And while pop culture celebrities are front and centre in mainstream fragrances, a different kind of celebrity is emerging in the high-end niche fragrance market. In specialty perfume shops...perfume aficionadas (and –anados) search for other names: Bertrand Duchaufour, Olivia Giacobetti, Andy Tauer, Jean-Claude Ellena, Francis Kurkdjian, Dominique Ropion, Maurice Roucel.
— Author Kim Pittaway, writing in Scents and sensibility at The Toronto Star.
Maybe I’m just jaded, but I am SICK TO DEATH of perfume articles being headlined “Scents and Sensibility”. It’s been DONE. Time to think of something else, headline-writers!
The article’s interesting enough, though, and I see NST got a mention.
Absolutely — the title should be banned.
I get excited whenever NST is mentioned in an article [and that was a good article too]. Very cool.
I’m glad you said it because now I don’t have to. Do writers of articles actually think that this title is witty and original? Another hackneyed one is “Making Scents”.
I was just going to write that! LOL! I have several articles in my files – the first one dating from the late ’70s – with that heading. Enough already!
The journalist is clearly well informed about fragrances. At newspapers in the U.S., a much less informed copy editor generally writes the headline.
They often sum things up in a way that makes people who are well informed about a subject cringe (in this case, perhaps the average reader cringes at this one, too). But there really is an art to writing snappy headlines and, unfortunately, the internet is killing it.
Glad to see Andy Tauer on that list. I think he belongs there, but sometimes gets overlooked because he only works for his own line, and its such a smaller company than the ones the other noses work for.
True 🙂
Ha! Did anyone else notice how they didn’t EXPLAIN anything about Petit Mort? *giggle* I guess their readership isn’t ready for THAT much information about the more unusual side of niche fragrance! 😀
Yes, I smiled to myself over that too.
Also, not to sound arrogant, but I seem to have this pattern of picking up things right before they become popular in the main stream. It’s a running gag between my dad and I that if I like it, wait 2 years, and everyone will be doing it. I am NOT generally considered fashionable, because whatever I’m fascinated with in the moment isn’t currently popular, pretty much ever, but just as I’ve moved on to something new, I start to see my old obsession popping up on the street. In any case, I have wondered if fragrance was gonna be another situation like that, since it seems to appeal to so many of the impulses for quality, individuality, beauty and expression that so many other people seem to need to find expression for. And, even with the economy so sluggish, it really is an affordable luxery much of the time. One really nice bottle of perfume (or 6!) is certainly more affordable than the “big house, big car, fancy vacation home” variety of demonstrating good taste.
Anyway, articles like this make me wonder if good fragrance is about to become (return to being) more culturally acceptible/common some time soon.
I’m pretty sure the aspiration to be a ~*perfumista*~ has been a trend for a while.
Maybe you catch onto things that are already trends before they become big.
I suspect that the popularity of good perfume is highly variable by social status, country and age groups. Most young American professionals that I know are fragrance-phobic. If they wear anything at all, it’s exceptionally low-sillage, inexpensive, and rather generic. The goal seems to be still to smell “clean” and not to make a statement. I guess what I was trying to suggest was that perfume may become more individualized (or at least, I’m hoping so).
My sister used to “hate perfume” because ALL of them give her a headache etc, until I started wearing perfume.
and she liked what she smelled on me so she decided to look for a perfume for herself.
and out of ALL of the perfumes at Sephora she chose Black Orchid o__O
Yes, I think that we can act as “ambassadors” for perfume by not wearing scents that fit people’s preconceptions and pointing them out. Heh. Now I sound like I’m proselytizing! I’m here to witness the gospel of Amouage. . . 😀
I think people are too obsessed with being ~*in the know*~ and knowing perfumer names, etc.
Nice picture of Nahla! I missed this article (not being a Star reader). Giggled over the De Niro comparison – it was a nicely written article, despite the title.
On a different subject–did anyone else notice the glaring (to me at least) grammatical error? The correct phrase is “prove your mettle”, not “prove your metal”. There seems to have been a distinct decline in recent years in the quality of much news writing. Spelling, phrasing, and punctuation errors occur with alarming frequency.
Maybe they’re just Judas Priest fans? 😛
Sadly, I suspect this is something we are going to have to accept. I am a teacher (science), and I do not see a push to teach grammar and spelling in the way it used to be. There is an assumption that technology will correct it for us. Obviously, this misses the point that the technology is only as good as the designer/user. I think the real, often unspoken, reason is that teachers have less time than ever with their kids, due to a combination of factors including higher class numbers, constant state testing, fewer class days, among others. When we are forced to prioritize, language arts teachers decide to reduce grammar/spelling and hope that technology takes the place of instruction.
Spell checks only catch sequences of letters that are not valid words. They generally do not flag words that are valid words, but out of context. I once read a wonderful poem on this subject, which I wish I would have saved. It was full of words that were spelled correctly, but used incorrectly. As best as I can recall, the end of the poem was something like this:
“Eye no its rite, my spell check tolled mi sew.”
HA! Yes, I completely agree. When I was in college another, older, wiser student warned a group of freshman to always READ what the spellchecker was replacing words with. She had applied to be an RA (residential assistant), went through the interview process, and at the end had been asked, “So, why are you applying to be a bra?” 🙂
Spelling mistake aside, I do think its an interesting point. It does seem a norm, in the ‘perfume community’ to try appreciate notes one is most naturally somewhat averse to. It seems to me that this is an important way of coming to appreciate new things. She/he might be suggesting that it has some special significance to ones status in the ‘community’, but personally I haven’t really found that status, or hierarchy is a factor here – at least not in any of the forums I visit….
Totally noticed this, and had a twinge on Denyse’s behalf–she cares so much about language!–since I’m sure she meant “mettle” and the reporter misspelled the quote.
Though should add, re: 50 Roses point, that I think the far more frequent appearance of errors in print has more to do with having fired all the copy editors than a general decline in grammar usage, etc.
I connected to the idea of wanting to wear a fragrance that is a work of art. Since I don’t have a very acute sense of smell I can never smell what ‘everyone else’ is wearing. Also, it doesn’t seem like the best reason for shelling out $$$ for a niche fragrance – ie. just to be different. That kind of motivation sounds tweeny to me but as I said, that may be cos I dont smell what everyone else is wearing anyway.
Do you distinguish between “just wanting to be different” and a sincere desire to express one’s individuality? Do you find that you are always suspicious of these efforts?
I don’t like uniformity, and I have a tendency to always want to express the ‘other side’ to everything’. This makes me a bit argumentative by nature. Also i do have a penchant for the ‘unusual’. I’m not sure that this is really compatible (logically) with my skepticism. Don’t know!
Merlin,
Not sure you’ll see this, but I wanted to thank you for your reply! Looking back over it, I was afraid that I was sounding too snippy yesterday! As an “unusal” person, I’ve been accused of doing things “just to be different” by so many people who don’t seem to believe that any of us might just have different tastes than the main stream. I don’t like the implication that creativity is really just an attempt to get attention or what-have-you. Not that I thought you were doing this, but you had hit a nerve, or nerve-memory, or whatever. In any case, thanks, again! 🙂
I agree with this entire comment.
Hi all–The error on mettle vs metal was entirely (and embarrassingly) all mine. Sadly, writers have no control over the headlines on our stories, though what seems too obvious to enthusiasts and experts can be just the right title to draw in a more general audience. Appreciate all of your comments though. I’ve learned tons from this site–and its comments–over the past few months.
If I got embarrassed over every typo I made, well…
And, I appreciated the point: it’s interesting to view the dynamics from a more abstract standpoint.
I also enjoyed your comments about the ‘irony’ of the top noses also creating the more generic perfumes. This has certainly confused me: it seemed a little like designer clothes and ones without a brand coming out of the same factory. In that case we are all fools shelling out for the label. And yet, I still found myself preferring the designer ones. The parallel with top directors making both art and commercial films dispels most of my confusion around this. Tks for a good read!
Nice to see you over here, Kim! Should have said above that in spite of my twinge I appreciated the article as a whole. Denyse is a great source (as is NST) and you took the subject seriously, which many journalists don’t–it’s nice to see a piece that mentions the word “art” and “perfume” in the same sentence. (And hey, at least all the perfumers names were right–harder than it looks in some cases. I’ve read many an article on perfume, and a few books, where they aren’t.)
I think it’s a great thing to get the names of the talented perfumers out to the public. You know the article authors haven’t googled how many times their title has been used but I’m hoping it will catch someone’s eye and lead them to investigate some of the scents we know & love. If perfumers sell thoughtful great fragrances, it will encourage them to make more!