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Somewhat alarmed

Posted by Robin on 17 September 2010 32 Comments

The perfumer scolded me when I asked whether his fragrance was meant to be unisex. He prefers the term “genderless.”

Why?

He replied, somewhat alarmed at the prospect, “Unisex means there’s no sex.”

— Perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, quoted in A Season’s Roundup of Beauty Choices at the New York Times. Many thanks to SuddenlyInexplicably for the link!

Filed Under: perfume in the news
Tagged With: francis kurkdjian

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32 Comments

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  1. sweetlife (ahtx) says:
    17 September 2010 at 8:46 am

    Ha! I’ve always thought unisex a an extremely unsexy term. I think unitards and uniforms and y-front white underwear.

    An SA once told me a frag was “for sharing,” which sounded way hotter…

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    • Robin says:
      17 September 2010 at 9:09 am

      I suppose “unisex” does not sound sexy, but it has never bothered me. This cracked me up mostly because “genderless” sounds to me even less appealing than unisex. Surely there is no more sex in “genderless” than there is in “unisex”?

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      • LaMaroc says:
        17 September 2010 at 9:16 am

        I agree, “genderless” is much worse. He is French-Armenian though so I wonder what the term translates to in his native language(s).

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        • Bela says:
          17 September 2010 at 10:25 am

          I don’t know what it’s like in Armenian, but the word ‘gender’ is extremely difficult to translate into French and, AFAIK, there is no word for ‘genderless’.

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          • sweetlife (ahtx) says:
            17 September 2010 at 11:38 am

            This is so interesting, Bela. Does “gender” get shuffled into “sex” a la “The Second Sex”?

            You have me thinking back to grad school and my days of reading the French feminists. Trying to remember how the concept of gender popped up in that stuff. I mean, it was everywhere, but definitely in a different way than the more straightforward American division between biology (sex) and its expression (gender).

          • Joe says:
            17 September 2010 at 1:09 pm

            ahtx: While quickly skimming, I thought you said GRADE school, and I thought, “Dang, her elementary must have been awfully high level if they were reading de Beauvoir!” 😉

          • sweetlife (ahtx) says:
            17 September 2010 at 9:40 pm

            Ha! That’s funny, Joe. Grad school was more like junior high than grade school… 😉

  2. lovethescents says:
    17 September 2010 at 8:53 am

    Oh how funny! Thanks for sharing 🙂

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    • Robin says:
      17 September 2010 at 9:11 am

      🙂

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  3. LaMaroc says:
    17 September 2010 at 9:08 am

    It means *one* sex not zero sex. Uni = one. Sheesh. Unisex has never bothered me as a term, in fact I’ve always thought of it in a Benetton-ad kind of way – two sexes coming together to make one. I do agree with sweetlife though, that unitard is definitely an ugly word.

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    • Robin says:
      17 September 2010 at 9:11 am

      Unitard is just horrid..

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      • boojum says:
        17 September 2010 at 10:57 am

        LOL!

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      • sweetlife (ahtx) says:
        17 September 2010 at 11:39 am

        LOL!! Glad we can agree on that much, R. 😉

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    • miss kitty v. says:
      17 September 2010 at 11:21 am

      I keep coming back to read this because it cracks me up.

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  4. lilydale aka Natalie says:
    17 September 2010 at 9:50 am

    “Unisex” may not be pretty, but everyone knows what it means. “Genderless” sounds even closer to “sex-less,” if you ask me. Hmm, maybe “omnisex”? Now THAT sounds hot!

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    • Robin says:
      17 September 2010 at 10:08 am

      Exactly — sexless! Omnisex is funny, but yeah — the thing about unisex is that everyone knows exactly what it means. “Shared” doesn’t work so well.

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    • LaMaroc says:
      17 September 2010 at 12:49 pm

      Omnisex – I like it! Almost sounds like “omniscient”, a word I really like to say and hear for some reason.
      Hmmm, now I’m thinking of my friends of the more radical relationship spectrum that refer to themselves as “polyamourous”. You just *know* someone’s going to be using that in fragrance liturgy soon. 😛

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  5. jaqsyd says:
    17 September 2010 at 10:13 am

    Genderless sounds like the wearer has no gender. What a hoot. Thanks for my morning laugh!

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  6. 50_Roses says:
    17 September 2010 at 11:12 am

    I’ve always felt that unisex means that a thing is suitable or applicable to either sex, while genderless means that the thing itself has no gender. Since perfume has no gender anyway (as only living organisms can have gender), calling a perfume genderless is redundant. Of course, there is also the matter of grammatical gender…

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  7. RuthW says:
    17 September 2010 at 11:14 am

    After reading this all I can see is those poor Ken dolls I played with as a child . . .

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    • LaMaroc says:
      17 September 2010 at 12:52 pm

      Oh yes, poor castrated Ken! Has anyone taken a walk down the doll aisle lately? Ken’s lost about 30 years and, according to the haircut and outfit he was sporting, is definitely out of the closet.

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      • miss kitty v. says:
        17 September 2010 at 3:50 pm

        Oh, now I’m curious and will have to check it out. 🙂 I’m still kicking myself for getting rid of my Earring Magic Ken doll. If the current incarnation of Ken compares to that I might drop dead in the doll aisle.

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    • Joe says:
      17 September 2010 at 1:11 pm

      Hahaha… hadn’t seen your comment until after I’d posted below.

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  8. Dilana says:
    17 September 2010 at 12:37 pm

    How about “For Everyone”

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  9. Joe says:
    17 September 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Funny, “genderless” to me sounds more “no sex”… like what Barbie and Ken dolls have down there.

    Unisex at least has “sex” embedded in it… sort of like “pansexual.”

    But whatever. Affectations.

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  10. boojum says:
    17 September 2010 at 1:14 pm

    Ungendered, non-gendered? Intergenderational? 😀 I think sometimes people take words too literally, or too seriously.

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  11. Valentine says:
    17 September 2010 at 3:00 pm

    I think “unisex” and “genderless” are both odd terms to describe scents meant to be worn by both men and women. Unisex always seemed like a bizarre label for such fragrances because it does translate into “one sex,” when the whole point of the label is that it’s for BOTH sexes–two sexes. Multisex. Is that sexy enough?

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  12. Owen says:
    17 September 2010 at 3:23 pm

    if a perfume is meant for both genders it can’t be genderLESS

    unisex means undistinguished between sexes. meaning both.
    genderless means no gender, hence it has “no sex”.

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  13. graziaplena says:
    18 September 2010 at 1:37 am

    How about ‘bisexual’?? Or polysexual.

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  14. eminere says:
    19 September 2010 at 11:05 am

    Errr I would’ve thought “genderless” would have a stronger correlation with meaning “no sex”.

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  15. ceelouise says:
    19 September 2010 at 3:35 pm

    I think its a language thing. I just can’t imagine a French speaker saying “unisex” casually. Although the word exists in the French language, they don’t use it as often as we do. To French ears it sounds somewhat like a medical term, after all, not for perfume! They’d probably just say “ni masculin, ni feminin” for a perfume – neither masculine nor feminine. (I think – it’s not my native langauge but I speak French and my hubbie is French. He’s working right now, can’t interrupt to confirm my loosely formed opinions.) Anyway, I am loving Cologne Pour le Soir, and the two Lumiere Noires right now! Go to his shop in Paris if you can!

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  16. ceelouise says:
    19 September 2010 at 3:47 pm

    I just asked my French husband. He agreed that while unisex is the word in English, for the French, “ce n’est pas tres joli”. But his only suggestion otherwise was “mixte”. Or, “pour homme et pour femme”

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