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Are colognes more varied than perfumes in general?

post #1 of 7
8/2/10 at 6:30am
Thread Starter 
Hey Guys:

I was trying to analyse some perfumes that my wife and stepdaughter like to wear. It seems to me that the three that I tested (Escada Signature, Ralph Lauren Romance, and
Davidoff Echo) were all rather similar. I can hardly see the necessity to even own all 3.
It's like they all were floral or floral/fruity in nature. I think about how many different smells exist in my cologne collection. So, is it fair to say that guys have a better array of options to choose from than girls?
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post #2 of 7
8/2/10 at 7:10am
Hi!

At the moment my GF uses D&G The One, Gaultier´s Ma Dame, Armani Diamonds, Hypnotic&Midnight Poison and YSL Elle (I´m sure I´ve forgotten some) and most of the time I have no trouble with identifying what she wears. I´ve tested a few other women´s frags and I don´t think that those were very similar either. But many are sweet and have floral or fruity elements, that´s true.

The interesting thing is, my GF often says that all the male fragrances are VERY similar to her. It´s all woods, musk and spices, she says! Blasphemy, I know. She´s unable to recognize even the most distinctive ones I have (IMO). For her it´s just good/bad/I don´t care, lol. Maybe it´s just easier to see the differences, if you are more familiar with those fragrances (I don´t know the ones you´ve mentioned)? I don´t know, let the pros decide on this one.
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post #3 of 7
8/2/10 at 9:29am
Before we begin one thing must be made clear. When you say "cologne", to what are you referring:
1. fragrance marketed to men, meaning your use of "perfume" also means fragrances marketed to women
2. Eau de cologne strength, as opposed to eau de tolette or eau de parfum
3. the family of light citrus fragrances

I think you're going for 1. But regardless of 1 or 2, to both I say absolutely not. Both mens and womens scents (if you subscribe to that distinction) have a huge varieties with entire families and numerous classifications. EdC may have fewer members than EdP but both are quite diverse as well.

The three you've tried are mass market, appeal to the widest audience possible fragrances. They're also all roughly the same age so it is likely that they were all engineered to appeal to the same demographic. I'm not surprised at all that you find them similar.

Don't judge 1000's of untried scents by the similarities of just three. Keep sampling more fragrances and you'll find your question is false. As for what scents to try, well, if you're talking about #1 then spend some time in the Female Fragrance Discussion forum. If #2, try sampling from the big houses first where finding very good quality fragrances of numerous types is easy. Guerlain, Annick Goutal, Chanel, and Hermes should all be widely available at stores such as Macys, Nordstrom, Dillard, etc.
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post #4 of 7
8/2/10 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I was actually referring to definition 1. There are actually several reasons why I posted this thread. The inspiration was the fact that I tested three consecutive perfumes with a similar smell to them. Also, I like to follow Teresa's Youtube channel, and notice how often she is drawn to either unisex or men's cologne because perfumes tend to be so similar. Also, if I chose three random colognes from my collection, I'd be unlikely that I would keep bemoaning the fact that they all smell alike. I might get woodsy, fruity, sweet, or tobacco-like for example.
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post #5 of 7
8/2/10 at 11:40am
A long time ago I had a pet theory that men's scents had to be more complex than women's scents. (I'm talking about scents marketed to men versus scents marketed to women, of course.) I thought women's scents only need to smell pretty, conform to notions of primping, be floral (usually), and generally fit into a simple stereotype of women's beauty cosmetics. Men's scents, however, I argued, needed to dis-conform to primping and smelling pretty, yet still smell good, thus being more complex since two things were going on at once: "I'm a manly man and don't really care about smelling pretty" and "I want to smell good." Where it's socially appropriate for a woman to just "I want to smell good." Socially, men have to have a butch thing, a non-pretty, a non-vain element in their scent.

Not that I argued this was how it should be, and not that scent life is always so simple, but at the same time I thought that male vanity required a complex scent to be both not-vain yet smell good. So in this way I thought men's marketed scents were more varied than women's marketed scents, and by varied, I meant more complex.

I've sort of forgotten about the idea the more I've smelled though.
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post #6 of 7
8/2/10 at 11:56am
In my opinion, it`s exactly the opposite. Most male fragrances end in the same anoying, simple base, that seems to be the only way to finish a frag. It`s always a mix of notes like musk, cardamom, cedar.
At first, I think that if you want to create a thread, it`s important to know the differences between cologne and perfume denominations. And it`s absurd to make a general rule based on 3 fragrances tested in a row, specially if they seem to belong to the same family. It`s also very strange to conclude that guys have a better array of options based on the reviews of a particular person. The male fragrance corner was never the focus of the fragrance industry. You can see it clearly in most mass market fragrances, where in general the male counterpart is only launched after the female was a sucess, and barely the male version is as strong or interest or complex as the female one. To me, saying that guys have better array of options seems odd, only if you consider as a better array of options all the male cool water clones, aqua di gio clones or the massive quantity of aromatic fougere fragrances, when you can harder find recent floral or chypre fragrances for men. If the recent market reflects the vast array of male fragrances, I feel very sad about it.
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post #7 of 7
8/2/10 at 12:00pm
Well I'm sure there are exceptions, and I'm sure one's conclusions are only as fitting as the sample pool tested, but still I don't see a pain or an infraction in thinking about the idea. I think it's kinda fun to put up thoughts and impressions, not that I mean such to be pronouncements or declarations.
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