The Rise And Rise Of Gender Fluid Fragrance

According to Tania Sanchez, coauthor of the seminal 1992 compendium Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, the beginning of the modern era of fragrance can be marked by the 1882 release of Houbigant’s Fougère Royale. It was the first cologne to use a synthetic material, but its cultural significance runs much deeper, explains Sanchez. “The Fougère family, which would come to include such macho standbys as Brut, Drakkar Noir, and Cool Water, really established itself in that moment as the fragrance family for men anxious to prove they were ‘real men,’ ” Sanchez continues. By the 1930s, advertisements for Fougère Royale read, “Leave the flower perfumes to the ladies” alongside an image of tuxedoed gentlemen smoking cigars and drinking cocktails. (That flower perfume, of course, was Houbigant’s Quelques Fleurs, a lush cacophony of jasmine, tuberose, violet, rose, and ylang-ylang for the woman who “uses as great care in selecting her perfume as she does her jewels.”)

When they launched, these scents were decidedly of their time, olfactory representations of the strict gender roles established in the Victorian era. And what of our time? Look no further than Eilish, the ungendered debut fragrance from pop phenom Billie, which arrived last fall in a bust-shaped bottle that hints at the female anatomy. The heady gourmand was created by the 20-year-old “to feel like you could see anybody in it,” she recently told Vogue, “and you could be it.” Nearly 30 years after CK One mainstreamed the idea of gender-fluid eaux de toilette, a new generation is latching on to the idea that fragrance should exist beyond the binary.

Scent, in its purest form, is not a gendered proposition—Burberry’s recent ad for its bergamot-laced Hero, which features a shirtless Adam Driver becoming one with a horse, notwithstanding. “The gender-centricity of these flowers, spices, woods, and herbs was never part of the conversation,” says Anita Lal, the Delhi-based founder of LilaNur Parfums, a new line of 10 gender-fluid fragrances built around ingredients native to India, including the opulent jasmine sambac–tinged Malli Insolite. One of the most expensive and prized raw ingredients in the world, jasmine is traditionally considered feminine, explains Lal, but in India, where it is frequently used as a temple offering or to scent the home, it is embraced by people of all gender identities. Rose regularly faces similarly undue gender sidelining, adds Sanchez. “The salesperson for Frédéric Malle at Barneys once told me that he’d sold out his entire stock of Une Rose to a couple of wealthy Saudi guys for their personal use,” she shares of the Arab world’s non-discriminating embrace of Malle’s florals, including the tuberose-heavy Carnal Flower. His Bigarade Concentrée, a bitter-orange eau de cologne, has also enjoyed gender-bending success, boasting the same fresh appeal as Mäurer & Wirtz’s citrus classic, 4711. “Without the colors and the campaigns, you can just focus on making something that’s different,” adds Barnabé Fillion, who created Aesop’s 2020 R¯ozu, which casts rose through a modern lens by layering it over vetiver and focusing on “the liminal space between genders.”

Those liminal spaces are now getting smaller and smaller. “We are at a critical inflection point,” says Patrick Kelly, the founder of Sigil, an indie line of natural, genderless fragrances, including the modern-marine Aqua Viridi. “Binaries are being left by the wayside,” continues Kelly, “and thankfully fragrance is catching on.” This enlightenment can be credited to younger fragrance enthusiasts, suggests Byredo founder Ben Gorham, who has been successfully subverting the industry’s marketing traditions since he launched his pioneering gender-agnostic fragrance brand in 2006. “They don’t have to be binary to belong,” notes Gorham, whose newest scent, De Los Santos, is an herbaceous musk that bows next month. Gen Z is also more keen to use fragrance as a means of self-expression versus as a tool of seduction, suggests Fillion, whose new project, Arpa, features seven scents that explore the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia. “Younger generations are looking more for an experience,” he continues.

This checks out per a recent sniff test with my 20-year-old babysitter. Never conditioned to stay in a prescribed perfume lane in the first place, she was guided by pure olfactory preference, which defies arbitrary gender associations: In no particular order, her favorites included Aedes de Venustas 16a Orchard, a sparkly fusion of ginger and iris; Synthetic Jungle, the latest from Malle, which grounds powdery lily of the valley in a mix of earthy chypre and leather; and Dior Homme Sport 2022, a zesty amber wood straight from the “men’s section” that she likened to “a hug.”

“When we take away labels—people are more open to trying new things,” Vijay Uttam tells me a few days later on a visit to Scent Bar, a shoebox-size store that he manages in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. Uttam points me toward a selection of staff favorites on the boutique’s cluttered shelves, Parle Moi de Parfum’s Milky Musk among them. I spray it on, captivated by the hits of creamy sandalwood that feel at once comforting and inviting and completely unencumbered by preexisting narratives. That freedom of association is something perfumers appreciate too, confirms Alberto Morillas. A master perfumer for Firmenich, who was one of the noses behind CK One, Morillas has more recently become Alessandro Michele’s go-to perfumer at Gucci, where the binary is regularly blurred, then bottled. (Morillas’s universal, Harry Styles–fronted, chamomile- and jasmine-heavy Mémoire d’une Odeur broke boundaries at the Italian house when it launched three years ago.) “With no specific consumer in mind, we can focus on conveying emotions through ingredients,” Morillas says. In that way, he continues, “fragrances have shifted to reflect more of what people want to feel.” And these days, if you want to feel like a chiseled centaur, that’s okay, too.