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!
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…
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”?
I agree, “genderless” is much worse. He is French-Armenian though so I wonder what the term translates to in his native language(s).
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’.
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).
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!”
Ha! That’s funny, Joe. Grad school was more like junior high than grade school…
Oh how funny! Thanks for sharing
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.
Unitard is just horrid..
LOL!
LOL!! Glad we can agree on that much, R.
I keep coming back to read this because it cracks me up.
“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!
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.
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.
Genderless sounds like the wearer has no gender. What a hoot. Thanks for my morning laugh!
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…
After reading this all I can see is those poor Ken dolls I played with as a child . . .
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.
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.
Hahaha… hadn’t seen your comment until after I’d posted below.
How about “For Everyone”
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.
Ungendered, non-gendered? Intergenderational?
I think sometimes people take words too literally, or too seriously.
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?
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”.
How about ‘bisexual’?? Or polysexual.
Errr I would’ve thought “genderless” would have a stronger correlation with meaning “no sex”.
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!
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”