Why put gender on it?

Hi guys, I'm Amanda, I'm new here.

Out of curiosity, why perfumers or perfume industry have to give label gender? I mean fragrance now can be wore by anyone.

It’s mostly marketing, but the matter of fact is still that men and women are different and sometimes they just want to go their own business.

Loads of times I find it fantastic to weed through all sorts of perfumes to find the one that fits me most, or to find the one that fitst my wife most. But also sometimes I just want to go over to the men’s section and have some of the chaff separated from the wheat.

I believe men and women are different. but when it comes to scent, it should not be that differentiated, right? or maybe the marketing makes it easier to differentiate the products, idk, thoughts?

We are different for sure. But we can share similar tastes too. That being said, I would never wear a fragrance like Chrome Eau de Toilette, Acqua di Giò pour Homme Eau de Toilette and marketing has nothing to do about it. It's just too manly for me. All these blue fragrances are for men to my nose.

Although, I can totally wear something like Opus XIV - Royal Tobacco, which I think is even manlier than Chrome 😅but it's not the same kind of fragrances. And with niche fragrances, I feel like dichotomy is less obvious, even though some houses still have a men's and a women's collection. I don't know if I'm being clear 😅

What makes blue fragrances "for men" to you? is it because they're too strong like spicy or woody you know "masculine thing"

I think that perfume sells dreams. As a man you’d want to be the embodiment of strength, self-confidence or opulence.

So probably smelling like candyfloss or a field of flowers might not sell that dream to most men. Of course, if you’re very confident by yourself already you can pull off a candyfloss frag no problem.

As I’m typing this I wonder: what dream does perfume sell to women?

I think that citrus, fresh, aquatic fragrances, my brain associates this with "men only". This kind of scent is really not my cup of tea. It's mostly aquatic that bothers me I think.
On the contrary, through in spices and woodsy notes, and it can become really appealing to me. 

@Ceesie 
As a woman, my dream is not to smell like a pastry or a bouquet of flowers. Once in a while, I can fancy some diabetes inducing fragrances, but that's not my "dream fragrance" per say. But I think flowers, rather than pastry, appeal to a large part of my fellow sisters. As for myself, I think I'm not the best target for women marketed fragrances.

I edit because I didn't even answer. My dream fragrance would be made with my favourite notes : throw in ambery notes, woods, tobacco, spices. Perfect base to appeal me.

The gender labeling is all marketing. Personally, I think fragrances are gender neutral and you can wear whatever scent you enjoy or connect with.

I am a female and while I do enjoy my "feminine" fragrances, a.k.a. floral, fruity, gourmand, etc. I tend to lean more towards unisex fragrances. In the last 1-2 years, I have started to wear fragrances marketed towards men as well.

I have a wide palate when it comes to fragrances and unless it is a note or combination of notes I dislike, I will wear whatever I'm in the mood for. Fragrances are also tied to smell association. I sometimes pull out certain "masculine" fragrances when I have an important meeting or formal event that day where I want to feel more confident in a professional (or even authoritative) way. Or when I go out for a date, I prefer to wear something a bit more floral or sweet because that's how I like to feel at the moment.

I guess I went on a rant😅 but personally, I do not associate most fragrances with gender but I guess some people do not associate a manly man if they smell a sticky sweet floral or a bucket of sugar, just for example 😆

Brands seem to be doing it less and less anyway. Only designer brands that are sold in the mall (as opposed to more exclusive brands like Dries van Noten for example) are still sticking to strict male/female scents nowadays.

I think simplifying it to "it's just marketing" is a bit shallow. Society has been conditioned over a hundred years that men wear certain scents and women wear certain scents. It came to a point in the United States that the word "perfume" itself started having feminine connotations and to sell scents to men they had to call it something else ("cologne"). And that's not the fault of big bad companies or marketing execs, it's just culture. Women were putting on N°5 Parfum while men just put on aftershave and called it a day, so "perfume" itself became feminine.

As for myself, I'm aware that those connotations and associations are societal, but it will still give me pause if I put something on that is very fruity/floral/sweet. It feels "wrong" on me, like I am smelling someone else in my own skin.

I don't think fragrance should ever be marketed as "a man cannot wear this" or "a woman cannot wear this." That being said, I don't think the general public's literacy of note pyramids is good enough that they will know the structure of a traditionally masculine or traditionally feminine fragrance just by looking at the notes. So if gender is entirely removed from even the mall brands, you will get a bunch of disappointed people who have bought a fragrance they cannot connect with.

This is a very good point. If a perfume is meant to smell delicate, flirty, or elegant, it might not appeal to men who want to smell confident, powerful, energetic, etc. But there also should be an overlap (within mall scents there isn't) for men who want to feel delicate and cutesy or for women who want to exude power and strength.

I feel like this is an Ouroboros of a situation. Our capitalistic society sells people an idea of gender, people buy into it and ask for more, society shrugs and says "see, people want gender", so our capitalistic society sells people an idea of gender, people largely buy into it... Personally, I'm somewhere in the "gender is an archaic and poorly defined concept that human society should move away from entirely" camp. But we're very much not there yet.

And since we're not there yet, we are instead stuck in the marketing loop of society telling us what we should smell like depending on our set of genitalia. The more people buy into it – the more stale and rigid these categories become and the more people find themselves stuck in them.

As a child, have you ever asked your mother "why?" about something, only to receive "because I said so" as a response? In a lot of ways, the answer to your current question is also "because I said so". It's not reasonable. Or productive, or fair. But unfortunately, it also is what it is.

Hopefully, if more and more people grow up and figure out that they don't have to live like that, things will start shifting to a better direction ദ്ദി ( ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ )

None of these three things (strength, self-confidence or opulence) are inherently masculine or intrinsically linked to a particular type of scent. And if a person lacks them – that's something no amount of lavender and bergamot will be able to fix. Otherwise with the amount of masculine marketed perfumes I own I'd be the most confident person in the room by now, lol.

Both men and women are individuals, so I think it's unfair to group them all into one huge hivemind for the purposes of this conversation. In general, "what dream does perfume sell to you?" question is an interesting one, but I don't think it's gendered. Not necessarily, at least.

Solo Vulcan sells me the taste of ash from a burnt steppe on a humid summer evening.

Rouge sells a cozy little kitchen with a wide open door that leads directly into a vegetable garden.

Earth sells the hope that I will one day grow old and settle down and mellow out, and find peace in it.

7 Anónimo sells crisp autumnal air of the forest and Agua Drop – cold river water in spring, at the very start of the season when stonefly larvae start emerging from it, molting for the last time and spreading their wings.

7 Cobalt sells a witch hut and tartness of fresh currant on my fingers as I mix it into the latest magical brew.

Amazingreen sells a post-post-apocalypse, where existence of mankind is but a distant memory, while nature persists and perseveres.

001 Man Eau de Parfum sells a warm blanket and breakfast in bed, because I'm so damn tired and I really deserve it. 001 Woman Eau de Parfum sells me a bottle of Actimel to go with it.

Am a woman. But on a scale of gendered dreams, I'm not sure where this is.

Hi,Amanda.Welcome!This discussion is popular. Threads are regularly created about it. lol Please use this as a reference.
https://www.parfumo.com/forums...

I'll try to write from a different perspective than last time: "When did fragrance become gendered?"
Forexample,someone say it's traditional, but when exactly is that tradition? (Yes, I understand what you're saying. We are talking about the 20th century and beyond.) But, if we trace back to its origins in Japan, fragrances didn't have a gendered identity. I guess it's probably the same in other countries, too.

In Japan, the art of kōdō, which was introduced from ancient India and China, was developed in its own unique form, resulting in the creation of an item called a sachet（Hmm...sachet?it's nioibukuro). Yes, unlike in the West, it wasn't liquid. Dried sandalwood and agarwood were placed in small bags and placed inside the collar of a kimono to infuse the scent. Yes, it was introduced from Indonesia and other places!
The people competed to create their own, more sophisticated, and original fragrances. It was loved by aristocrats and samurai since ancient times, but by the 17th century it had spread to townspeople as well, and was also favored by courtesans and kabuki actors.it's fashion item. Around this time, scents of seasonal flowers and fruits also began to be incorporated. Of course, maybe scents were created based on the gender interpretation of the time.

But it's questionable whether they would be accepted today.

In other words, the current concepts of "feminine scent" and "masculine scent" are post-modern, and in Japan they are post-Meiji (Westernized) concepts.Incidentally, Japan's first encounter with perfume was with rosewater, brought from the Netherlands during the Edo period. Furthermore, in 1892, the first authentic Western fragrance imported and sold commercially in Japan was Roger & Gallet's "Heliotrope Blanc." (Yes, I was surprised too. It's not that perfume culture is not well developed in Japan, but rather that there was a different fragrance culture, which is why it isn't as popular in modern times as it is in Europe and the United States.) For that reason, even before we consider whether it's for men or women, roses and heliotrope somehow make me think of the "West."

So, it's likely that the current norms of what is "feminine" and "masculine" will be different in 100 years. In other words, these cannot be considered absolute values. They are concepts that were created quite recently. When you think about it that way, is there really no need to be so bound by them?

Also, in modern Japan, unscented scents are generally preferred, so I don't think many people would feel masculine even if they wore a "masculine scent." I'm not sure if this is a global sensibility.Yeah...
"why perfumers or perfume industry have to give label gender? "So, maybe that comes from a modern Western concept.

I'll say the same thing I said last time this question came up, and every time it does in the future... you really start to see the curtain being pulled aside, as it were, on gendered marketing, once you wear enough fragrances marketed to the opposite sex. I wear and enjoy a lot of men's fragrances, and I really think there is a bit of a feedback loop happening: something is marketed to men, so men wear it, so now people can point and say "well, if fragrances have no gender, why is it only men who wear this?" But if the very same fragrance had been marketed to women, the opposite thing would happen.

Like... to my nose, Aramis Eau de Toilette and Cabochard (2019) Eau de Parfum are almost the same fragrance (and a really good one at that). But one is 'all that a man is' and the other has a little bow on the bottle, and people buy the products that are marketed towards them. It's not that either fragrance is somehow uniquely suited to a man's or a woman's taste, it's the marketing. Guys loved Grey Flannel Eau de Toilette (and deservedly so, it's great!) but turned their noses up at the similar-scented but more ambiguously-gendered marketing of Insensé Eau de Toilette . Stetson Original (1981) Cologne is much sweeter than, say, Red Door Eau de Toilette , and yet guys wear Stetson and girls wear Elizabeth Arden.

I don't think it's wrong for anyone to be more comfortable with the scents that are directly marketed towards them. There are certain categories of scents that, for whatever reason, have been assigned genders. If you're a fellow who loves fougères you will probably have more luck in the men's section, and the reverse goes if you're a girl who loves gourmands. I'm aware there's a pattern to what tends to get marketed to whom, you're probably not going to see Fantasy Eau de Parfum Pour Homme. But the idea that men or women are just naturally disposed to fit within the boxes that marketers have created for us is one I have to push back on.

@KillaAmanda because marketing changes like a dying dino. It repeats safety patterns. However, leaving designers' fragrances and diving into a more artisan and creative perfumery you will find out they do more unisex scents than scents for gents and scents for ladies. I know women who love wearing men's fragrances. Recently saw a video where Snoopy Dog was smelling Delina PDM and was saying : this is a fine quality perfume, and passed the testing paper strip to his gal!

ik its the dumbest thing ever but its just for marketing mostly which is ridiculous and ngl im starting to see the effects of said marketing in my personal life when i wear floral heavy frags my mother/sisters make fun of me as soon as they find out im the one wearing it lol 

For as long as fragrances have existed, there has been a distinction based on gender. This is also perpetuated on every fragrance platform like Parfumo, Fragrantica, Basenotes (and of course on social media, including YouTube) by stating in the information whether a fragrance is suitable for men, women, or unisex. This is often emphasized with a gender icon. This information comes almost exclusively from the brand. But we ourselves play a significant role in this. We ourselves often fill in the classification here on Parfumo. Even in reviews of a unisex fragrance, it's all too often stated that it leans more masculine, more feminine...more suitable for... If this were to disappear completely, would you be happier? Perhaps... only time will tell. Will brands address this? Will they adjust their marketing? Probably not.

We also have to consider that we ( the so-called "connoisseur") are often much more knowledgeable than the average shopper in the mall. Why do you think there's still a separate department for men's and women's fragrances in stores like Douglas and Ici-Paris, to name a few? And the same goes for the very large and established brands like Chanel, Dior, Armani, Prada, Gucci, etc. This gender distinction is made to make things easier for the customer. I even believe that if gender is no longer "visible," many (and again I'm not talking about us, but about the average customer) buyers will stay away from certain stores, afraid they might have bought the wrong gift for someone, afraid of coming home with something that doesn't suit them, Yes, there are still loads of people, who prefer a typical masculine or typical feminine fragrance...they don't want to shop for hours and hours searching for it. We, on the other hand,  love to go to the more refined niche stores, we love to go to find that gem that not every-one is wearing. We love to plan a day ( or perhaps more) for shopping fragrances...we love to talk, talk, talk and even more talk about fragrances. That's what makes our passion so exciting : sniffin , talking, writing, taking pictures of your fragrances and we never get bored of it. And we all are very aware of the fact that many don't understand this passion...That's why brands put a gender on a fragrance to help them to make a choice in this overwhelming range of fragrances. 

Personally, I don't object to this gender designation. Just as I don't object to the classification here on Parfumo in the Charts regarding type, occasion, style, or season. Then I usually know immediately whether I should avoid the fragrance or if it piques my interest.

This exactly. Originally ancient perfumes were not gendered, they were more indicating social status and covering unpleasant smells. Historically, certain  smells belonging to certain genders is a quite new concept. Also what's considered feminine or masculine is completely depending on cultural things, so what's for example "feminine" in Western countries isn't globally or universally considered gendered at all, and people seem to ignore that fact too often. Smells being associated to genders are indeed simply associations, not facts. In this matter Japanese and Finnish cultures are again very similar: fragrances have been often considered in Finland also a more "feminine" thing in general, and many men are thinking "a real man doesn't wear perfume at all". Those men would actually feel very feminine to wear any fragrance at all, no matter what the marketing says. (Thankfully there's a new trend among very young Finnish though men that fragrances are fashionable again, hopefully this will change the public general negative attitude towards anything fragranced more positive here in the future.)

But yeah, as many others already pointed out, perfumes being gendered is sort of a weird loop - brands marketing gendered perfumes in order to increase sales as people are expecting gender labels and people expecting gender labels because that's what marketing has done for a long time. 🤷

I'm not a historian or an expert, so I don't know when modern "gender concepts" were established. But at least in ancient times around the world, I don't think there were gender-specific norms for scent. At least 1,000 years ago, there were no "gourmand" or "fruity" scents, so the range of scents was probably much narrower.

Even if there were scents for men and women, they were probably narrower and had more in common. But in modern times (really very recently), when synthetic fragrances began to be used and the range of scents expanded dramatically, people began to draw "clearer gender differences." Some people might see this as "more precise expression." But in reality, isn't this just a further limitation of what is an overwhelming number of options?

OK, as I mentioned last time, women's body odor contains lactones, so lactone-based scents could be considered "feminine." However, rose and jasmine, at high concentrations, produce unpleasant body odors, so there shouldn't be any particular gender differences. But for some reason, white flowers and red roses feel like scents reserved for women. Yes, I'll admit it!
And generally speaking, while it's easy for women to wear men's fragrances, men are reluctant to wear "candy notes." Personally, no matter how much a man I pass smells like candy,I just think, "Oh, he likes candy smells," and that's the end of it.lol But maybe other people feel not that way too. Yes, in general.
So, men might think, "It's strange to label something that's clearly a women's scent as unisex." Or vice versa. I won't dismiss that feeling by saying, "That's just your imagination." I think everyone has their own standards in life.
However, I believe those standards are actually illusions created by humans, standards that will change in 50 or 100 years, so I think it's fine to enjoy them as long as you do regret them in your life. In other words, even if you act against modern norms, the things you want to protect won't disappear. That's because such things have only recently come into existence in human history, that's what I want to say.
Yes, dress shirts and T-shirts were originally underwear. But at some point, men started wearing them when going out, and now both men and women wear them. This isn't a thing from 1,000 years ago, but quite recently.Is it because it's easier for women to wear men's clothes? Hmm, that's a possibility. But isn't the main reason because universal design standards are changing?
Yes, suits are said to have originated around the 15th or 16th century, so you might think they're a fairly universal design. But in my country, they started to become popular around the mid-19th century. That's very recent.
As an aside, in my country, there is another concept besides the concept of "century." This is more widely used, and we are now calling it "Reiwa 7." This era name is used in government offices and other places. Yeah,concepts that you think are universal are often not universal in other countries.

By the way, in my country, men who wear perfume are not seen as feminine, but rather as subtly trying to be popular, and I think that's why men don't wear perfume. LOL😯

Labels like this are everywhere. For example, if you see a sweet that says "Salt from Lorraine, France," it makes you think, "Oh, that sounds delicious." In reality, I have no way of knowing whether the salt is from Lorraine or Himalayan salt. But somehow, the image of that country makes me think of delicious sweets. Well, that's about it, I guess.

It is a marketing ploy. So really feminine scents are so sexy on a man. Additionally, the scent fragrance can give a completely different vibes on someone's skin.

Smelling like haunted forests littered with bones, of course! 

(Legend has it the mists of the Hoia Bachiu forest smell just like Pink Sugar!)

Yes, applying gender to a fragrance is marketing. But we, as enthusiasts, forget that fragrances are not being marketed just to us. The members of Parfumo may explore a fragrance marketed towards someone of the opposite sex (14% of the 2055 members who have Chanel No. 5 parfum in their collection are men, a fragrance that Coco Chanel said was for women; only 2% of the 8071 members who have Sauvage Eau de Parfum in their collection are women). But placing gender on a fragrance has a purpose. When a person who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking/obsessing about perfume walks into a department store, placing gender on the fragrance directs them towards something they might want to consider. They may not be interested in spending an hour or two in a perfumery sampling many different brands. They may only spend five minutes comparing Sauvage Eau de Parfum and Bleu de Chanel Eau de Parfum on blotters before making a purchase. Walk into a niche perfumery and you find that most of the fragrances are labeled as unisex. Those are consumers who are willing to explore fragrances that cross what people think are gender boundaries.

This! I agree. I hate how everything gets so politicized these days.

It's 8076 total Sauvage owners at the time of my response, and 2% of that is 161 (and a half) women. Idk about you, but to me that still sounds like a pretty sizeable amount of women. It's easy to point at low percentages to say "see, that's evidence that this group of people doesn't need this thing". But there are people hidden under these percentages that show evidence to the contrary.

How many more women would give Sauvage a chance if it had a cuter name, a pretty bottle and something more palatable than Johnny Depp's crusty mug on the marketing cover? It's a spiced artificially sweetened ambrox bomb. Any gender can fall victim to those.

4923 Parfumo users own Black Orchid Eau de Parfum. It's listed as unisex here, and 55% of current owners are men. But in my country it's considered a fragrance for women (especially older women) and sold as such. You will only find it in the women's section. Sucks for all the local men who will not be directed towards something they might otherwise have wanted to consider, I guess?

Sure, majority of the population doesn't have the time or energy to dive deep into this hobby and thoughtfully sample everything. But that doesn't mean that they don't deserve to have all options available to them. Especially since the ways in which these options are segregated are often completely arbitrary. It would probably be both simpler and way more fun if perfumery was separated based on what it actually smells like.

People of both genders can love sweets, or enjoy scents of different flowers, or want to smell like the sea, or sandalwood, or what have you. If everyone was able to freely and without judgement try out things based on their actual preferences rather than whatever marketers decided goes well with a penis this season – I think we'd all be happier for it.

It's not a question of need. No one needs perfume. It's a luxury item that people use for different reasons. For as much as we want to view fragrances as art, for the fragrance houses It's a business. Even for the most creative independent producers. If labeling a fragrance by gender aids their sales, that's what they will do. When it was first introduced Old Spice After Shave was marketed towards women. It didn't sell. They found it did sell marketing it to men. Now, in the US they're marketing one of their product's (I believe a body wash) as one that women also enjoy. The focus is what helps the bottom line.