New releases...mostly rejected by us?

Narciso R. & Terre D'Hermes have been getting pretty good reviews I thought???

As for many of the new releases...they get the same flack that previous releases did...you just don't hear about those anymore because they're off the market (and for good reason).

narcisso, fleur du male , terre and prada have all gotten rave reviews, although they are polarising... a lot of people either love them or hate them, not many are indifferent.

what makes a fragrance really disappoiting? if it's rive gauche ph.

I think there's a few issues including but not limited to.

1.) BN is a self-selected community so there is some re-inforcement of community norms, one of which includes a preference (snobbish?) for various niche high end fragrances. Hence the endless chatter about Creed, which collectively has sold far less than Acqua di Gio. We are not typical fragrance consumers, and so our tastes may not reflect that of the typical consumer.

2.) A style thing, where many people on BN don't like the crisp aquatic fragrances that are popular with the general american public. There is a market for sexy fragrances, and also an market for merely attractive inoffensive office fragrances as well.

3.) An issue with the current fragrance industry where there is a "throw it against the wall" mentality. It's expected that fragrances have a short lifecycle sell b/c they are new, and are mostly bought by people who are clueless about fragrances.

I notice that as newer releases get worse, we begin appreciating the previous year's frags more. Also, it take some wearing to really discover and appreciate new scent. We are so used to Antaeus or Egoiste also because we had longer exposure to it.
Based on reading this forum and wearing new frags, I would say that two-three years after release we can really separate the crap from scents that have something speacial to them. Look at the threads like "Rochas Lui, Underrated", etc.

I don't think there's a preference for "niche" or high end fragrances at all...I think the members here have a preference for quality and innovation, whether or not it comes at a $50 pricetag or a $500 pricetag. It probably comes across that our preference is for niche products because we're more aware of them than the average consumer (maybe?).

It's in the nose of the beholder-The general public will gravitate towards heavily advertised scents. Remeber the constant barrage of ads for Obsession and CK? Personally, I don't follow the pack on new releases. I've got a box full of "Fresh" smelling Cr@p given to me by relatives, friends, et cetera. I've found most people just want an "inoffensive scent" for the office, or casual wear and could not care less about the quality, or how many people wear it. After all, it is marketing and $$ that drives the Scent industry. Get a scent that the public will buy with a barrage of advertising, make your profit, and then drop it when the well runs dry.

I don't agree with the ones you've listed, but I do agree with the point that us Basenoters are generally not impressed by the hyped up, popular stuff that gets released. We seem to be less concerned with the hot scent of the moment and more so with finding stuff that really fits our individual styles and personalities.

I totally agree. Terre d'Hermes is huge favorite here (didn't it win a BN award last year?) and Narciso has done nicely as well. I think what disappoints us are our expectations for an upcoming scent, especially if there is a lot of hype about it (i.e., Tom Ford) or the house has previously produced very nices fragrances (i.e., Dolce & Gabbana with its yawn-inspiring Light Blue PH).

Let us not forget that the average person on this site is not the average perfume wearer. This is not a boast. The average guy who goes to the counter at Sears wants something that smells nice. Done. On the other hand, there are people here who are looking for specific perfumers (not houses), notes, genres, historical features, and like Scentronic noted, scents that fit their individual styles and personalities, not to mention wardrobes. It's like the difference between a music enthusiast and someone who wants something to play in the background. Different approaches entirely.

Its hard of all of us to decide since we all have unique taste here. But I do feel that Usher was hands down a flop amoung us?

Actually, I thought Usher was OK. Yeah, I wouldn't buy it, but there were worse releases this year. The dreadful, fake-concept CKIN2U Him was one of them, IMO, along with the new Beckham fragrances sold at drugstores. But we did get some good new releases, despite the general overall lack of innovation this year.

I do have to say that many of the new releases from the big houses have been "rejected by us". Take a peek at Yves Saint Laurent: us Basenoters prefer M7, Rive Gauche, Kouros, and Jazz to L'Homme, as we think that the others have a character and quality that L'Homme lacks when compared to the others. But L'Homme is YSL's best-selling men's fragrance by far in the United States, outselling the next-best-seller in the brand (Kouros) by a significant margin. People in the US tend to prefer the kinds of scents that are "rejected by us".

Take this simple test: Walk into a Macy's or Dillard's store (preferably a high-volume one), and go to the men's fragrance counter... ask the SA what's #1 in sales. They're likely to say Acqua di Gio, a scent that's universally panned here on Basenotes. Then, go to Sephora in the same mall and ask the same question. Next, go to a store catering to a higher-end clientèle in the same mall like Nordstrom, Von Maur (if you're in the Midwest), Saks, or Neiman Marcus and ask the same question. Even though you might see better scents on the shelf there, chances are that they'll still say Acqua di Gio. In the end, people don't care whether it was created for some royal Middle Eastern king or if it contains some unique ingredient... but they do care about the designer/celeb on the label and the actual smell.

And that's why scents like AdG, Unforgivable, and Le Male do so well on the market... they smell good to ordinary people and they are attractive to them, too.

Excellent point!. I think the fragrances which tend to get bad reviews are one that we see repeated again and again with little to no reverence to originality or "story telling" within the fragrance... I smell Black and Double Black and Lacoste and all of those and sure they smell good. But they don't have the extra something special that makes an afficionado's blood pump faster.

I also believe that SOMETIMES there is a bit of ego when evaluating scents. You cannot be considered a connoisseur by praising AdG, any college student can do that. In fact, if you can trash the popular you will be able to pull the "my nose is better than yours" card. That same card can be pulled when prising a Niche. You cannot get it wrong, it is a niche. It is always safe to say that a niche perfume is good, even though we all know that price and quality are not proportional.
Also, it is safer to talk bad about the new than defend it. The truth is that reviews, price tag, people endorsing it/using it (Paris Hilton or Creed), posters on the streets and magazines, the comments you read on BN, the house producing it, etc, influence our final judgement. It is actually really hard to just smell the scent. That is the only way that i can explain people loving MI and hating Unforgivable.
People want to comapre Gucci II with Gucci PH and Envy forgetting that Gucci II has a very different intention than the other two.

I think the small monologue about critics at the end of Ratatouille is appropriate here:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new."

As well as the exclusive element of niche fragrances. They are expensive and have limited distribution. In normal circles you can be pretty sure you are the only person wearing "Secretions Magnifique"

Plus, how many would admit that they paid $225 for something they didn't like?

New fragrances are only disappointing to me if,
a. They are very similar to a genre and aren't unique enough to make me consider getting them at some time i.e. I clasify them as "nothing special", and

b. They do have that certain something special about them, but they have little lasting power on me (which rules out about half of the niche scents, and a smaller proportion of designers), and

c. When I smell something people have raved about and it smells something like pot pourri that someone slapped together with essential oils (which rules out another chunk of niche scents), and

d. When it's something really, really good with a ridiculously high price tag and I can't find it cheap anywhere on the net.

I notice people here getting very disappointed with scents having a so called synthetic smell. I usually like them a lot. They're different - a nice contrast to whale vomit (i.e. ambergris), which I also like.
Renato

One thing I really like about Basenotes is that scents of all price bands usually get very balanced, well informed, fair and evocative reviews. Often they are very good reviews too. (Look up Old Spice or Tabac, for example, as well as mid-price scents like Grigioperla and so on.) I don't get a whiff of snobbery there.

I've made several "blind" purchases, and revisted old favourites, based on recommendations made on these pages, and they have been across all price categories.

For instance, I would never have discovered the fabulous Iceberg Twice PH (bought for a song at my local TK Maxx) were it not for Basenotes' enlightened reviews. Nor would I have been inspired to re-try Blue Stratos for the first time in decades. (Although the jibe about it in "Life on Mars" also pushed me to try it again!)

That, for me, is the true value of a forum like this.

We also have to consider that there are more releases than there used to be, period.
Lets say that in a given year, there are 5 releases that generally please us here at
Basenotes. And there are 70 releases. There was a time when there were less than 15
releases per year max.

So if we're going to be pleased with 5 or fewer scents per year anyway
(look at any given year...there are probably less than 5, even in years we consider to be knockouts, with a few exceptions),
that means there are simply more bad releases.

I know this is flawed logic. But come on. There ARE more releases, and we're liking about
the same number per new year as we do any other year. It's not us liking fewer scents and
being more snooty. We just recognize that the good ones are not increasing in proportion to the bad.