Discussion on perfume trends and what lies underneath trends

I often hear from people speaking at fragrance events and online on perfume trends and I can't understand it if either they are way off or I am. This is more of a rebuke to what I often hear but I would love others opinions on this. So I normally hear people talk about trends in perfume in terms of notes. Vanilla as the center stage note is getting big....or Cherry notes are now trending, or softer citrus notes etc..

To me it seems like the only time a note starts a trend in the industry is when industry defining fragrances hit the market like Aventus and pineapple note becomes big. Another example is middle eastern fragrance houses bringing the Oud note to the larger market.

Otherwise, to me it seems like the only thing that trends are actual fragrance houses. The rise of Jo Malone, or Frederic Malle. Tom Ford as whole starts trending, not so much specific notes in a release from Tom Ford. Maybe a specific note is what drives the upward trend of an entire fragrance house. I realize this forum is biased in that many here can recognize individual notes but the average consumer has no idea what a Gourmand is and likely can only pick out very distinct and common notes.

Am I just way off here? I'm not sure how to conceptualize this but going off what I hear and see, it seems like fragrance house are what trend rather than notes/accords

I think trends apply more to designer fragrances and the bigger niche houses (which are owned by the same parent companies as the designer houses anyway). It's more the "style" of fragrance in my opinion that trends rather than a particular note, for example, nowadays we're getting flooded with sweet aromatic ambers like Myslf and "Ralph's Club | Ralph Lauren". Lots of fragrances like Apex Eau de Parfum, Absolu Aventus, etc. are taking cues from Sauvage Elixir with similar spicy-sweet drydowns. Also, Baccarat Rouge 540 Eau de Parfum started a huge trend with its combination of saffron, ambroxan, and ethyl maltol that has been used as the base for many fragrances with added notes: "Oud for Greatness | Initio" added oud, Spirito Fiorentino added leather, etc.

So I guess what I'm saying is I agree with you that the trends usually follow immensely successful fragrances. You mentioned Aventus and my examples were Sauvage Elixir and Baccarat Rouge 540 Eau de Parfum but I think it's definitely true.

...I remember when we were all moaning about the endless series of fruitchoulis popping up like mushrooms one after the other and when was this trend going to die already.

Sweet Summer children we were. 

These days, I feel surrounded by spiky ("stabby", more like) woods and all-oud-all-the-time-in-everything and one-upmanship for being beastier than the previous beastiest beast of olfactory territorial dominance. 

...come back, fruitchoulis, all is forgiven!

Totally agree and you put it better than I could have.

I think there are some notes which comes popular and pop out more than others, but more than that there are some combos of the notes like now for example Raspberry/Oud Oud Nude , Passion/Oud Queen of Silk or in overall some berries or fruits and Oud. This is like a sequel of only different kind of Oud perfumes. When Oud is not trendy enough anymore they need to figure out something a little bit different. Like they did Hacivat Oud after a successful Hacivat with Pineapple which was trending that time. The Moon was like a forerunner of fruity Oud (and what's the best, it's real Oud) scents where is beautiful Raspberry note and I think that it's trending more now than when it was released in 2019. There are many that kind of combos in the past. And yes, one of the biggest and best known "trending inspiration" has been Baccarat Rouge 540 Eau de Parfum .

One category of trends is how you name the new perfume. Some trends are very annoying like putting "Oud" in the name even if there is no Oud. Another trends are names of the flankers like "Elixir" and "Intense".

Vanilla on the other hand is popular always because of its endless possibilities to bring different kind of nuances to the perfumes. It's one of the most versatile notes/ingredients for sure. And Vanilla dominating scents are always in, they are so beloved that I think there is no wintertime without new trending Vanilla scents.

What are the trending brands and houses is more difficult question since it depends how we are thinking about that question. Does it count if some brand is popular in IG for example and all those posts are PR? We should know the numbers of sales to know what is really trending but of course after aggressive PR posts some scents start to be popular and they start a new trend. There are anyway numerous and all the time more and more scents which are forgotten as quickly as they came "trending". Frederic Malle was trending and became very popular because it was the first house which decided to tell the names behind the perfumes and printed them in the labels. That started the whole new era in perfumes where "noses" became popular.

The fact that we are discussing individual notes/accords is a trend in itself. A few decades ago many perfumes consisted of an endless list of ingredients blended into a fuzzy harmony where single notes did not stand out. Now it is a time of hyperrealistic notes and extreme note clarity.

Actually what comes to the notes which houses want to inform has changed a lot as well. A couple of decades ago they listed all the notes but nowadays they want to be simple. Sometimes it's ok, people get the idea of the scent easier but sometimes I don't understand their logic at all. Let's take "Richwood | XerJoff" for example: I really don't understand why Xerjoff decided to take out Sandalwood from the list? It's the main player in that scent. And when Kemi was discontinued and they released K Collection under Xerjoff they removed Caramel from official notes of "Kemi | XerJoff" even if it's very important note and they mentioned it in "Kemi | Kemi / Al Kimiya" . I don't know if it's because "Caramel" is not an actual ingredient or what is the reason. They do mention it when describing the scent. But yes, unfortunately the simplicity seems to be trending now not only how they list the notes but how they make the scents as well and that's why I love so much for example Roja where you can still find that old school complexity. There are some others as well. But it's true that keeping the note list simple people talk more about individual notes. For most of the people it works better in that way. By the way I would love to see more scents with Oud/Caramel combo but it's not trending.