Vetiver may be a traditionally “male” note–Guerlain’s much-missed Vetiver Pour Elle not withstanding–but you can pry my vetiver scents from my cold, dead, scaly claws.

I don’t subscribe to the “perfume has no gender” line precisely: wear whatever you want to wear regardless of the marketing (of course) and don’t feel your choices are limited by arbitrary labels (naturally) but I think perfume is still deeply entangled with gender performance.

Fragrance is just as culturally gendered as drinks marketing. (see also: “I’ll have a babycham” and decades of Diet Coke and beer adverts.) It shouldn’t feel transgressive to wear something that smells good and gives you pleasure, unless that sense of transgression is part of the fun for you. But it still can. Though I think it’s easier for women, socially, to step across the highly gendered marketing lines of scent.

Reinforcing the boundaries seems awfully old-fashioned.

So, though the men in suits have a lot of money to spend I’m a little surprised and disappointed that Frederic Malle has launched such a traditional masculine-fragrances-for-masculine-men campaign. Pinstripes and all. Insisting on such traditional roles and perceptions seems so pointlessly limiting.

It would be so much more interesting if Malle’s campaign presented everything in their range to men. Not least because Portrait of a Lady can smell *devastating* on a man.

I’m trying to work out which feels more cynical right now: previously demarcated stuff/companies claiming fluidity, or flying a flag for this sort of old school definition.

Originally posted 23 March 2019