All her perfumes are also gender neutral, something she says is particularly appreciated by her younger clientele.
"Millennials don't want to wear their mom's perfume. They want to smell different, like leather, crushed herbs and smoke," she explains. "I get a lot of women saying they don't want to smell like flowers."
— Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume Co, talking about generational differences in fragrance preferences. Read more in How millennials are changing the perfume business at BBC. Hat tip to PekeFan!
It’s good to know leather and smoke are making a comeback! But leather can mean so many different things. There’s the Leather (matched with herbs and oakmoss) in Azuree, or by comparison, there’s the ethereal leather with gardenia, hyacinth, and iris notes found in Shiseido’s Murasaki.
Unfortunately, I still smell copious amounts of Light Blue in the ladies bathrooms on campus. (O_o)
Yeah, it is clear that light, clean florals are not over.
Yeah, i guess the part about not wanting to smell like flowers is true
….most millenials around here wear big clouds of laundry musk or a anything else that says/implies ‘fresh’ (citrus)
OR they smell like candy or pastry shops with all those vanilla, fruity, sugar and caramel notes.
So yup, NO flowers there.
But leather smoke and herbs….. ? No
Though I had a millenial in my surroundings fall for vetiver scents. So there’s a start… ?
You did your part!
All I smell on millennials is Coco Mad, Angel, Flowerbomb and LVEB. I guess I should add Burnt Sugar and whatever celubscent that smells like sweet nothing. I’m snorting over here, because I know nothing about perfume, but I also know zero millennials who can name one niche perfumer. They buy their stuffs from Sephora, at least in south Florida. And what generation hasn’t said they don’t want to smell like their mother?
Pfffft.
I thought millennials were supposedly into clean and light – like Byredo Elevator Music and ELDO She was an anomaly. (I also like this category — along with other categories — this is not a criticism.)
But is this supposed to be a new thing that the younger generation doesn’t want to wear mom’s perfume? I didn’t want to either and I was a teen many years ago in the 70s.
I think there was a time when young teens wanted to wear the glamorous perfumes their elders wore, but that was surely over by the 60s.
I thought gender neutral re-emerged* with Obsession (For a Man! For A Woman! From Calvin Klein) back when Reagan was President.
*Fragrances were not gendered until they became commercial products which then required marketing campaigns.
You are right there Dilana, that was Calvin Klein’s whole brand back then, talk about reinventing the wheel at a higher price point.
I am a millennial and I think, oddly enough, opinions vary.
A lot of people seem to like very light perfume and I definitely think many men think a lot of aftershave is unprofessional/douchey now.
I find perfumes extremely highly blended to a similar formula these days. A lot will claim to have leather,suede or even ‘dark woods’ but it’s usually a clean white floral or a light oriental.
As everyone says it’s a very crowded market and it’s especially confusing and annoying when a lot of these things don’t match their scent notes.
Also thinking about storage space per individual: i think we will end up with fewer perfume hoarders among the millenails as we don’t have the space or sure address. I would conjecture fewer people chance giving perfume as a gift too.
I don’t even think they’re referencing older millennials, more like younger millennials/Gen Y. I also think whoever wrote that is telling the younger generation that they like those types of perfumes because they’re trying to sell them those perfumes, not because it’s fact. The new Joy and Gabrielle, both marked directly to 18-35 are clean florals, and popular. I get my intel from a younger Gen Xer who sells the stuff at Sephora.