Smelling Like A Dude (Or A Lady) Is So Passé

Until the middle of the 20th Century, there was no such thing as a women’s or a men’s fragrance—there were only fragrances. The fact that we’ve been trained to think of women’s scents as “perfume” and men’s as “cologne” is nothing more than marketing (not to mention a gross misunderstanding of those terms). In reality, the only thing that matters in a fragrance is whether or not you like the smell. And more and more, fragrance manufacturers are embracing to that old-school philosophy. According to a recent article in Pret-a-Reporter, the gender-free niche fragrance market is up 24 percent over last year, and is currently experiencing double-digit growth. “Five years ago there were fewer than 200 new niche fragrances, but last year alone there were over 1,000 new launches, and probably 950 of them were gender free,” Amy Bourne, North American regional marketing director for International Flavors and Fragrances’ told the website. Read more at Esquire.