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SebastianM

Politically incorrect fragrance notes?

SebastianM | Perfume Discussions

... @Cardea thank you for your insightful and enlightening discussion. I agree with almost all you say. I especially agree with the point you made about "oriental" applying to a fragrance genre and not to ethnicity or people. However, I am not so sure whether I agree with you and @Johnjssmith that actual usage of the term even by German speakers usually adheres to that innocent pattern, at least when it comes to describing an individual perfume, in contrast to discussing perfume categories. And we are not talking about a few "stupid people" here. I can recall a number of statements on Parfumo, by users whom I would never suspect of stupidity or racism, where "oriental" is used in conjunction with cliché Arabian Nights imagery, swirling garments and allusions to sensuous allure. I believe that's definitely orientalism. (Of course, I can recall only a few anecdotes, and as there is no functionality to easily examine the totality of perfume statements on Parfumo, I see no way how I could produce empirical evidence.) I also believe that enjoying such day dreams is legitimate. The perfume world as a whole is largely a world of dreams and free-floating associations when seen exclusively from a consumer view point, as is the case on this platform. Why try to remove a well-understood way of expressing such dreams evoked by an olfactory experience? If there were people who were offended by it, I would mostly think they were making a categorical mistake. As should be clear from what @Apicius said about the fragrance hierarchy on Parfumo, there is also a great difference between the classes of perfume that would be officially classified as oriental here and those that @Cardea would presumably call "oriental". I myself rarely use the term because it is so very imprecise and could well dispense with it entirely. I would not feel the need for a substitute either. (And agree that a translation of "ambery" into German would be a very poor one.) But although I doubt its usefulness and apparently do not share the usual associations (to me, an "oriental scent" is mostly the same as a "Christmas scent"), I would not take it away from others.

79

Apicius

12/10/2023

Apicius