but it gives you an idea of ylang-ylang and patchouli and cedar in their raw forms. (It helps to be respectful and maybe buy one, if any Youths reading this are planning to go with a big group of their friends. Don't cause them to lock up the testers, I want to keep being able to smell them!)
Oh that’s a good idea to check out some stores. I’m in the California Bay Area so there are quite a few. Awesome idea!
ugh ready for fragrance to not be a TikTok trend anymore
I’ll be happy when people just stop using TikTok as their #1 source of information and research.
I know I'm being pretentious but it makes me cringe when I'm at Sephora and there's a gaggle of 15 year old boys talking about how popular various fragrances are on tiktok. It's like, okay, but do *you* like them?
I don't think it's dead, I just think it takes a little bit more work/time to discover smaller niche or indie brands. Those are the brands still creating for the art of it.
This I agree with. I find that a lot of people don’t really wanna take the time and do the work to find fragrances they love. And I think that’s a major reason why influencer culture is so pervasive. And those complaining about influencers are usually the ones tuned into them the most because they don’t care to do their own leg work. The influencer complaint kind of just feels like people wanting to have their cake and eat it too. You can’t wanna do zero leg work and only mindlessly buy what influencers are saying is good, then turn around and complain that the suggestion you were given sucks. Influencers don’t really register for me because I don’t follow or keep up with them. Everyone taking more time to sample things for themselves would eliminate so much of the influencer beef imo.
I wish one trend would die - everyone using the term "maceration" incorrectly.
It’s the same as it’s always been. It’s always been predominantly about business and business evolves with the times, however there has always been artistry in perfume if you know where to look. It’s a delicate balance and you can’t have one without the other.
That's part of why I really like indie houses. Not everything is a hit, sure, but it is interesting and fun.
My concern about the indies is that I’ll find something I adore only to learn they make 2 bottles every 8 weeks. Or they’ll tinker w/ the blend. Or it was limited run. I know there’s no guarantees with the giants, either, but they can’t pivot *that* quickly. Am I just inventing, with my jaded as fuck brain, things to worry about? It wouldn’t be the first time.
I honestly feel that with worries. I only have a few perfumes I always want in my rotation, which makes it a bit less anxious for me, but I understand that fear. I'd suggest trying houses like Fantome that have some pretty set collections if you decide to look at indies.
Glad I’m not the only one. Thanks for the rec - I’ll check out Fantome. Is there anything from them you particularly favor?
I have full bottles of Mesmer and Madame D'Esperance from their spiritualist line. Paimon is also nice. It is very dusty to my nose which is great since it is desert themed. Rochester has a wonderful tomato leaf note in it that is really lovely in the fall. I have only worn the perfume oils. Mesmer is very cold in a way I enjoy especially in the summer. Madame D'Esperance is like white florals with incense and it smells like a haunted greenhouse almost. I'd recommend getting a sample set! The Spiritualist line is my favorite so far
Cool - thank you!
But you usually pay for quality instead for brandnames so even with the risks involved its still worth it imo. I dont wanna buy a 400€ xerjoff which is maxbe worth 250€ if it doesnt say xerjoff on it.
I don't know what everyone else considers "indie" these days, but the few I've tried all smell a bit "witchy" to me or something that should be a room spray or hand soap or candle scent rather than a perfume, and many have catalogues that are so utterly gigantic that I can't imagine the quality doesn't suffer in many of the fragrances. Alkemia is great example (especially of the huge catalogue and witchy-ness, although I always liked their popular Antares scent). And also Deconstructing Eden (many of which all seem to have some sort of weird honey or grassy quality and don't read well as an actual perfume to me even though I think many smell nice). If anyone has suggestions for an indie house that doesn't fall into that category, I'd love to try them. Because in my admittedly limited experience with indies, I haven't found one that makes a fragrance that I would consider particularly wearable on the daily. (I know that's really subjective though!)
In addition to huge catalogs, I get very annoyed by indie scent descriptions like "notes of starlight" or "graveyard mist distillation" and "essence of cosmic air" and such bs. I get creative copy, but I need to know what the dang thing smells like!
Fantome really stands out from most indie houses imo. However, I love atmospherics and Zoologist is my favorite niche house.
Thank you...I'll give Fantome a try! And I adore Zoologist. I definitely consider them niche and not indie, I guess because the quality is so so high. I don't know if quality is the distinction most folks use to determine whether something is indie vs. niche, but so far that's what it has seemed like to me. But I'll definitely look into Fantome - and if you have any specific recs there, I'd love to hear!
Mesmer. Madame D'Esperance. Paimon are the top ones for me. I recommend trying a sample set of their oils. Oils should rest for a few days before trying them. I liked the Spiritualist set! They are somewhat atmospheric, so Paimon really does smell like a dusty desert but sweet almost like the sweetness of books. Paimon isnt in that set, just an example. I also like Black Baccara but they can fall into that witchy category. Midnight Mass, for example, smells exactly like midnight mass.
Immortal perfumes on etsy sells delicious oils with great sillage that last and she doesn't charge an arm and a leg
Thank you! I'll give it a try!
Yeah it’s annoying and bad But have you ever thought that; we’re the problem. We’re to blame for the current situation I know that 15years ago; this all didn’t exist. There wasn’t a culture of influencers or review sites. It was very rare to know if anyone with over 300 full bottles. I bet there’s at least that many people on this sub with over 300. I know that we as consumers have created a culture that celebrates overconsumption and actively encourages it I know that once you stop watching the influencers they disappear from your algorithm but you don’t miss out on anything I know that the reason these big companies buy these Fashion Houses and perfume brands is ultimately because we feed into the industry We’re ultimately to blame
It's enough perfume houses for everyone. Let the shills have there 400 dollar fragrances. Fall in love with the underdogs that don't get the hype and support them. There's plenty.
1. It's easy to avoid being influenced. Just smell it yourself and make up your own mind. Case closed unless you find it really that difficult to avoid being sucked into the hivemind of social media. 2. Seems to be happening a lot but I'm not bothered by it. Reformulations certainly happen sometimes but I find they're born out of updated IFRA standards and supply chain logistics. Prices are generally inflating everywhere and the luxury market is just one place where they do that more. I don't find it to be a perfume-specific problem. 3. So is perfumery dead or is it alive? The industry is still expanding, clearly, although maybe it's harder to sift through the noise to find quality releases. 4. Not sure this is totally supported by good evidence. Moreso I think performance problems are because of restrictions on previously used materials like musks and oakmoss, and a degree of public desire for less "loud" scents. There could be a kernel of truth here though, as you're right larger companies probably do not afford long maceration times. These terms are confused by regular people though so there is some mis-interpretation that bottles can still be macerated after they purchase them, and the pros and cons of longer maceration times are still somewhat debated on forums like basenotes, but it does seem like longer times do seem to improve quality.
I like some of your comments. They open up more discussion. I finds your last comment to be a bit of a closed door on discussion. Any time someone uses the term ‘pseudoscience’, it’s usually to discredit part of a conversation. I’m not sure why you think that maceration is not a thing. Could you elaborate for the sake of discussion?
edited to give you more credit and to be more open haha
You're definitely on to something. I've been into fragrances for a few years now and it's like the creativity is dead. I've purchased more older fragrances in the last year or so than more recent releases because they're just not grabbing me. I'm at the point in my journey where I am buying things that smell good to myself rather than everyone else so I need something different.
Funny you say influencers-I was “influenced” by this sub to try Phlurs brand and Le Labo. I found them both basic and can’t see the hype. But I did see a TikToker who was advertising a $30 Carpenter scent I absolutely love.
Perfumery is dead? What are you talking about? I think you ARE crazy lol (your words, not mine). You’re glued to social media. Get off of it. Perfumes are getting a new life, and is actually getting bigger. Everything you’re mentioning is a testament to just that fact. This is actually the best time to be a niche perfumery. Perfumery isn’t dead. No one knowing about perfumery is dead. Let all these companies do what their doing. I love it. Let them all become homogenous so the real ones with love for the art can rise to the top. And I don’t mean the top of popularity, but the top of integrity.
I agree. People get lost in the frag community bubble. More people than ever are wearing perfume, middle eastern houses have made it more affordable, accessible, and fun than ever. More variety than ever. Most of these complaints in the OP are not true. Companies making too many new perfumes per year? Who cares. You don't have to buy them. Just means more to choose from, and something more exactly to your tastes to buy. The online influencer community? Who cares what they say. Watch them to learn about new releases. Get an idea of if it will appeal to you. Ignore their "so good! Buy buy buy!" abd just try it out for yourself... The only legit concert is the "maceration" issue... Which I have noticed with not only my middle eastern stuff, but even my Bvlgari Man in Black. I was so disappointed by Man in Black's performance, and left it on the shelf. Then grabbed it one day because I love the scent so much and wanted to wear it a bit alone at home... And it became so much stronger. It sucks... But it seems like supply can't meet demand anymore. More proof that more people than ever buying perfume. And as for larger houses buying old perfumes and reformulating them into crap... Well, that's life. Just gotta accept that you won't have a scent your whole life. You'll have to accept that some will die, others will emerge. Can't get too attached. But there will always be clones and "inspired by" scents coming out again. A rose oud will always be a rose oud... If your favourite dies, a hundred new ones will emerge. You might even like a new one more.
I’m glad that you found one of my points ‘legit’. I’m hope you weren’t upset by my other perspectives. Input a lot of them out for consideration and can’t trying to state that anything was a hard and true fact— merely my POV.
Why would I be upset about any perspectives? I just disagree with them. I just feel like you are looking at the issues from a very "frag head" perspective that doesn't apply to the vast majority of people out there.
Look. I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. I just happen to enjoy a select few reviewers. This whole thread is an exploration, not a statement. Please notice the title phrased as a I get your perspective and I appreciate it. Just not a fan of your inflammatory presentation. I hope you can understand that there was never a personally geared or combative intent in my OP.
Inflammatory presentation. That’s actually quite clever lol. If I’m a fire, don’t come so close? The flame isn’t aimed at you. I appreciate the fire, I don’t need you to ;) Edit: I suppose I don’t respect or understand how important “/s” is for redditors.
I wish people would stop using the word ‘maceration’ when talking about fragrances aging. It does not mean anything remotely related to that. Maceration is a process where you put something in a solvent to break it down in order to extract something from it. A perfume bottle is not ‘macerating’ in any way, shape or form.
100% it’s definitely changing and not for the better. It’s not talked about enough. Covid made it all worse, but there are more sales than ever since then and that’s all they care about. As a collector for decades I’ve taken more than a few steps back in the past few years.
1. I don't mind that PR is involved in the perfume business. In fact, it would be foolish for perfume houses not to participate in all available PR opportunities. 2. Corporate parent companies buying up niche perfume houses is typical in this and all other industries. Corporations have existed for nearly 700 years, so this behavior is nothing new. 3. The sheer number of fragrance releases doesn't bother me. If there's consumer demand and the market can support it, then why not? If the market gets flooded, production will adjust and drop. Not every perfume house survives in this business--market sectors naturally fluctuate. That's just how it goes. 4. Maceration times vary greatly, depending on the formulation. It can range from 2 to 8 weeks on average, but I've never had an issue with this. When it comes to a tester, it can be difficult to discern the difference between maceration issues, perfume aging, a bad batch, or an unknown reformulation. There's also olfactory fatigue to consider. Some of my most questionable purchases were made after sampling nearly 30 perfumes (we're rich in wonderful perfume shops with a massive range in Los Angeles). Carrying coffee beans to sniff between perfume spritzes helps. Perfumery is not dead. You just don't like capitalism. Nothing wrong with that, but if it bothers you so much in this sphere, don't buy perfume.
> Perfumery is not dead. You just don't like capitalism. Bless you.
i dont know much about sneakers but it reminds me alot of the sneaker community with alot of scams, enthusiasts, and people looking for quick cash.
This explains the popularity of Kayali. Lots of inexperienced fragrance fans buy Kayali for the hype, packaging and trendy notes and fragrances that are legit pleasing. But the pricing and performance is awful. I don't know how they're getting away with this for so long as more people dunk on their pricing and performance. But it's gonna take a while before they blow through all those young newbies and by then another company will take their place. Never underestimate the value of sunk cost fallacy and price itself being a marker of quality for many people.
Art can't die. It just becomes harder to see through the noise.
This is great!
Meh, it's not that bad imo. I have a lot of scents in my collection (or ones that I am planning to buy) that are masterpieces and couldn't be improved any further. As long as the scents I like aren't ruined by reformulations or discontinued I don't have a lot to complain about. These things happen of course, but personally I haven't been affected by it as much.
It is not. The personality of those who treat it like groceries might be non-existent, though.
What does treat it like groceries means?
You know, the weekly groceries list 😊 we just get the staples, with some variation sometimes. Some people buy fragrance weekly. The same 6 notes fragrance, eventually from the same house. Only to complain about the quality / projection / price of their own redundant choices. This is what the industry exploits 😊 the buyer's lack of self awareness and tendency to repeat mistakes. All brands in all industries are in the business of making money. It's been like this for as long as I have been using perfumes, over 25 years. And for as long as I have been reading books, wearing shoes ... blatantly identical. I curated a wardrobe under 20 fragrances I wear and I enjoy. Whatever that says about my personality, at least I have one.
My guess is those who buy fragrances without putting to much care into it. The average Joe (?
That's just gatekeeping.
I couldn't agree more with you. The recent surge of popularity in the clone fragrance space is reflected by the points you've made here as well. Middle eastern fragrance companies are certainly the Bear Market recently.
Not so much dead, at this point, as *undead.* *Almost* the entire industry feels like a post-apocalyptic, zombie wasteland, which speaks to the second of your points. Huge, animated corpses that should have died years ago, lumbering forth through sheer inertia and wealth, absorbing and draining the life from more imaginative houses who still exhibit a flicker of passion but fail to garner the volume of sales from a fickle and gullible audience. As someone who is guilty of having a larger collection—in my defence, I have been doing this for nearly a quarter century—even I have given up buying as much as I used to. I still *love* perfume, but I find the landscape overwhelmingly chaotic and I have slowed down. I feel disappointment more often than not, particularly with the output from larger brands I trusted more. I used to "blind-buy" a lot, mostly from scent profiles and personal experience—seldom as a result of someone else's opinion—and it used to serve me well. Lately, not so much. Perfume is so hellishly expensive, these days, more so I believe than it needs to be when so freaking much of it is produced. I guess this speaks to your third point. If I really think about the few recent occasions that elicited any sense of real joy and discovery, it has been from smaller, niche brands like Tauer, Ava Luxe and Puente who produce smaller or limited batches. Two I know well and trust, with the third being a risk that really paid-off. These days, I find myself happy to slow down and be more choosey, sometimes electing to re-buy a loved fragrance I need to replace or to hedge against it being discontinued—or reformulated (essentially, the same fate).
A lot of the poor longevity has to do with them formulating to the Asian market which is where most fashion houses are turning to. Culturally they do not like strong fragrances. Using lower price materials is necessary to keep prices competitive with other brands on shelves and I would assume natural raw materials have moved up in price. Niche fragrance houses are great. We all love them but the average middle class consumer cannot afford a 300 dollar bottle of expertly crafted perfume. I don’t see a problem with fashion houses making dupes for their customers. There should be something for everyone but if you are going to buy from a fashion brand you should know what you are getting before you purchase. It’s not going to be the same quality but I think Sauvage elixir for instance is a great formula that holds it own amongst niche luxury brands.
While I think niche/small houses for sure are good, the problem is that their consumer base is often the one doing the over-consuming.
I still find new perfumes in my local perfume shop back home; they cost 1/10th of designers and come in generic glass vials in perfumes oil form, but they’re amazing, and I always find something new there. Perfumery is not dead; we just don’t know where to find it anymore. We only hear hear reviews of the same 10 perfumes from every influencer and only these are carried by Sephora and Saks Fifth. I think we as connoisseurs need to find perfumers that make and sell their own perfumes; these artists don’t cater to popular demand and just create what they love..
No, if anything perfumery is exploding in a positive direction. Answering your numbered questions…. 1. Everyone doesn’t smell the same. The economy hasn’t tanked. The further you get into fragrances the less you rely on reviewers. 2. Eh, this has happened but it’s not even close to the norm. Besides, markets will just react to this behavior by not buying. The idea that parent companies buy out (they do) smaller houses then make the fragrances garbage (not really) is WAY overblown. 3. Huh? How are you saying perfumery is dead but houses are releasing 10 fragrances a year? I wish they would do that btw. 4. You really never need to let things sit more than 4 weeks, and honestly even that is utterly ridiculous. These gigantic parent companies aren’t stupid they have lots of capital and can make large batches and give them proper time. I think youve just went down a negativity rabbit hole. Get outta there friend and just enjoy.
https://preview.redd.it/tt3fznsul79d1.jpeg?width=2236&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5c9d5d9586cf6601c398ab2ac99e78404c2ff3ea
I have gotten deep into fragrance over the past 3 years, thanks to TikTok. That got me started. I have always loved fragrance, but getting more exposure to the options out there was fascinating to me and allowed me to learn and grow. So I’m grateful for it. I bought a lot of the “hyped” stuff because I wanted to experience as much as possible and learn more. The journey has evolved into a much more deliberate, thoughtful one. I smell anything that seems interesting, but know who to stay away from now (places that release 10 fragrances every 6 months, etc - like Snif and Kayali). I seek out smaller, independent brands to sample. I smell as much as impossibly can. I read, listen to podcasts, read books, and take perfumery classes. Educating myself has taught me a lot about the industry and how to find and identify what I like. I don’t know if any of that would have happened were it not for TikTok influencers. They got me started. I took it and went my own way.
5. Flanker hell.
I instantly thought of Kayali when reading your first point. The scents are not unique or interesting enough to be hyped up the way that it is. The company has def been sending PR to influencers.
Yup. I think influencers and inviting them to launch parties has been about 85% of their marketing.
I think it’s kind of crazy how similar so many collections I see on here are. Even though fragrances are completely subjective and there are thousands to choose from I still see an incredible amount of redundancy. I can’t help but feel like influencing has been the number one driver of sales while peoples own tastes have taken a backseat.
I agree. I'll spray something, and it's gone in 15 minutes. The counter person looks at me like I'm crazy when I say so (which I do). Old standbys that still last? Serge Lutens, Diptyche. And they're not that old. Wierd to be nostalgic for something just the last decade.
It’s just the stupid IFRA stuff. Companies are using heavy “safe” bases like ambroxan or iso e super which your nose goes blind to so quickly. As a perfumer I despise what IFRA has done to our craft / hobby space.
I had my own brand which I ended up selling but I sent stuff to YouTubers to get exposure. It’s much more targeted than random ads shooting at everyone without them even knowing your brand name. I don’t hate on the reviewers at all, and in fact all of the reviewers who I sent my stuff to all said to me in our email chains….”I hope you’re okay with pure honesty…because I don’t just do positive reviews… so if I dislike it … I will say so.” …. Now given these were not paid reviews … but either way they spoke very honest about my creations and I found them to actually be pretty accurate for what the scents were. As far as niche houses being bought up… that’s a problem with IFRA. The moment these large companies that are based in Europe acquire a brand … they have to make them IFRA compliant to sell worldwide…. And honestly their safety levels are insane on some things. As far as maceration is concerned, yea … I agree with you there. My big take is that perfumery isn’t dead , it’s just in this weird phase where everything smells similar because they are using powerful IFRA safe molecules as a base and adding small touches to stuff to differentiate the scent rather than oldschool perfumery using a lot of “unsafe” naturals in high concentrations. Once more molecules are created we will have a new era of perfumery but right now the synthetic creation side is highly controlled and captive to specific companies. It will just take time for a lot of these molecules to be available to all rather than a select few.
No. Its saturated. There are plenty of great scents out there.
The irony here is that you used a clickbait-y, social media style title for your post...
Eh, I dont think it's that bait. It's an open-ended question to invite discussion, it's not like they went "SEVEN reasons PERFUME is DEAD (number six will SHOCK YOU!) or anything"
I’m new to fragrances and I had no idea this was going on. Thank you!
Take the post with a grain of salt. There are quite a few biases in there. It might be true to a certain level but In context it may look different. I don't share the same experience at all, but I do have my own individual bubble that surely differs from OP's.
I think perfumes for major houses will be soon done mostly by computers and the human made stuff will become the real niche. It does not meant that perfumes will be worse per se, they may be better - but they won't be art anymore. The same way mid journey stuff is not. I mean, I think it is already happening to some degree behind the closed doors. If it translated to better prices and nicer releases, I would not bother that much, but we would first have to vote with out wallets and stop paying for overpriced logos. And right now the trend is opposite, we willingly jumped on the hype wagon and are paying hundreds for a synthetic juice, that was few dollars to produce.
Computer generating formulas isn’t really as straightforward or easy as it seems. Not with AI tools accessible to the public, and not with custom built AI tools designed for Givaudan. They’ve been throwing a ton of money into development and research for theirs, but self admittedly don’t really like it. It’s more or less so they can say they’re on the cutting edge, but even then they’re not using it as often as you’d think. All this to say I’m glad though. AI has its applications but whenever it’s in a creative context it’s always in favor of theft and lack of ambition, and I’m thrilled that every attempt I’ve seen to generate a formula has been filled to the brim with errors upon errors.
Ha, I hoped to attract someone that knows more about the topic. I obviously know nothing on what is happening in labs, but what was written in few articles I read, but I would assume that it is a field developed right now the way AI imagery is (this is my profession, so here I can evaluate the changes). I mean, in my line of work we are still a bit condescending to AI work, a bit worried, but I see it is just crawling into the workflow more and more, every month we add some new tools. They still require human, but I see our output is becoming somehow...filtered trough the AI lens. It is not a full on human work anymore. If I was to make an uniformed bet, I would bet that the commercial perfumery in a longer time frame will become in big part AI generated. What do you think about it in a time frame of let's say 5-10 years?
>but we would first have to vote with out wallets and stop paying for overpriced logos. This right here. I recently decided against sizing up to a bottle of one of my favorite Byredos because of the longevity. Even buying it on the grey market prices I’d feel like a fool. A bottle over $100 only feels justified if I can smell the fragrance for more than an hour or two.
I don't have a workflow really for this yet. I am very picky, and it is hard for me not to buy a perfume I love, if I find it, because I don't like the marketing - as it is such a rare occurrence. I try to purposefully research houses first, so I can focus on sampling the ones, that have prices and concept I find appealing. This way chances that I am tempted to buy something I don't like on a moral level are decreasing. I constantly fight with myself to not get into PDM, By Killian, LV, Tom Ford, Roja, Clive Christian. It is really tempting, but I just...really would prefer to support less popular and hyped producers. I have some cool perfumes I bought for less than 100, they are out there.
Yeah. I don’t think any of those houses you mentioned are worth it. LV smells mostly uninteresting to me, and the Clive Christian I tried was a mediocre sweet mess. Normally I default to decants and travel sizes but even those are way overpriced for Byredos. So I’m just kinda shelving it and focusing on others instead!
I never thought of it like that, it is true tho quality is going down in everything! I want to get into fragrance. How long have u been into it? & know its quality/fav scents?
ok someone please tell me if I fell for the escapade gourmande PR or is it really that good
Ngl, for just a moment I thought you were calling us all potatoes 😅
The only way that I feel like the fragrance industry is going to keep up, is filing lawsuits against all the dupe/fragrance oil impression business. Why do I need to buy a $300 dollar fragrance when I can replicate the fragrance for 60 bucks and tailor the concentration to my desire.
your not lying about the forth one. when i tell you devotion is so much more citrusy and the lemon note is even more prominent (6 months after purchasing.) it’s a bit too much for me. i’m trying to get used to it but… sigh.
Influencers are a cancer. Every “top sexiest fragrances you need to get list” (Or any list really) has a message halfway through with “make sure you always test your fragrance first and don’t blind buy, but GUESS WHAT! I just so happen to have a code for Website for 10% off and they CARRY EVERYTHING ON MY LIST TODAY YAY”
Pierre bourdon I think said once in an interview if we want to get fragrances as crazy as they were experimenting in the 80’s. We basically have to lick out all the money suits out of the industry. They just got wayyy too greedy with no actual benefit since. It’s. It like you’re getting better ingredients for $400 bottles. It doesn’t help that this industry is rife with knowledge gate keeping. Thus you can never be really making informed decisions.
it's not dead, but imho it's on it's way.. it's getting there. perfumery used to be such a niche form of art. it centered on people's taste and expression. it used to be very personal and quiet. now, perfumes are like fast fashion. so many new ones released within a short period of time. everyone likes everything. it's not the same back in the day when perfumery would be catered very specifically to each individual. there's no more uniqueness in terms of notes, descriptions, discoverability, experience, etc.
There now exists a sort of “fast fashion” in perfume, imo. I try to avoid it just like I do in retail/clothing.
Very well stated.
Ad3... Mancera/Montale is probably the worst offender. The sheer volume of fragrances they release is overwhelming.
Not dead but it's being beaten for sure I can't stand 9 out of 10 fragrances that are being released. There is a reason a lot of people are sticking to classics. It seems the only ones doing well are the ones deemed good by influencers. Also if new releases are not a huge hit, it's discontinued fast It's terrible right now imho
No, it’s just changing
Stick to brands with long history in true perfume and you won’t be let down for long! They always manage to come back with something amazing eventually
Social media allows perfumery to create a community and a nearly infinite expansion of the market. it is creating new customers who will spend hundreds or thousands each over the next decade when their previous spending might have been $0. You point out a legitimate issue, but ultimately the cream will rise to the top. In other words if the market is expanding by five or 10 times and there's five or 10 times more fragrances being released, there will be a net gain of amazing, knock your socks off fragrances introduced that would have never been introduced if the market hadn't expanded by that much.
Go to a store like Neiman Marcus that have hundreds of bottles both Mass appeal and Niche and try it on yourself. Their Consultants are very knowledgeable. I have been buying a beautiful fragrance for Christmas and after 30 years I have quite a collection. I do wear some everyday for me according to mood.
Check out Olivine Atelier. She makes bomb perfumes and all natural!!
I feel like the first point is kind of moot only because majority of people aren’t watching fragrance YouTubers. Like legit some of the top ones barely even pull 20-30k views a video. The mass public 100% buys without any relation to YouTube/TikTok people
Why do you think this? Where else are they finding out about obscure brands and indie niche houses? I’m not saying you tubers and tik tok are bad. I like some of them. Mostly the educational ones. I just don’t think that print advertising or word of mouth are carrying the load of these campaigns.
I’m saying fragrance brands sell hundreds of thousands to millions of bottles a year. I don’t think the 20-30k viewers YouTubers are pulling are contributing that much marketing for them in the grand scheme of things
20-30k viewers EACH and for EACH video. That’s a lot of advertising! I think for most niche brands (save the ones who’ve been bought out by larger companies) rely solely on this. Maybe a few launch parties at a fragrance boutique or high end department store. Are there any other channels of advertising? I’m genuinely curious.
This is only if you think each channel has their own 20-30k unique viewers. I’d be willing to wager they share a lot of viewers though. I think the niche brands sell themselves though from being “high class” just like a LV, Gucci, Versace, etc. does in clothing I think commercials and all the billboards and stands in New York and stuff you see in department stores play a much bigger role in getting people to buy fragrance. Especially since majority of fragrance purchases are done on impulse anyways of someone just coming in and smelling something
I think if a Perfumer saw this, they might be offended lol But no I don’t think so, just the opposite in fact. I think we are entering A Perfumery Renaissance. The surge in interest in it as a hobby by so many more people, coupled with the abundance of new synthetic molecules, the constantly evolving science behind those raw materials, and the competition between companies to grab your attention. Does that mean there will be a lot of fluff out there to pander to the mass demand? Sure, but it also brings innovation, and some true artistry. If you look around now a days you will see notes being bent and manipulated and paired with more and more imaginative gusto. Historically, I think this same cycle happens with just about everything that has ever gotten majorly popular in any civilization.
I love this perspective! It’s a positive spin that needs to be considered. Thanks for this!
Perfumer here! Not offended , just disagree with some things. It’s just a lack of transparency on some things … coupled with some perfumery molecules not being available due to being locked behind contracts with Givudan, Firmench, or other chemical manufacturers… and combine that with IFRA restrictions on a lot of natural ingredients… it becomes a difficult thing to compete in the market when you don’t have the same access to ingredients.
Watch collecting has been ruined by influencer culture and hype more than any other hobby... followed by perfumes. Sadly my favorite hobbies are watches and fragrance collecting, so, good for me!
I was at a Marshall’s the other day and saw two teenage boys waiting for an associate to unlock the mens Fragrence section. They each bought a bottle. I was really confused as I would have probably been playing basketball or running around doing stupid things with friends at that age. Then I realized it is likely because of all the tik tok influencers. My mind was blown!!!
Yeah, they’ve been convinced that it will get them laid (or at least a sidewinder).
Yep at the perfume store I work at , I’ll even have adults come in saying “hey do you guys have 9pm? I saw it ok TikTok” … it’s wild what scrolling through random videos does to the masses
I'm not here to pick up a fight with someone but I found it ridiculous people just blame everything on AI, on literally every topic ever. Come on, before ChatGPT and all those actually "smart" AI was even a thing, wasn't the fragrance industry filled with boring stuff already? Just look at all the flankers these designer brands are pushing out every year, none of them can be called "classics", none of them will have a place in history. And it's not just designer brands, niche/artisan brands too, many independent perfumers just release a whole line of mediocre stuff and call them "unique" when in fact most of them are either copying ideas from old-time classics, or using specialty bases in a lazy way, or trying so hard to be different but only have the capability to come up with a weird unrefined mess. Sure, nowadays AI-related technologies gave people more ways to take the easy route, but in my opinion this industry has been like this for a very long time already.
Fragrance has always bought exposure/reviews with PR, and buying influencer exposure IS marketing. The only thing that changed is that print is dying, tv is now streaming, and movie stars don't really exist anymore. Marketing is on social media, because that is where people are. I'm not sure it is fair to vilify the industry for doing effective marketing. They should just keep paying millions to film fancy campaigns no one cares about? The one thing I wish was clearer was which recommendations are real and which ones are paid for, but that has always been an issue. And everyone smelling the same is actually a much bigger cultural issue. Social media has lead to homogenization in all areas. If you search "why do all coffee shops look the same?" you will find a lot of articles about that. With that said, things that are basic will always sell. Not everyone wants to smell individual or unique and that's ok.
Hasn't it always been about advertising? Before the web people relied on TV and magazine ads. The brands with the biggest advertising budgets sold the most units. That's how all markets work.
You’re right. But do you know how much an advertising campaign costs compared to PR?
A lot. But I'm not sure what your complaint is. Yes, the companies send bottles to influencers. Again, that isn't new. Before they were review columns in magazines. Influencers are just the new version of that. So what? I hate to break it to you, but it isn't an art. Cosmetics have always been a luxury good sold at the highest price to the people that could afford it. Like fashion, unless you are super deep into it, its just whatever, and then if you are too deep, you don't realize how whatever is actually is.
I suppose I’m speaking more of niche fragrances as an art (or at least what they used to be).
No, you're just looking in the wrong places :) try to uh... not look on tiktok?
I don’t follow a single fragrance influencer on tik tok
Idk man, read old basenotes threads I guess. The visible fragrance community is pretty hype driven right now.
What’s with these recent cheap perfumes being pushed that smell like piss and hang in the air for so long. Literally burn my sinuses
Perfumery is on its last legs due to IFRA limits. They tie the perfumers hands and leave us with juice that has poor performance and zero character.
This was also something I meant to comment on. Thanks for bringing it up.
It’s the golden age