Has Perfume become Samey?

What do the stats tell us?

There is a fascinating graphic on Linkedin. It charts the frequency of different notes used in perfume releases. The data, which covers 1980 — 2024, has been culled from the Parfumo database, which is a useful resource for “stats nerds” like Fitz Chao Li - the creator of the graphic, and nerds for perfume history like me.

The chart can be divided into three sections. The top section forms the most commonly used or core notes. These make up the bulk of perfumes released at that time. Middle ranking notes tend to be modifiers, which rise and fall as trends come and go. The bottom section is the grace notes and novelties which are occasionally used to ring the changes.

The video is courtesy of Fitz Chao Li whose strap line is Data & Fragrance. You can find him at www.linkedin.com/in/fitz-li/

The graphic moves quickly and there is a lot going on, so I have taken screenshots to help examine it and draw out some trends.

It begins with bergamot in second place. Even though it’s rarely the star of the show, bergamot’s citrus, woody and orange notes blend with a whole host of different materials, making it a useful modifier. It has always been popular with perfumers and is always in the top five.

Bergamot rose to first place in 1984, but this was only one change out of many. Every note was in flux, showing that in the early 1980’s a variety of perfumes were being made.

It was a time of rampant creativity, with a whole range of classics appearing: Antaeus, Obsession, Poison, Paris, Sables, Coco, Knowing, Fahrenheit, the list goes on.

And then in 1988, Cool Water reset the compass. After that, things in the top half of the graph settle down, suggesting consensus. While jasmine and musk lead the way into the aquatic 90’s, there is still volatility as different supporting notes are tried out for size.

Jasmine is ubiquitous in perfumery and is rarely out of the top five, although it does see some ups and downs before dropping away to seventh place. Recent ethical concerns about the wages and conditions of the workers who pick the flowers in Egypt won’t help jasmine’s popularity, but perfumers have long known how to evoke jasmine with aroma-chems; a method that is also much cheaper than using the flower.

By the late 1990’s, the modifiers and minor notes are moving round a lot, but the top six core notes are fairly consistent. sandalwood goes from fourth to oscillate in second and first place with musk.

Sandalwood has always been popular. It has a long history of use in India, where it originated, and has been used in the home and the temple since antiquity. The comparatively recent rise of modern perfumery, which was naturally attracted to this rich, milky-sweet and complex note, lead to overharvesting of the sandalwood tree, and the source of the oil disappearing. When this happened, attention was urgently given to replacements, and synthetic substitutes for the rare and pricey Mysore oil. Thanks to the efforts of these supply side workers, sandalwood -in a variety of forms- has remained among the top five notes in the perfumer’s palette.

By the year 2000 the popularity of musk becomes clear, along with more stability in the top and mid sections of the graph. Despite that, there is still volatility in the bottom half, with cardamom, vetiver and lavender showing large variations.

The start of the twenty first century saw the consolidation of two long term trends.

First of all musk reigns supreme. White musk is actually a class of molecules and not a single thing, and their odors are quite different to the animalic smell of Musk Tonkin. These molecules, which are core of laundry perfumes, have been popular over the years, but they really came into their own as the aquatic age took hold in the 90’s. Like Castor and Pollux, musk and jasmine orbit around each other in the top two places, but in the late 90’s, jasmine began to drop back. It should be noted that being produced by the mega-ton, musks are far cheaper than a synthetic jasmine accord will ever be.

Musk is not the sort of note people go into a shop and ask for, but it is one of those fillers -like Iso E Super- that adds a great deal to the ambience of a scent. It is probably musk’s usefulness to the perfumer that accounts for its popularity, rather than public demand for a note which is often hidden away in the mix.

As well as the rise of musk, there is the terminal decline of muguet or Lily of the Valley. By the mid 2000’s it was down to 14th place, but things have got worse since. Once being a part of the classic floral bouquet, now that grande dame perfumery has gone out of style muguet has died a death. It cannot be extracted and is hard to recreate. Even Coty was not able to get it right; his Muguet des bois was composed by his right hand man Henri Robert. No wonder it’s not popular with perfumers.

Between the fates of those two notes we find vetiver, which after a period of change, settled down to a more stable path at the turn of the century. Vetiver is in the mid range of notes, largely because its mainly used in masculine perfumery — the second sex of the perfume world, and that means the number of releases are fewer than those on the feminine side of the scent supermarket’s aisle.

Rose has never really gone out of style, but it’s never really been in style. It’s seen a slow decline over the years, from third in 1983 to eighth in 2024. For some of the time it mirrors the popularity of jasmine, but being the junior partner it never overtakes it.

During the early 2010’s musk is way out in front, but below that there is volatility all over the chart.

In olfactory terms vanilla and amber are closely related; amber being a mixture of labdanum and vanillin — the main molecule in vanilla essence. So it’s no surprise that for a long time vanilla and amber snaked around each other in the graph. But in 2017, vanilla overtook its derivative for the first time, and after a slight dip hasn’t looked back since, ending the video in second place.

Where amber is often associated with the Oriental (or now called the Amber with a capital A) the dominance of vanilla (or usually the less complex, less darkly animalic) vanillin, has opened the way to the gourmand age. From Angel, to Be Delicious and Lost Cherry, the gourmand has been around for three decades and is still going strong. Only this year, that pillar of the perfume establishment de Nicolaï succumbed to the trend, taking three gourmands to Esxence in March 2024.

An interesting variant of sweetness is the cotton candy odor of ethyl maltol. This first came to prominence in 1992 with Angel, and was then used in 2015 in Baccarat Rouge 540, which spawned a rash of imitators adding further impetus to the vanillic category.

After that there came a brief rise in the fortune of patchouli, which -like musk, amber, sandalwood, and to some extent vanilla- is one of the heavier materials with a full odor profile. By the late 2010’s we see these narcotic notes at the top of the chart.

Patchouli’s dry and mothball woodiness may have been used as a counterbalance to the sweetness of vanilla, but it’s a multi-tool for the perfumer. An essential part of the Chypre, and often used in woody fragrances and leather, there is even a note of patchouli in Eau Sauvage, Roudnitska’s groundbreaking cologne from 1966.

The fermented leaf has always had something of a risqué reputation; first being the scent of a loose woman in the 19th century, and then in the first half of the 20th century it became part of the parfum fourrure, patchouli was used to hide the smell of a dead animal’s fur. In the sixties patchouli was the mark of the hippy trying to cover up the smell of his pot (and stereotypically unwashed state) and in the seventies, Afghan coats became popular, which -being made of a cured sheepskin- also needed some masking, especially when wet.

Patchouli broke away from its bad reputation in 1992 with Angel’s woody-sweet gourmand. The Fruchouli, which developed out of it, simplifies the theme by focusing on nuclear red fruits and patchouli. It’s this pairing that propelled the woody leaf to its highest placing of number three, but it’s fallen back now that times have moved on.

There is also lavender, which thanks to the camphoraceous notes they have in common is a natural partner to patchouli. Lavender was a fairly popular note in the eighties, but it’s declined in favor and now is mainly used in the Eau de Cologne and Fougère. That was long thought to be a men’s fragrance, but recently, fougères for women have been made, boosting the use of lavender — no doubt.

Looking at the graph for the 2020’s it’s clear that that volatility has largely disappeared and the status quo has taken over. With the most popular notes being musk, vanilla / amber and sandal, the prevailing style is likely to be cozy, enveloping, even somatic.

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In amongst the normal fluctuations you’d expect from a creative industry, there are four distinct periods when the volatility of perfume notes declined.

• One was in 1988, when a new genre appeared from nowhere, bringing about a volte-face from thick and narcotic Florientals to the light water tones of the Aquatic. This caused flattening in the top half of the graph.

• A lesser pause happened around the millennium, when angst got a grip of business — causing worries about computers crashing and planes falling out of the sky. Approximately 30% of the graph flatlined between 1999—2004, mostly in the upper half.

• In 2015 a new phenomenon appeared where the mid section of the table levelled off while -with the exception of musk- the top and bottom notes became more lively.

• And then came Covid 19.

In the four years before 2019, there are 65 movements on the graph. During the year that lockdown swept the world there are ten, and in the four years after Covid, movements nearly halved to 35.

Discounting the anomaly of 2021, when there were just four, the average number of movements dropped from 16.25 a year before Covid, to 10.25 after; roughly a third less.

This graph shows the decade surrounding Covid, with the date of the first lockdown in France.

Lockdown ⬆ March 2020

In the mid term, the effects of Covid don’t look that serious, but that’s due to the on going effects of previous events.

Now compare the beginning and end sections of the graphic: the early 80’s and the early 2020’s.

Experimentation & static conformity

Creativity is being crushed.

There are currently six versions of Sauvage in the Parfumo database, while Fragrantica has no less than 37 versions of La vie est belle. We are living in the age of the flanker, where iterations of tried and tested formulae are preferred to new ideas.

It’s time for change.

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