Trends? Unfollow.

Fragrance is a fascinating world to live in but, admittedly, we do our best not to live in it full-time. A little bit of distance allows us to maintain a healthy perspective when we are in the developing stage of a new scent. It’s liberating not to be tethered to what is expected institutionally and, most importantly, what current trends dictate. Instead, we design fragrances from our own narratives and begin each new project from the same place, square one.

The intentionality of our “distance” means we also don’t test or catalog to memory as many popular fragrances as one might imagine. Clients sometimes do ask us if we know fragrance “x” or “y” to help identify their tastes. Or, industry types will reference trending fragrances to test our reaction. Although it can be a speed bump in the conversation in the moment, I am ever more convinced it’s a true asset. It is the principal reason why our fragrances are inherently unique. Not because we strain to do something different for different’s sake (re. strange), but because we organically follow our own instincts and trust in our personal creativity. The most repeated and gratifying praise we receive in store or at a fragrance fair is, “I haven’t smelled this before”. A compliment that should be the norm and not the exception in our creative field.

Therefore, our perfumes may or may not be in line with certain market trends. If they are it’s purely by happenstance and, frankly, isn’t part of our approach. It’s not possible to create freely while chasing trends. They are at odds with each other. Just ask any of the uber-talented perfumers at the world’s best fragrance houses whose talents are wasted when satisfying clients’ requests to copy [insert best selling fragrances here] instead of creating something wonderfully new. Naturally, we have been on the receiving end of suggestions to make something that tracks closer with current trends to sell more or, worse yet, to come out with a fragrance that is similar to “x” or to “y” because of its sales success. Eye roll.

There are so many replicas or variations of the same scent profile being packaged and repackaged by the majority of brands that it’s hard, even for a “nose”, to know what perfume I am smelling out in the wild. It is a real, unfortunate trend in the fragrance world. It may be lucrative but it’s also a lazy way for brands to quickly bring to market (before the trend moves on) an entire collection of fragrances without putting in the work. You just “call it in”. Where is the joy in that?

Being lead by the nose (pun intended) by fast changing trends to have your mildly edited version of everyone else’s version of [insert trend du jour] smells as boring as it sounds. It has also created a drug-like dependency on social media gimmickry, uninformed content creators and “shock” marketing campaigns that push trends in order to feel relevant. Yawn.

There’s good news, though. The fragrance world is a larger universe in the end and there are still many bright stars putting a light to what is beautiful in perfumery — interesting, creative work being done with quality ingredients and with a distinct point of view. That’s a definition of “niche” I can rally behind. We have our favorites that succeed in this proposal and I daydream that a like-minded subgroup with these principles emerges from the fairs and awards foundations that have moved on from that for the love of hashtags.

You may have to look harder for the standouts because they aren’t generally the loudest voices in the room … but are the most compelling. Their stories are the ones that unfold in chapters, not in #captions.