Politically incorrect fragrance notes?

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Ringtale


I think, when it comes to words and speech, it is all about 'intention', but that is often not clear when we're not in a 'live' discussion. So I think, in that case, it is best to avoid words that can be painful to some. 

And hearing  John Lennons 'Imagine' in my head right now Smile 

@Ringtale : this exactly! I personally think that it doesn't hurt me to stop using words that do hurt other people, after all. But more importantly for the topic, the perfume industry has more or less collectively decided that it was indeed a good idea to move on. 

My take is, outside of any "moral" considerations, the older discussion here about how adequate or not the word "ambery" is to describe a perfume, has pretty much become a moot point by now, since the perfumery world itself has decided to use it. 

2
Anamandy

Banning language is to ban free thinking and speech. Someone should send the British Society of Perfumers a copy of a book from their fellow countryman, which they apparently never read - George Orwell's 1984.

When I think of Oriental for fragrances, I think of something that is full of the spice of life.  And that is not a bad thing. 

@Hi @Anamandy, I think this book is not as simple as being about 'avoiding words' that could be painful to some. Many dictators start of their campaign promoting 'free speech' and 'free thinking' (encouraging people to even insult others, thinking that that is what freedom is all about) and then, when gaining power, they will ban journalists, punish people that are against their government and so on to stay in power. It's when 'free speech' becomes just 'one way trafic' when it stops being about real freedom and I think this book is more about that than about being conscious of what ones words can do to others.

For me personally, avoiding words that could hurt others is part of my freedom (!) to consult my own conscience before I speak and not to be 'prisoned' by the idea that we all 'must' say whatever we want, not matter the impact.

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Ringtale

@Hi @Anamandy, I think this book is not as simple as being about 'avoiding words' that could be painful to some. Many dictators start of their campaign promoting 'free speech' and 'free thinking' (encouraging people to even insult others, thinking that that is what freedom is all about) and then, when gaining power, they will ban journalists, punish people that are against their government and so on to stay in power. It's when 'free speech' becomes just 'one way trafic' when it stops being about real freedom and I think this book is more about that than about being conscious of what ones words can do to others.

For me personally, avoiding words that could hurt others is part of my freedom (!) to consult my own conscience before I speak and not to be 'prisoned' by the idea that we all 'must' say whatever we want, not matter the impact.

Incidentally, and stepping a bit aside for a sec but still on-topic: it is scientifically established, time and again, that language influences perceptions, thoughts and representations of the world - random example, "fireman" will, unconsciously, make little girls integrate - not even "think" - that it is "not for them"; while "firefighter" won't have that effect. 

Language doesn't exist in a vacuum, outside of time, place, culture, you name it; it is very much contextual, has connotations, and it does evolve, with society and/or preceding it. It's all but "censorship" to move away from words that have a connotation/weight that has become socially/culturally undesirable in place P and time T. The example has already been given above, but here and now, using the N- word would be totally not OK. I guess that when that shift started, some people felt censored and silenced too.

1
SixAmbregris
Ringtale

@Hi @Anamandy, I think this book is not as simple as being about 'avoiding words' that could be painful to some. Many dictators start of their campaign promoting 'free speech' and 'free thinking' (encouraging people to even insult others, thinking that that is what freedom is all about) and then, when gaining power, they will ban journalists, punish people that are against their government and so on to stay in power. It's when 'free speech' becomes just 'one way trafic' when it stops being about real freedom and I think this book is more about that than about being conscious of what ones words can do to others.

For me personally, avoiding words that could hurt others is part of my freedom (!) to consult my own conscience before I speak and not to be 'prisoned' by the idea that we all 'must' say whatever we want, not matter the impact.

Incidentally, and stepping a bit aside for a sec but still on-topic: it is scientifically established, time and again, that language influences perceptions, thoughts and representations of the world - random example, "fireman" will, unconsciously, make little girls integrate - not even "think" - that it is "not for them"; while "firefighter" won't have that effect. 

Language doesn't exist in a vacuum, outside of time, place, culture, you name it; it is very much contextual, has connotations, and it does evolve, with society and/or preceding it. It's all but "censorship" to move away from words that have a connotation/weight that has become socially/culturally undesirable in place P and time T. The example has already been given above, but here and now, using the N- word would be totally not OK. I guess that when that shift started, some people felt censored and silenced too.

Hi @SixAmbregris, I think you are absolutely right! But it is even more compex than 'just the words we speak', which is why I feel intention matters too. Here in Holland we have the akward situation that an extreem right party now is in the government; they would use very insulting language towards refugees for instance, but now have to work closely with less right thinking parties, those asking from the extreem right party to take back the insulting language they would use. Guess what: they won't take anything back but instead they say: "I need not take it back because I said those things as a member of the opposition, now that I'm in government, I won't use this language any longer" (so not because their thoughts on refugees have changed for the better, but only to not to be excluded from government....). 

I'm giving this example not to start any political subject by the way, but only to illustrate how intention matters as well. 

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recently bohoboco renamed their newly released perfume "Oriental Saffron | Bohoboco" in the span of just a few days, following the backlash from the public. they renamed it to exclude the word 'oriental', acknowledging its racist connotation. it's really refreshing to see a brand react this quickly!

quite an interesting conversation on the topic Smile

https://blog.sporahealth.com/m...

1
Markofrojlan

recently bohoboco renamed their newly released perfume "Oriental Saffron | Bohoboco" in the span of just a few days, following the backlash from the public. they renamed it to exclude the word 'oriental', acknowledging its racist connotation. it's really refreshing to see a brand react this quickly!

quite an interesting conversation on the topic Smile

https://blog.sporahealth.com/m...

Thanks for sharing that article! I still don’t really understand how the term Oriental can be considered racist (it’s literally East Asia), but I know it’s hard to figure out how that should smell. I wonder what we feel about Amalfi scents. That’s even more specifically bound to a place on earth.

Great discussion about uncommon ingredients and child slavery though.

1
FreshKatsu

Speaking as someone from Asia this whole debate is pretty demoralising. Personally I would rather not see the word 'oriental' because of the way it conjures up the 'mystic orient' myth and associated negative feelings. It is also inaccurate as a description. 

While I understand that it's difficult to change a historical term, it is hardly an unprecedented ordeal. Other fields in the humanities have also encountered similar issues and embraced evolving language as a necessity. 

Maybe I'm naive but why we can't develop a new word for this category? If amber is too confusing, what about resinous? warm spicy? Or straight up call it Shalimar? Why is it so hard and why can't we try? 

My vote would be to change this outdated term as many other platforms have done so. 

What about "Exotic" as a term?

This was what the original term was partly referring to. The rich, spicy notes from the Asia/Middle East region. And of course the sultry sensual mystical image that titilated Europeans.

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I believe the term "oriental" should be replaced with "amber" in fragrance descriptions. Many people don’t realize how offensive that word is — it’s essentially a racial slur, comparable to the N-word in its impact. When I see it, I’m reminded of a former coworker who was blatantly racist.

We worked for a company owned by a Malaysian corporation and had a significant number of Asian clients. Whenever my coworker had something nice to say about Asians, he would use the term "Asian people." But when he wanted to make offensive, stereotypical remarks, he would say "Oriental people."

One time, we had a customer organizing the Miss Asia California beauty pageant. She asked me to participate, complimenting my looks. I declined, explaining, “I can’t do it — I don’t want to take the place of someone who truly deserves to be there.” My coworker then chimed in, saying, “Don’t worry, you only pass as white until you open your mouth!” Fng asshat... (I’m a quarter Asian, but we don’t know the exact nationality of my grandmother because she was adopted as a baby)...

Anyway, the word "oriental" evokes memories of all the racists I’ve ever encountered. It’s outdated, loaded with prejudice, and shouldn’t be used in modern language — especially not in contexts like describing fragrances. 

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As an American, I was shocked when I first got into the perfume community and saw the word oriental everywhere. But that was before I learned that it was a perfume genre and the notes that comprise it don't even come from "the orient" and it's not even actually about ingredients from Asia, it's an imaginary term like calling it Narnian, and a lot of big Arab perfume makers call themselves that, so it's just completely not related to the term as I previously understood it. It's an odd, confusing, and uncomfortable term, but I don't think just calling it all "ambery" is a good replacement because it doesn't communicate anything useful, but is itself also confusing, since a lot modern amber note fragrances don't even fall into that category and makes it doubly confusing when the makers are trying to communicate that it contains oud not amber. This is a mess. Hopefully it will be resolved by the industry itself eventually but so far they are just making it all more confusing.

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so, even guerlain has moved on from using the outdated o-term, i think whatever excuses anyone was still using are now void.

bravo for guerlain!

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Oriens, in Latin, means the place where the sun rises. Occidens, in Latin, means the place where the sun sets . In France we use the word "midi" for South. Nobody is offended. The "oriental" when referring to perfumes was meant to underline the exotic quality. I like it because it suggests the richness of a scent. Why to politicize a word used by perfumers for a century and apply "correctness" to please ? Is it correct?

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Tessa

Oriens, in Latin, means the place where the sun rises. Occidens, in Latin, means the place where the sun sets . In France we use the word "midi" for South. Nobody is offended. The "oriental" when referring to perfumes was meant to underline the exotic quality. I like it because it suggests the richness of a scent. Why to politicize a word used by perfumers for a century and apply "correctness" to please ? Is it correct?

It’s not about the origin, it’s about the impact. Various offensive n-words also have a Latin root, and it doesn’t make them any less vile. The “o-word” has been used a pejorative about Asians, and most don’t like it. Is it so hard not to use it? 

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Completely agree with @gythia and @Mike212! 🙏

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tangentially related:  I remember reading the trivia somewhere that Mon Guerlain Intense was dubbed the "Become a Wife" fragrance, and that is the kind of marketing that makes me blink once and slowly back away 

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Well, at least we Asians don't think of ourselves as "oriental". We're just unknowingly included in that category.

There are hardly any Japanese people who use oriental notes. (They are sold, but) even from our perspective, it's an exotic scent.

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I don't have the right to decide for Asian people how they should feel about / whether they should reclaim terms they find offensive. But even putting the controversial societal connotations aside, I personally would prefer a more neutral flavor-based term to replace "oriental". 

Perhaps because I started learning about perfumes very recently and missed the decades where "oriental" was widely used, that term doesn't make much sense to me. Sure, "ambery" can describe a rather wide range of scents. But at least it describes scents? I personally find that way more helpful than a term that describes a whole range of perfumes based on a vague vibe

To be honest, I'd love it if this website could restructure its classification metrics altogether. Give it an overhaul based on the current state of the perfume industry and community, send all registered users an email asking to update their stats and be done with it. 

I do understand that changes (especially drastic ones) will skew the current statistics. For example, if "unisex" style is added right now, existing perfumes that theoretically fit in that category wouldn't have it for a long while, because most users who have already voted wouldn't bother going back and changing anything. 

There is an easier way to ensure we don't get skewed stats after the overhaul – delete all previous metrics data and start anew. But although I would've diligently gone back and updated info on all my perfumes, I understand that not many people would bother doing the same and it would take a while to gather all the info again. 

That would hurt for a while, sure. But it is the kind of thing that needs to be done eventually, right? So the sooner – the better. The site is growing and so is its userbase. There's never the best time to change something, but as with most things in life – the second best one is right now

Last edited by Ursaw on 04/16/2025 - 03:43 PM; edited 1 time in total
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@Ursaw My thoughts exactly, couldn't agree more! 👍

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While I personally do not view the phrase 'oriental' as a descriptor of a DNA/accord within fragrance as offensive, I also do not think that 'ambery' is a suitable replacement, as 'amber' is already a wildly vague term in the fragrance world, and it would complicate things more than they would need to be. Personally, I do feel that the world 'oriental' should be replaced with something more modern, especially as that is not a great/accurate descriptor in itself.

This is a potentially controversial take on this situation, but theoretically the term 'oriental' could be removed entirely and fragrances could still be described accurately. An example with YSL Opium, which is considered 'oriental', instead we could rely on other descriptors such as warm, spicy, resinous, sweet, fruity, etc. to describe the scent instead. 

Additionally, I do think that removing the term and adjusting the metrics accordingly would be useful as it would allow the addition of new accords/descriptors to be added. Someone above mentioned starting anew with the data we have and reclassifying all fragrances which would be a lot of effort, but would pay off in the long run, especially if we can describe fragrances more accurately overall. 

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I personally use "amber" to mean the warm spicy-resinous scent that "oriental" tends to refer to. It's not vague for me, because when I mean ambergris, I say ambergris. But not everyone says things the way I do, so I get why there's confusion and why a one-to-one replacement with "ambery" is a tough sell.

The term is definitely outdated and in need of a change though. Like @Akira1005 said, it's not even accurate to the kinds of perfumes that are popular in large parts of Asia. "Spicy" and "resinous" are already categories, so why not just use those words?

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I agree that it would be great to have an alternative term, but what that might be is still difficult for me at the moment.

I find amber/ambré and all its variations too one-sided, as it reduces this complex fragrance family of spices, resins, animalic notes, smoke, heavy flowers etc, to one note.

I would therefore be more in favour of terms like ‘mystical’ or something along those lines to convey the impression of these deep, heavy fragrances.

btw in the German-speaking world, oriental nowadays mainly refers to the Arab, Middle Eastern region; it was historically used for the East Asian region, but is no longer used today and is no longer understood in this way by most people. The fragrance note ‘oriental’ was therefore also created in this context at parfumo. This has nothing to do with the question of whether the term is contemporary or not, as it is a colonial remnant regardless of which region is meant, but I wanted to mention it to make the original intention of the note clearer.

As for the technical aspect, I think it would be possible to rename the note if we can agree on a replacement term. Although I'm not 100% sure.

A re-categorisation is not planned at the moment or in the near future due to the technical hurdles of distortion. 

https://www.parfumo.com/forums...

As a database that values long-term archiving, we will not delete all previous categorisations, so this is not a solution.

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Here's a thought— if the argument against renaming oriental to amber (as Michael Edwards has done) is because it's seen as more a "class" of perfumes... "chypre" and "fougère" are also notes that refer more to a general class of perfumes rather than any particular note (i.e., you wouldn't want to rename "chypre" to "mossy"). They are both named after the perfumes that began the genre: Chypre Eau de Toilette and Fougère Royale (1882) Parfum. Why not rename 'oriental' to the perfume which began the genre, whichever one that may be?

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I'm not angry, but as some people have pointed out, I think we should stop using the definition "Oriental". It's misleading to judge whether "Westerners" find it offensive.

If Westerners just ignore Oriental Notes and say "They won't find it offensive" or "We don't think so, so that's fine" and don't ask if it's offensive, then I don't think there's any point in discussing it. How can we know if we don't ask the person?

It's the same as when Japanese people call foreigners "gaijin" (foreigners) and immigrants or travelers say it's "insulting", but they excuse themselves by saying "No, we don't mean to discriminate". We had a similar discussion in Japan. Now we don't say "gaijin".

Orient means "East" and literally refers to the whole Orient, so it includes Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc., which are not included in the original. It's literal.

After all, the word "Oriental" is an old definition. Or rather, it's misleading.

In reality, it refers to Eastern countries (Turkey, Egypt, Persia, India, etc.) as seen from Europe, so, well, in fact, it gives a rather Western-centric impression. That's a fact, so there's nothing you can do about it.

However, it is certainly true that it has taken root, but I was surprised that you didn't actually check with people in the East. In the first place, only they can judge whether it is politically problematic. If you say that Westerners are sensitive about it, that's the same as when it was defined as "Oriental".

If it's an Oriental, Oriental, or Far Eastern scent, it includes Japan, but I repeat, Oriental scents have not been used historically.

I think you can only determine that there is a problem by asking people in the East.

As Rempi and others have pointed out, "But it is polite to be careful with your language and not belittle other people's perceptions. Westerners have no right to dictate to Easterners how they feel about the word 'Oriental.'"

I wholeheartedly agree with this. We should decide for ourselves how we feel. Or ask an Indian or a Persian.

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Recently discovered there is an independant perfume house in my city called Maison d'Orient so of course I had to check them out. They make bakhoor. They're from India. Everything they make has oud in it. Apparently elsewhere in the word "oriental perfume" means that.

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If we're not describing people, what do we do next? Do we stop referring to Oriental medicine as such? What about Oriental rugs? Should Orient Watch, a subsidiary of Seiko-Epson, be forced to change its name. I  don't have an answer. I'm just wondering what direction this is going.

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JSO60

If we're not describing people, what do we do next? Do we stop referring to Oriental medicine as such? What about Oriental rugs? Should Orient Watch, a subsidiary of Seiko-Epson, be forced to change its name. I  don't have an answer. I'm just wondering what direction this is going.

I don't think I've heard the term "oriental medicine" widely used before. Is that an American thing?

I googled it, and apparently that's a name sometimes used for traditional Chinese medicine (or Eastern traditional medicine more broadly)? In that case – yes, perhaps we should stop referring to it as "oriental", given that an easily understandable official name for it already exists.

And while we're at it, sure, let's stop with "oriental rugs". Those rugs are produced in a variety of different countries/cultures, and I personally think that it would be fair to refer to them as such. On a tangentially related note, it annoys me immensely when people refer to Bessarabian carpets as "Russian carpets". This particular tradition of carpetry originates in Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors. So yeah, I'd personally love it if we could eventually move on from colonizer language, even if some people find it convenient.

No opinion on Orient Watch, they're a Japanese brand I'm not familiar with and am not the target audience of. Whether their naming convention is reasonable or not is for Japanese people to decide.

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