If the fragrance counter seems a little crowded this holiday season, it may be because more than 800 new fragrances hit the market in the past year in an effort to grab some of the $6.5 billion Americans will spend to smell better. And that doesn’t include all the eau de toilettes and sprays offered on niche perfume websites and boutiques.
It remains to be seen how many of those new scents will stand the test of time and be around next Christmas, or even decades from now.
“There’s no way, when a fragrance first comes out, to predict its success,” says Luca Turin, author of “Perfumes: The Guide,” (Viking, $27.95), which rates 1,500 scents, tells the history of famous fragrances, has “best” lists and a glossary. “Many from the last 20 years had a tremendous original run, like Opium, and then they’re violently rejected.”
Some live long on reputations and huge advertising budgets, like Chanel No. 5 or Shalimar. “It’s a little bit like painting,” Turin says. “Everyone mentions Picasso because that’s the only artist they’ve heard of.”
But the greats, like No. 5, live on because they are “technically fantastic,” “abstract and well-constructed,” he says.
And therein is what makes a fragrance iconic: An original and memorable perfume is a complex creation, not some spray that vanishes an hour after you apply it. Nor does it linger like a bad headache.
“Most of the ones I really love have a mysterious abstraction; there’s something strange about them,” says Tania Sanchez, Turin’s “Perfumes” co-author. “They’ll show another face. Sometimes cuddly, sometimes powdery.
“It should be distinctive and have a personality,” she said in describing a great perfume like Mitsouko, one of her favorites. In addition, “a really wonderful one smells good the whole way through, to the last dregs at the end of the day.”
Sanchez views perfumery as an art, albeit “probably the least understood and least appreciated of the arts.”
“Perfumes,” she writes, “have ideas: there are surprising textures, moods, tensions, harmonies. . . .” The problem with studying it as an art is that “nothing can be smelled without disappearing. You don’t use up a picture by looking at it, but each time you uncork a perfume, the bit that evaporates is the bit you enjoy, and after you’ve smelled it, there’s no getting it back into the bottle.”
Sniffing out the trends
Just as silhouettes and hemlines change, so do preferences in scent styles.
“Perfume trends are cyclical rather than changing every season,” says Mary Ellen Lapansky, vice president of The Fragrance Foundation in New York. “They reflect the times and social climates.”
For the past several years, full-bodied, warm and robust fragrances have been strong and that will continue, she says. “They have more of a personality and character.”
Deeper scents, like patchouli, musk and amber are making a comeback. Woody notes, always strong in men’s scents, are making inroads in women’s lines.
The lines are blurring between what’s a male or female fragrance today as well, Turin agrees. “The feminine scents have become more woody and masculine, androgynous,” he says. “They’re a mix of woody and floral notes, such as Coco Mademoiselle and Chance.”
There’s also been a return to strong rose chypres (pronounced “sheep-ruh,” from the word Cyprus, a mossy- wood combination). Estee Lauder’s classic Knowing, which debuted in 1988, has been joined by scents like Agent Provocateur and Emporio Armani City Glam for Her in a genre that can range from delightful to jarring, Sanchez says.
Turin is not fond of another trend: the proliferation of sport scents. He calls them “apologetic, bloodless, gray.” The problem with them, he says, “is that they smell so close to shampoos and the things you find in a hotel room,” Turin says. “Who wants to pay $100 for that?”
Perfume doesn’t have to be expensive to be good, the authors say. Among those Turin lauds is Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger, because it was the first scent to use an intense tea floral base. “I’ve been lambasted for giving it a high rating, but it represented a turning point in fragrance, with many imitators following.”
Another cheap treat that passes the smell test is Lady Stetson. “It smells as good as Chanel No. 22 and has no artistic pretension,” Turin says
Choosing a scent
Perfume is a popular gift — 75 percent of sales are made during the holidays — but Sanchez cautions against choosing a fragrance for someone unless you fully know their likes and dislikes. “You can go wrong so many ways, because it’s the sort of thing you have to wear to see if you like it. A fragrance has a specific personality.”
On the other hand, if you have a good nose and can readily think of a person when smelling certain fragrances, you might be in a better position to choose one.
When selecting one for yourself, plan on smelling at most between five and 10 on paper test strips in the store. Then test one or two of those on your skin before you make a choice, Sanchez says.
Custom job
So what if none of the prepackaged drugstore or department store scents will do?
Visitors to storefronts like Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s south Boulder perfumery can buy one of 350 ready-made “artisan” scents or pull up a chair and have a fragrance custom designed for them.
An 18-year veteran of the industry, Hurwitz opened Essence Studio two months ago, offering both simple custom scents and more elaborate “signature-scent service.”
At the studio lounge, customers can choose from about 60 aromas, many natural, she said. “We use good quality ingredients, like Bulgarian rose, Italian neroli, Egyptian jasmine,” she says. A combination of those scents can be made into lotions, body washes and eau de parfums. The service costs from $38 to about $75.
Those who want the full scent service spend three to four hours and $500 to have a custom fragrance made for them, choosing from upward of 1,000 ingredients. Hurwitz analyzes the person’s skin to see how it reacts to various scents and quizzes the customer about her likes and dislikes. The customer goes home with both pure perfume in a French flacon and an eau de parfum spray. The formula stays secret, and with Hurwitz.
Customers include women looking for specific ingredients for special occasions like weddings or anniversaries, or they might just be looking for an all-natural perfume, Hurwitz says.
“It’s also the experience of coming here with a friend. We get a lot of girl groups who want to do something fun,” she says.
“We do a lot of smelling and talking about it. I don’t expect them to be able to decipher perfume language, but they give me clues when they say something is “like their grandmother’s bathroom — it could be too musky or powdery.”
Hurwitz is part of the growing niche perfume world, selling primarily on the Internet (dshperfumes.com)before opening her studio.
It used to be that perfume was created and advertised and you “bought what was in front of you,” she says. “Now there are so many choices and artistic ideas out there. You can sell worldwide and there’s a plethora of critics and perfume aficionados talking 24 hours a day.”
Suzanne S. Brown: 303-954-1697 or sbrown@denverpost.com
What the expert noses know
You’ll spend the first hour with “Perfumes: The Guide” flipping through the 1,500 perfume reviews, reading what Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez have to say about your favorite fragrances, the cologne worn by your father and first boyfriend, your grandmother. They make it so entertaining, you don’t even have to like perfume to enjoy reading about it. A few excerpts follow, noting the fragrance name, perfumer, rating and description. You’ll find many more on the authors’ website,
WOMEN’S
No. 5 parfum (Chanel) , powdery floral
“We don’t wear Chanel No. 5 because Marilyn Monroe wore it; we wear it for the same reason that Marilyn did: because it’s gorgeous.”
Beauty Rush Appletini (Victoria’s Secret) *, Jolly Rancher
“Victoria’s Secret has determined that its customers need (1) cleavage and (2) to smell precisely like dime-store candy. You may discern an implicit insult to the male mind in this pair of facts.”
Curious (Britney Spears) *, syrupy floral
“It lasts forever, radiates like nuclear waste, and perfectly expresses the crude charms of its star.”
Euphoria Blossom (Calvin Klein) **, light floral
“Muzak for the nose.”
MEN’S
Cool Water (Davidoff) , aromatic fougère
“CW belongs to the category of things done right the first time, like the first Windsurfer and the Boeing 707. Countless imitations, extensions, variations, and complications failed to improve on it or add a jot of interest to this cheerful, abstract, cheap and lethally effective formula of crab apple, woody citrus, amber, and musk.”
Polo (Ralph Lauren) ****, dry oakmoss
“Polo has a relaxed, expansive feeling in a comfortingly conservative way, like short hair combed neatly in a straight side part on a fellow otherwise charmingly shabby. No wonder some men have worn it all their lives.”
