Perfume

The revolution is coming. Perhaps it has already started. In the last 50 years there have been more perfumes introduced than ever before. They integrate international scents and revolutionary ideas. From trying to express intangible emotion to bringing about colognes for men, a lot has changed and will continue to change on into the future.

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The tumultuous 60’s brought about revolution. Civil rights, women’s’ rights, hippies and fresh-faced crusaders. Revolution showed in the perfumes of those days. Estee Lauder launched Youth Dew, an oriental fragrance that was long lasting and made from oriental scented oil. Altogether, they created a different scent experience from the stogy perfumes of the 1900’s. It was the start of something new.

The late 60’s saw the line between scent and art blur, as scent designers began to strive to create the idea of ‘love’ in a scent. Individual design houses became known as much for their modern bottle design as the modern scents contained within.

The seventies moved toward big business and big marketing from the small independent perfumeries. Coco Chanel launched her famous No.19 scent. It’s still one of the most famous perfumes to date. In the US, the Bicentennial seemed to signal both a nostalgic and futuristic feel.

Two kinds of perfumes were popular in during the seventies: floral (smelling like flowers) and Chypres (which perfumes.com defines as ’strong, spicy, and powdery’.) Bill Blass joined in on the fashion/perfume fusion, releasing a self-titled perfume. Dior tried marketing a stronger, harsher Chypre perfume to women around this time as well, to coincide with the fashion of ‘liberated’ women wearing men’s colognes.

The Yuppie decade of indulgence in the eighties brought about decadent perfumes. Guy Laroche introduced the now standard in men’s cologne - ‘Drakkar Noir,’ and men’s fragrance cologne would never be the same. And though Coco Chanel was gone by this time, the perfumery released the Chanel fragrance ‘Coco’ to honor their famous namesake. Calvin Klein roared onto the scene in 1985, giving the world ‘Obsession,’ three years later he introduced ‘Eternity,’ another standard by which all still judge perfumes.

Generation X of the nineties seemed to be the decade of the merger in business. Multi-tasking and streamlining became the buzzwords of every industry, including the scent industry. The fragrances released this year seem the antithesis of the high-stress business environment. Scents from this decade tend to be subtle and cool, fresh and with more than a few fruity and floral overtones.

Yet the complexities of this time would not allow for just one theme. Personal computers were becoming common predicting further transformation. Calvin Klein (now ‘CK’) launched ‘One,’ a fragrance intended for either gender - in touch with the modern and fast changing gender rules of the time.

The independent perfume houses have made way for the mega-conglomorate business. And exclusivity is a thing of the past. But through the years, we’ve gained a diversity of scents and ideas about making scents that cannot be denied. Indeed you could say that scent is young America’s new mood ring- a different one for every occasion.