Has designer fragrance been made obsolete?

I stopped following the cutting edge of the fragrance scene a decade or so ago.

There were still epic designer frags coming out. M7, Rive Gauche, Terre D'Hermes, L' instant, Top notch Dior Flankers, La nuit de l'homme etc etc.

The designers were for over a century setting benchmarks and had great quality. They were like niche to mass market options.

With cheaper easier to come by synthetics and regulatory impact they all seem to lack personality now.

Now niche is mainstream and there are countless indie labels the likes of which will never compare to the great Designer releases (which have unfortunately been ruined with reformulations) and won't be around in a decade.

It's not necessarily incompetence or lesser quality ingredients. Companies have a better read of what consumers want.

Fragrances like M7 and Rive Gauche are cult classics, but were commercial flops. 20+ years ago, companies would try all sorts of different fragrances to see which ones were a hit. But now companies have more data, information, technology and test groups at their disposal. They probably have a better understanding of how a given fragrance will perform in the market.

As an enthusiast, I agree. There have been very few exciting designer releases to me in the last 10 years. But there are evidently many people out there who are interested in the current trend.

romanopip said:

I stopped following the cutting edge of the fragrance scene a decade or so ago.

There were still epic designer frags coming out. M7, Rive Gauche, Terre D'Hermes, L' instant, Top notch Dior Flankers, La nuit de l'homme etc etc.

The designers were for over a century setting benchmarks and had great quality. They were like niche to mass market options.

With cheaper easier to come by synthetics and regulatory impact they all seem to lack personality now.

Now niche is mainstream and there are countless indie labels the likes of which will never compare to the great Designer releases (which have unfortunately been ruined with reformulations) and won't be around in a decade.

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No, I don't think designer perfumery as a whole is obsolete. Quite the opposite, in fact. All niche perfumery is downstream from the commercial powerhouses that drive innovation in synthetic perfumery. Chanel, Dior, and Louis Vuitton sit at the pinnacle of the market.

However, designer perfumery is clearly not what it was. Many brands have become, if not obsolete, then irrelevant as brands. These designers are effectively also-rans in the race for customer interest and sales. This is a very dangerous position to be in and likely means dwindling down over time in to effective obsolescence. Consider some of the older designer brands from the 70s or 80s and see how their fortunes have faded since the 90s. This won't apply to all brands, of course, but over time the number of brands falling out of business of in to effective redundancy as a creative brand only increases. The opposite trajectory, for a resurgence of a brand, is the exception to this trend; the likes of Acqua di Parma being revived in to a commercial success is a real rarity.

Most niche perfumery is poor to awful. A great percentage of it is middling or what you could also call obsolete as a creative force - they may be commercially successful but the creative drive is largely borne from imitating/ripping off the actual innovators. This leaves only a small percentage of niche brands that are doing something interesting and aesthetically valuable, rather than chasing the latest fad or viral novelty that ensures a piece of the pie. Even then, some of the more respected artisanal perfumers may only create 1 or 2 truly good or great fragrances in their catalogue, and generally have a hard time trying to match some of the older niche perfumers/brands like Lorenzo Villoresi or Serge Lutens in terms of consistent creative achievement. Most of the more savvy artisanal or indie perfumers realise they are catering to a small but extremely committed and generally affluent clientele who will happily buy fragrance after fragrance for the "experience" (of solitary sniffing) rather than worrying about how it wears, performs, what other people think etc (i.e. general concerns that most people have about the perceived quality of a fragrance).

The days of designer brands being reliably interesting, high quality, and worthy of investigation seem to be over (perhaps permanently). This is sad for those of us who were used to blind buying a YSL or Gucci fragrance and receiving something reliably competent in return. It takes a while to adapt but, by now, I think most of us on here are aware of how that dynamic has been lost - it's over, it's gone, and it's probably not coming back. For younger people, those under the age of 25, they basically don't know any better than what we have now. They don't remember the 'before times' and, as such, there isn't the same sense of loss or frustration the rest of us feel. Designer brands are caught in a bind, between expensive, high end, boutique niche brands above them, and the cheaper, clone-adjacent, more affordable brands below them. Both types have proliferated in number over the last 10-20 years. It's a real issue for the established fashion house brands to remain commercially competitive and still produce interesting, competent, or cutting edge fragrances. Most of these designers are struggling to manage that balancing act, opting for quantity over quality and hoping that within the mass of releases that something sticks (think Tom Ford and their various versions of Ombre Leather). That leaves only the very few - again, Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford as the obvious ones - that are staying ahead of the encroaching tide behind them. I wouldn't say the rest are obsolete (and in many ways the big designers, especially LV, are now more relevant and more powerful than they were 20 years ago) but they're certainly less competitive and have stopped making memorable fragrances at the rate they once did.

I think Calvin Klein provide a good example for where most designers eventually tend towards. Over enough time, the period of genuine popularity gets overtaken by a drop in aromatic novelty or competence, which leads to dwindling customer interest, less commercial success, and eventually a loss of desirability and prestige.

I believe there will always be a solid market for designer fragrance, both due to loyal fan following, and because of lower cost than niche.

The issue with new designers in addition to budgets is a lack of risk taking. The lack of diversity / personality is symptomatic of the lack of risk taking. The bigger brands have bigger budgets, have better data, and seem to be plagued even more by risk aversion. The older ones have suffered reformulations due to cost cutting, restricted availability of naturals, and regulations.

The mainstream niche (stuff sold at places like Saks for the most part) takes a bit more risk, but are still risk averse - and additionally employ a host of synthetics so you aren't going to get the wonderful bases from even 10-15 years ago - think Puredistance M, as an example. Moreover the output of the better brands within this segment skews heavily away from styles that could be argued to be conventionally masculine - fresh/spicy, aromatic, fougeres or woody scents without sweetness. The ones that do are either overly synthetic and not that great (Parfums de Marly) or a brand like Creed (a brand which was good but never great) whose best days are in the past.

Smaller niche / indie take risks, but they don't have the economies of scale or huge budgets, and often functionality and wearability seem to be left out of consideration. It's almost as if they think that that's entirely covered by the mainstream market, so all they need to do is to create museum art pieces.


By the way, this risk aversion is a phenomenon that extends more generally - just look at movies, music, business and industry, even investment such as concentration in S&P composition or real estate returns relative to other sectors. It's also evident in consumption in many ways as consumers chase what's the best (read: trend) rather than what's best for themselves.

No not obsolete at all. Those of us in here are way more interested and invested in watching trends, niche, vintage, etc. We note and are frustrated no big new directions have launched mainly from the big boys.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of people are shopping and buying their scents in department stores offering basic designer fare. The guy who loves Bleu de Chanel will try the Bleu de Chanel EdP, then Parfum, etc.

Designers have gone into a bit of risk aversion/brain freeze that grinds on many of us in this world. A long philosophical discussion could probably be had about why this has become their strategy.

I'm also amused that most of us now are eschewing the new Allure Homme Sport Superleggara.
But the marketing muscle and power of Chanel is such that in a couple of years, it will have a fan base in here I'd bet.

I was recently in a local perfume discounter. A 50-ish guy came in and bought L'eau de Issey and Aqua di Gio. He's been buying them since the 90s. Three years from now, he'll be back in there buying two more bottles of the same stuff. He doesn't care about niche, new directions, trends, or designers.

^ that guy is living his best life. we're trapped in the hedonic treadmill. hes in bliss.

slpfrsly said:

No, I don't think designer perfumery as a whole is obsolete.

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Nor do I.

lair77 said:

^ that guy is living his best life. we're trapped in the hedonic treadmill. hes in bliss.

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LOL. Fair point.

From my conversations with the SAs, he gathered I knew a bit about scents and asked a few questions. He really didn't like any of my input, so he left in a slight huff. I said nothing even vaguely insulting, but he kind of realized he was stuck in a 1990s loop.

StylinLA said:

I said nothing even vaguely insulting, but he kind of realized he was stuck in a 1990s loop.

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Yeah, everyone here knows you’re supposed to be stuck in a 1980s loop.

I’m as annoyed as anyone at the plethora of (subjectively) substandard offerings from the big designer and quasi-niche houses, but there’s probably as much good stuff now as there ever was in absolute terms; there’s just a whole lot more crap taking up bandwidth in relative terms. That, and trends are cyclical, so eventually everyone will “discover” all the bygone accords and structures we miss today. (I’m not saying restricted ingredients will return, but as Guerlain has shown with Les Légendaires, they don’t have to.)

As for those lamenting the commodification of the art of perfumery: perfume has always been a commodity. And that doesn’t mean perfumery isn’t art. Michelangelo didn’t want to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; it was a gig. Creating art is a job, and artists have to eat. It is unfortunate that the people handing out the briefs are risk-averse, but as I said, it’s cyclical. In time, the advantages of being distinctive will become apparent again.

Meanwhile, we have no shortage of excellent fragrances to wear.

Designer / Mainstream Perfumery will always be around and won't be going anywhere.

Western perfumery faces multiple threats from the east due to Western perfumery's ever increasing usage of synthetics. They face threats from below because synthetic perfumes are easy to clone. They face pressure from above because they legally cannot use the best materials. At some point the top of the market is going to realize that it makes no sense to spend hundreds of dollars for synthetic musks and accords; not when Ensar, Sultan Pasha and Russian Adam will sell them the finest materials that nature can provide and man can refine.

Then there is the issue of the classics of the past being destroyed by reformulation. Personally I have no interest in increasing my collection of western perfumes. If I spend $150 dollars on bottle of oud oil from Ajmal I get $140 dollars worth of oud. What do I get for $150 spent at Chanel or Dior? If something new comes out that piques my interest I'll buy a clone but the more I smell natural materials the more I turn my nose up at synthetics. Even absolutes lack the complexity of steam distilled essential oils.

^ All of that is hard if not impossible to prove.

There is no public information (from an independent third party company/organization) that shows what ingredients each company is using.

The only information we have go by is marketing materials and hearsay. And maybe our own intuition, though probably none of us are experts at making perfumes.

Has designer fragrance been made obsolete?​

The correct answer is....NO!

I agree that many recent designer releases have been safe and uninspired, though I think tastes have changed as well. I also see many more releases focused on middle eastern (ambers and ouds) and asian (lighter markets where I presume there is growth.

I think Hermès H24 has been the best release of "classic perfumery" lately. It was a brand new pillar, not related to any other scent, and not reliant on any single note (vanilla, tobacco, etc.) I'm not saying it's the best scent out there, but it is original and not following any current trends.

Not obsolete, but definitely stagnant maybe inert would be a better word for it.

PStoller said:

Yeah, everyone here knows you’re supposed to be stuck in a 1980s loop.

I’m as annoyed as anyone at the plethora of (subjectively) substandard offerings from the big designer and quasi-niche houses, but there’s probably as much good stuff now as there ever was in absolute terms; there’s just a whole lot more crap taking up bandwidth in relative terms. That, and trends are cyclical, so eventually everyone will “discover” all the bygone accords and structures we miss today. (I’m not saying restricted ingredients will return, but as Guerlain has shown with Les Légendaires, they don’t have to.)

As for those lamenting the commodification of the art of perfumery: perfume has always been a commodity. And that doesn’t mean perfumery isn’t art. Michelangelo didn’t want to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; it was a gig. Creating art is a job, and artists have to eat. It is unfortunate that the people handing out the briefs are risk-averse, but as I said, it’s cyclical. In time, the advantages of being distinctive will become apparent again.

Meanwhile, we have no shortage of excellent fragrances to wear.

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Very well put! I've gotten at the same thing in other similar threads but you nailed it succinctly and directly!

I think it's also important to have some perspective about just how new this current flourishing of the fragrance industry is. L'artisan is often cited as the first niche brand, and it started in 1976. But I would say not until the 1990s/2000s do the likes of Frederic Malle, Lutens, Amouage, Le Labo come onto the scene in a big enough way to constitute a new category. Only within last 5 years or so (post pandemic) has there been another wave of even smaller and more specific brands.

Totally agree there's a whole lot of generic uninspired overpriced junk out there. But there's also an embarrassment of riches in fantastic and inspiring perfumes being made.

I don't think designers are obsolete, but they are no longer the only option and they might not offer much of interest to the perfume enthusiast.

If anything has been lost it's the phenomena of the collective art experience. Before the internet, when a new album was released, or a hit primetime tv show, or a new blockbuster fragrance, just about everyone tuned in and had this kind of collective (pop)cultural language. Like Angel being in the air everywhere after its release or Dior Poison getting banned in restaurants and everyone could talk about what happened on Seinfeld last night.

There are still blockbusters of course, like Sauvage, BR540, and Talylor Swift. But it's not quite the same now that we are all able to find our own niche by communicating with a global community online. I'm not sure this is a major loss but it might be something to feel nostalgic about.

cheapimitation said:

L'artisan is often cited as the first niche brand, and it started in 1976.

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I think Le Jardin Retrouvé beat L'Artisan to market by a few months. But, yeah, as you say…

cheapimitation said:

…not until the 1990s/2000s do the likes of Frederic Malle, Lutens, Amouage, Le Labo come onto the scene in a big enough way to constitute a new category. Only within last 5 years or so (post pandemic) has there been another wave of even smaller and more specific brands.

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For both consumers and perfumers, quarantine fostered the artisanal movement. As with niche, it was around before, but it took off during and after the pandemic.

cheapimitation said:

If anything has been lost it's the phenomena of the collective art experience. Before the internet, when a new album was released, or a hit primetime tv show, or a new blockbuster fragrance, just about everyone tuned in and had this kind of collective (pop)cultural language. Like Angel being in the air everywhere after its release or Dior Poison getting banned in restaurants and everyone could talk about what happened on Seinfeld last night.

There are still blockbusters of course, like Sauvage, BR540, and Talylor Swift. But it's not quite the same now that we are all able to find our own niche by communicating with a global community online. I'm not sure this is a major loss but it might be something to feel nostalgic about.

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It's got positive and negative aspects. Gatekeepers are problematic—who appointed whom the arbiter of quality and taste?—but without them, it's a jumble out there. As a result, the blockbusters tend to be both louder and blander. At the same time, a significant percentage of young people have always enjoyed rejecting the most popular thing, choosing a "niche" experience instead. Groups like this one are the same, albeit with a broader age range. We're so niche, the lovers of popular mainstream scents are a niche group within BN. It has become harder to winnow out the worthy middle ground between the super-popular and the painfully obscure ("We sold out all fifteen bottles!"), but not impossible.

Overall, I think non-geocentric community is a positive. It's the overabundance of product that's so wearying. The best music in the past was made by artists who weren't trying to please everyone, but instead worked at the intersection of quirky individualism and broad appeal, in a field open enough to be noticed. Same goes for fragrances.

Its actually niche that has become an absolute farce.

Too many great ones.