fragrance categories - useful or not?

I still consider them interesting and fun to use nonetheless.
In general and in life, i am not a huge fan of any kind of categorization, but i can see the need for it ,and sometimes, they can help me get something i want , even if it's lead me there via the wrong direction.
And other times, i just see stuff than i wouldn't have encountered otherwise by my own means, if you know what i mean.
Is it truly meaninful you ask? only if you find them categories fun and somewhat informative.
There is not one official ,regulatory, legal way to categorize the scents, but we can only rely on the info the house gives us in the sense of in what category they think the fragrance in question is and what their intention is for that kind categorization.
In any case, i think it's very much a personal thing.
If someone says "x frag" is an oceanic fourgère and another says it's really an aromatic hespéride, i would take note but i wouldn't say that one is more right than the other (at least not superficially) since everyone has different views and it's all very relative.
Pink sugar considered an Oriental? IMHO, that's pushing the envelope, maybe just for the sake of being controversial, but we have to see what that person (or the company) considers and oriental to be like.
My personal opinion would be something else, and ultimately the most important, at least to myself.

Good question, I'd also love to know the answer to this!
I'm in two minds about fragrance categories - on the one hand I do find having a fragrance category helps me to get a better idea of what the fragrance might smell like... but on the other hand I have sometimes been misled or confused by the fragrance categories and in those cases I think I would have been better off just reading a simple description of the fragrance and coming to my own conclusions.

Fresh, green, floral, foody are fairly useful descriptions, but spicy and oriental seem murky to me, too far ranging.

I liked your description of "womanly," quinpus, for some Rochas frags. I understand that categorization. Sometimes I say a frag smells French, which probably has something to do with its having aldehydes.

I'd rather fragrances would be referenced with something like a musical key signature. Or, as in wine, you're given three variables: grape variety, alcohol content and residual sugars as indicators.

The system does need some kind of overhaul.

Absolutely, a good question.
Michael Edwards is great for hair-splitting accuracy, but there are so many categories that it is hard to remember them all and make those minute distinctions between the sub-categories contained therein.
H&G has a great flow chart for quick reference, but the definition within those categories is not specific enough.
I use several different classifications at once.

And then, I always ask myself, what three notes do I smell the most in this perfume? That way, I do not get overwhelmed by details. I think that the longer you do this, the more perfumes that you smell, the less you have to refer to classifications to find what you like. Artisankey just said to me today that she can intuit what perfumes will smell good on her because she has become so familiar with the notes. I wholeheartedly agree.

Certain combinations, especially if they are the ones that are dominant TO YOUR NOSE in the fragrance, will almost always come out as a winner.
For instance: rose + patchouli, galbanum + labdanum, myrrh + sandalwood. Whatever. You know yourself. Me? I'm a woody girl. Doesn't matter if it lands in the Floral category, or the Chypre category, or the Oriental category. It just so happens that many Woody fragrances end up in Chypre and Oriental, so that's where I end up. But if the wood is prominent enough, it draws me into Greens sometimes, with MOST EXCELLENT results. And I would be missing those fragrances if I simply avoided them according to the charts.

Same with me, Purplebird - I like foody, fruity perfumes and have several, but two are floral, two are basically oriental and one is a woody chypre. I don't have an allegience to any particular family - I just like to smell delicious!

I love woody orientals and gourmands so I just had to look up Pink Sugar and sure enough it's listed as an oriental in many places. It is getting much more confusing, but if I get some idea of the notes, I can then see if it is worth testing, for me.

Yes! Wonderful analogy.