The Eau de Senteur is a perfume designed for mothers & babies and young infants. They are usually soft and light and without strong odours, and they are alcohol free. It's these qualities that define them.
Early examples of the Eau de Senteur are Baby Dior (1970) and Eau de Bonpoint (1986) which was composed by Annick Goutal. On the sample sleeve it is described as
'Soft, airy and tender, Eau de Bonpoint celebrates the love between mother and child.
For all women who like perfume as soft as a caress.'
Eau de Bonpoint was also made in an alcoholic version; a milky peach with an accent of neroli, which -in the Eau de Senteur- may have been replaced with orange flower water.
One reason for making Eau de Bonpoint in two versions is that there was a technical problem with the Eau de Senteur, and presumably, the alcohol version was there for those who weren’t satisfied with the perfomance of the water based version. Most perfume materials will dissolve in alcohol but they won’t dissolve in water, so trying to create an Eau de Senteur that smells and performs like an Eau de Toilette is a challenge. The answer is to use adjuvants that bind to both perfume oils and water, but this can lead to the juice having a thick feel, low diffusion and poor longevity on skin.
But that didn’t stop Jean-Paul Guerlain from entering the fray with Petit Guerlain in 1994, a flowery creamy soap and baby powder composition that feels a bit like a mild version of Ivoire (Balmain 1980).
This is not just some historic trend that faded into the past though, it it still going strong today. There is the ‘moisturising’ Bonne Étoile by Dior (2023) with notes of pear, rose and musk, and in 2022 Hermès released Cabriole, which parfumo.com describe as fresh, floral, creamy, woody and powdery.
Hermès also took the alcohol-free idea mainstream with an Alcohol Free Body Spray of Terre d’Hermès, which performs a bit like the EdT seen through misted glass. The ‘Spray Corps Sans Alcohol’ is not an Eau de Senteur however – it’s not designed for children. It could find a niche with those who avoid alcohol though.
The Eau de Senteur proper is a staple of mother and baby shops, including the French chain Petit Bateau. Their current offering is called Eau Soilogne, which is a blend of neroli, mandarin and honeysuckle set on a base of white amber and musk; it’s a similar type of scent to that used in baby powders and creams.
Like Eau de Bonpoint, Eau Soilogne is available in two versions, for babies and for adults, and the website says it is ‘alcohol-free with no essential oils [but] enriched with waters of organic chamomile, cornflower and calendula’. They also claim that, in a test of 27 women, 100% say that after using an unspecified version of the perfume, their skin feels ‘soft, smooth and non-sticky’ and that 96% report that their skin tolerates the product well.
The makers of Eaux de Senteurs may have overcome the technical challenges, but on the other hand a sample size of 27 is pretty thin evidence, and the fact they have to emphasise there isn’t a problem would seem to undermine the claim.
But technical problems are not the only issues facing the Eau de Senteur.
A baby’s smelling apparatus is already up and running before she is born, and because a newborn’s eyesight only extends to about eight inches, the main way she recognises her mother is through her odour.
So it’s fair to ask, is it right to disrupt the olfactory link between a baby and it’s mother when it forms such an important bond between the two?
Another cause for concern is the effect a perfume may have on the olfactory system of young infants. Even if it is fully formed at birth it may not be that robust.
A related issue is the possible effect a perfume may have on the infant’s immune system, which is more vulnerable than an adult’s – which has gone through the trauma of childhood diseases, and been exposed to all sorts of environmental stimuli that develop the body’s ability to deal with toxins. By the time a person may begin to experiment with perfume themselves, they are likely to already have an immune system that can ward off most of the potential effects which a perfume’s ingredients may have on the body. Which is probably not the case for the very young.
If there is a concern about the safety of certain perfumery materials, this must be more pressing in the case of babies and the very young. That’s not to say I support IFRA, I agree with the ban on Lilial, but it seems to me the institution has developed it’s own momentum and has now gone too far. The point is, if there’s a question of safety, our children must come first.
As well as the potential health issue, there is a moral concern about the child's capacity to choose. Babies and pre-verbal toddlers have limited ability to express preferences. Beyond the most basic of reactions – gurgling, crying or screaming – there is no way they can give consent to being sprayed with perfume – whether it contains alcohol or not. Adults can make an informed choice about what we put on our bodies, or on our clothes (and into our homes), but this is not possible for the very young.
Regardless of these concerns, perfume for the young has been made for a long time, and for many customers: Baby Dior (1970), Psitsenbon by Tartine et Chocolat (1987), Baby Touch by Burberry (2002) and Baby Tous by Tous (2007) are just a few.
There have also been a couple of odours from Demeter – because that's what they are, odours, not perfumes : Baby Powder (2006), New Baby (2015) and Baby Shampoo (2016). These are less likely to be used on babies than ‘real’ perfumes; after all, who would spray New Baby on their new baby…? Perhaps a wry commentary from the founder of CB I Hate Perfume.
Of course it doesn't stop at the nursery. A range of crass Eaux de Toilettes are sold by a brand called Eau Jeune, which means Young Water in English – which gives a clear idea of their raison d’être. As well as these pre-teen pongs, there are perfumes sold by Disney which are aimed squarely at the juvenile sector. These include perfumes with the names Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Bambi.
As well as those, Disney do a series of Princess perfumes : Princess Jasmine, a brown skinned maiden holding Alladin’s lamp; a black princess, a mermaid-like princess who’s shown with vaguely aquatic imagery and -oddly enough- red hair, and a pink perfume for Princess Aurora, who carries a bouquet of flowers.
As well as these stereotypes, you have Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella etc, who are usually pictured on the box with a Disney-style castle. The list of fairytales seems to have been fairly mined out before Disney moved on to the likes of Hannah Montana, and - no doubt- whichever starlet is next on the conveyor belt of dreams.
One such example is Ariana Grande, who’s Cloud is a well known example of the teen celebu-scent. It is actually a simplified version of Baccarat Rouge 540, a structure that stymies an overdose of sweetness with a powerful woody accord. BR540 works in a similar way to Angel, which is a rather grown up scent. Even if it uses an overdose of candyfloss, red fruits and caramel, these are balanced by patchouli and woods, which make it unpalatable.
There have been lots of foody notes in perfume since Angel’s anti-gourmand set the ball rolling, and red fruits, tree fruits, caramel, candy floss and vanilla are still popular. The use of this sort of thing is just an appeal to our childish sweet tooth, something that has now encroached into adult perfume. This is not the fault of Olivier Cresp however, the idea behind Angel is brilliant -and not at all manipulative- it’s just the way it’s been exploited which is the problem.
As we saw with the peach and creamy notes of Eau de Bonpoint, and the mandarin and sweet amber of Eau Soilogne, the use of gourmand notes begins at an early age. But when the upper end of the target market for the gourmand / fruity-floral is the late twenties, many of the women wearing these essentially juvenile perfumes will actually be mothers, which brings the unsavoury trend full circle. As adults we should be developing more sophisticated tastes, and not regressing back to the sweet tooth of infancy.
When the infantile tendency of modern feminine perfume is compared to things like Ma Griffe (1946), which was described as the first Teen scent by Carven – but now reads like a grown up green chypre, or Babe (1977) – whose aldehyde, coriander and floral notes are also found in Arpège – Lanvin’s answer to No5, we can see that the level of maturity expressed by feminine -and also to some extent masculine- perfume has lately been lower than it has been at any time except maybe the eighties.
And a question arises from all of this; why has there been this rash of fruity-floral and gourmand perfumes?
One answer could be; sweet fruity gourmand notes are an easy hook to dangle before the consumer.
First of all it lures us in by using one of the most primeval of sensory stimuli, the taste of food – in this case the sweet berries supposedly gathered by the women of the hunter-gatherer tribe.
And then there are the sugar and caramel notes, which are the foundation of the patisserie sector – which is thriving in France. In Paris, people think nothing of paying 40€ for a cake to round off Sunday lunch. People the world over like sweet stuff…
Another answer might be; like citrus oils, synthetic fruity notes are essentially a by-product of the flavour industry, which is several times larger than the perfume sector. As a result, these sweet and fruity materials are turned out in huge volumes, making them cheaper to manufacture than things like floral notes, aromatics and aldehydes, materials that are used solely in perfume.
So, it’s no surprise that after the sweet and soft Eau de Senteur, and then the gourmand and the fruity-floral, we now have the vape flavour, the energy drink, and many Eaux de Toilettes, all of which smell pretty much the same.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Stop Press : Luca Turin says that sugary gourmands are back… When will it ever end?
Thanks for reading. If this made you think, please like -and subscribe- as it helps the blog to grow. You might also consider making a pledge to support my work.
Bibi
I had no idea they made baby scents! I find it all slightly grotesque. Thanks for bringing this to my awareness.
Whatever happened with perfumes like Ma liberté by Patou, what happened with all the beautiful lavender, nutmeg, cedar, musk, vetiver, patchouli in women perfumes? Now Ma liberté is seen as a masculine fragrance when the whole idea behind it was to express women's freedom, their strength.