dupes.

In 2024, a news article talked about a silent war that’s happening in the perfume industry.

It’s silent because it happens behind closed doors, and it’s not an all out war, more a series of raids. As soon as a new perfume hits the shelves, the big perfume producers buy a bottle and have it analyzed in their labs. In a matter of hours they can have a comprehensive list of the materials in the flacon.

If it appears that the perfume is selling in quantity (and this sort of data is closely monitored) the rival houses might direct their perfumers to make a similar -but not identical- version. Within a couple of weeks, this can be licensed to a fashion brand, manufactured, and sent to the shops.

Everybody knows what’s going on but nobody complains — and the reason is they’re all doing it.

From the news report you’d think it was a new phenomenon. But in 1980, the perfume composer Edmond Roudnitska was already complaining that perfumes are ‘outrageously and impecuniously copied several times as soon as they reach the market’.¹ The reason that is allowed to happen is, in 1975, the court of appeal in Paris ruled that -unlike music, or writing- perfume is not the work of a human mind and so isn’t covered by copyright law. Incredible but true.

As a result, perfumery became a Wild West; rustling was officially fair game — except it wasn’t beef herds but formulae being spirited away.

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In perfumery school, perfumers are trained to recreate classic perfumes by using their sniffing skills and trial & error. The art students you see drawing in museums are doing a similar thing, learning how the old masters achieved their effects by copying them. So when GCMS² came along, which can break down a perfume into its component molecules and print them out on a graph, decrypting perfume became child’s play. Perfumers now had their own Colossus, the proto-computer that helped Bletchley Park crack the coded signals of the Nazi war machine.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Jacques Guerlain would lock his formula book in the vault, knowing it was safe from prying eyes. But by the mid 1960’s this was kind of quaint. With the advent of GCMS, the key to a perfume’s formula could be found in every bottle.

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Perfumers could now decipher their rival’s secrets with ease, and once a perfume can be broken down and run up again in a matter of days, the incentive to create new and original works begins to wane. If it’s the case that the outfit on the other side of town can read your secrets straight out of the bottle, why bother coming up with new ideas? If they are any good, every Tom Dick and Harry will soon find out how they’re done and compose their own version.

The reality is, if it’s profits you’re after, it’s much easier and quicker -and surer- to copy the latest big hit and add your own bells and whistles.

These decorative elements serve two purposes. First of all they’re a fig leaf to hide the plagiarism that’s going on. Secondly, they give the punter a reason to buy your version of the formula, as opposed to the similar one offered by your rivals. But, as a consequence, the whole USP of your product becomes a tweak to a commonly used formula; an original nuance — nothing more: perfume becomes samey…

The big perfume makers are not just chasing each other’s tails. As Luca Turin puts it, they are chasing their own. At the last account there were 37 versions of La Vie est Belle, which amounts to 36 lost opportunities of doing something original.

Flankers have become an epidemic in recent years … copies of copies of copies. But apparently, they are legit because they are made by the owners of the intellectual property embodied in the formula.

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Not only has creativity taken a nose dive in recent years, the quality of perfume has also gone down. This won’t be news to anyone who knows vintage perfume; modern perfume often seems thin by comparison to the old stuff. According to Luca Turin (again), who was interviewed for an article on sky news.com³ the cost of the juice in the average bottle of perfume is about $1. If that bottle is 100ml of Eau de Toilette, which sells for -let’s say- $200, the juice would amount to 0.5% of the retail price. Adding in the cost of the bottle, the packaging, distribution, the retailer’s cut and other overheads (let’s forget the marketing budget, which can run into millions but isn’t part of the actual perfume cost) the profit margin appears to be enormous; a situation that’s bound to attract entrepreneurs.

The tycoon Alan Sugar, who appeared in the British version of The Apprentice, once set his hopefuls the challenge of making and selling perfumed soap. One likely contender did an Ernest Beaux and put an overdose of sandal into his formula. It was apparently a great smell. But even at £10 a bar in the 2010’s, it lost a wedge of money and the candidate was fired. ‘The idea’s not to make a good smell, it’s to make good money’ — Sugar might have told the poor guy as he was shown the door. How many industry bosses would disagree with that?

Of course you don’t have to be a tycoon to try your hand at the smelling game. As many artisans and niche brands have shown, brass neck and a spare room are enough to get you started. But that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. As well as chutzpah, ideas are necessary — and good ones are hard to find, something that’s demonstrated by the high number of perfumes that fail.

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As well as niche houses and indie perfumers, there is another class of entrants into the world of perfume making, dupe houses. As entrepreneurs do, they have spotted a gap in the market. Their MO is to exploit a weak point in the model of mass perfumery — price. Where a designer scent could set you back two, three or even four hundred dollars, the dupe might sell at forty.

These pirate perfumers make dupes ‘inspired by’ famous perfumes. But, because of limitations on their budgets and access to captive molecules, as well as possibly limited perfumery skills, the pirates’ cut & pastes won’t be identical to the famous names. They are sometimes said to be close though.

And given the fact that a decent smelling dupe can be had for small money, it should come as no surprise that some buyers prefer a scent that’s close to the real thing but costs a fraction of the price.

And there’s a ready market for their products, one dupe house is reported to have turned over four million dollars in the first year of trading.

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Making a copy of another’s perfume is plagiarism, there’s no doubt about that. Copying the work of another person without permission, compensation or even recognition is immoral — it’s theft of intellectual property.

So, if copying is wrong, how can Ariana Grande’s Cloud be any less immoral than Monte Carlo by noted.aromas? — they are both bootlegs of Baccarat Rouge 540.

Apart from the quality and the price, the main difference between them is Cloud is made by an industry insider that has ripped off Francis Kurkdjian - but doesn’t acknowledge the fact, and Monte Carlo is produced by an industry outsider who has ripped him off - and admits to it on their website.

I assume neither are paying royalties, but Kurkdjian has no legal redress in either case because he has no legal rights to the BR540 odor profile - even if he owns the formula.

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At one time, perfume was an affordable luxury. It was destined for those who wanted a designer dress but had to settle for a bottle of scent instead.

With prices sky rocketing, it’s now the case that some can no longer afford this ‘affordable’ luxury.

So criticizing people for buying bootleg perfume is like saying it’s wrong to buy cheap products that look like market leaders.

Bootleg perfume, off brand products — they are essentially the same thing.

What they show is that a product can be sold more cheaply. And in the case of perfume, much more cheaply; a sure sign of excess profit in the system.

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I recently smelled a new perfume that’s priced around $300 but smells like a rerun of a popular fragrance from the 2000’s. That’s to say: a twenty year old idea made with synthetics, it is therefore a cheap formula. I wonder how much it cost too make.

This is only one example, but it is symptomatic of the way creative stagnation, exorbitant pricing and mediocre quality have come to characterize parts of the perfume industry.

In a situation where a market appears to be taking its customers for granted, is it any surprise that those who think they are not getting value for money will turn to a cheaper source?

If the trend continues, and the dupe houses become a challenge to the perfume corporations, the question will arise — did they bring it on themselves?

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Thanks for reading.

1. Le parfum, Roudnitska.E (1980) Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatographyE2%80%93mass_spectrometry

3. https://news.sky.com/story/this-is-the-silent-war-the-perfume-industry-wont-tell-you-about-13288116