End Perfume Scentism! - Is it all about the juice, or... does the label matter?

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Paris Hilton made a vote for # 5! Lol

It doesn't matter to me. However, some weeks ago I had the "pleasure" to witness the show of some rich Russian bitches who forced a sales assistant to show them their "most prestigious and expensive" fragrances. Until then I wasn't aware that (human) trash like this actually exists. :-)

I hate to admit it, I wouldn't wear a celebrity fragrance due to the fact that it is a celebrity fragrance. The label does matter to me, unfortunately. That's why I wear GIT not CW, I can't really tell the difference. :'(

Only the juice matters to me.

I think there are MANY different factors that strongly influence perception of fragrances, beyond the juice itself -- from label/branding, to knowing the published notes, to reviews and forum posts, etc, etc.

Short of blind sampling, I don't believe it is possible to truly ignore all the influences other than actual smell that affect our perceptions and opinions.

Exactly

I agree. That is ALL that matters.

I honestly own a Paris Hilton frag..

There are 3 Paris Hiltons on here, lol.

It's all about the juice, but I haven't liked any celeb scents, just haven't.

I personally think labels do not matter, but I also take labels as a guide to test perfumes. With so many houses/brands/perfumes on the market, I guess it comes down to one's own discretion and preference to test potential buys based on knowledge of labels and houses, especially for those which cannot be tested immediately as a local store and has to be sampled or blind-bought online. So, celebrity scents and many mainstream/designer houses are simply too generic/boring for most perfume-lovers.

Labels don't matter in that it's theoretically possible to have a great scent covered by a terrible label. But that doesn't mean that certain labels don't have a far higher success rate at releasing good products than other labels.

Doesn't matter to me, I own some £2.50 Avon fragrances. But celebs fragrances I don't even try them.

The label can initially represent a potent hook but If the fragrance sucks there're no labels that can save it. So, in the end, it is all about the juice.

The label is irrelevant - the juice is the important thing.

I go by what I like. If something smells great to me, I'd buy it. Conversely, if I dont like the way it smells, I wont wear it - I dont care who made it or what the label says. Ex - I love Gold and Dia, but a lot of their other stuff I dont like at all. There are some Serge Lutens I like, but a lot of his line I wouldnt wear even if someone gave me a free bottle.

I think maybe your question has more to do with how we sample? I mean - I like Chanel, so I will try a new Chanel in the store just to see. However - being honest - I'd probably walk right by the Paris Hilton counter without a second glance, because I just think of those scents as loud, trashy and vulgar - not something Im going to like.

However - if there was a great scent wafting from that counter, I'd turn around and spray some on to see what it smelled like on me. If I liked it, I'd buy it.

You can't count on the label.

For instance, the original McGraw was nice. It really grew on me. The next flanker, McGraw Southern Blend, was impressive at first, but I tend to like the original more right now, because I'm into stronger scents at the moment.

However, the second flanker - McGraw Silver - was a HORRIBLE EPIC FAIL. Actually, it smelled slightly generic and kinda OK, but my wife hated it, which meant it was a FAIL. But no - the label was not a good indicator.

And the new men's SOUL2SOUL is really nice, despite the fact that it's a spin-off brand (faithandtimfragrances.com). Clearly styled off the original McGraw, it has the really warm, relatively recent aromachemical that is just smooth as silk, and very pleasant. (That same thing can be found, to a lesser extent, in Khloe and Lamar's first scent, Unbreakable Bond.)

But I also like Chanel no. 10 Poudré, despite the fact that it doesn't have a celebrity. Not even a hot actress. Although it does have a hot model with pretend wings. So you never know. Sometimes these strange Spanish brands are OK.

The problem with this question is the same problem with a question like "Do you feel you are an above average worker?"

90% of the replies will be "Yes, I feel I am above average."

It's DAMN obvious that many of the people who claim not to be influenced at all are, in fact, heavily influenced by many outside factors. Just go look at the release threads for the newest say, Lutens versus the newest Armani or D&G scent, to see how prone everyone is to prejudging a scent. If you really think some of those prejudices don't carry over to actually smelling and perceiving the scent, well, I've got some oceanfront property in Nevada to sell you.

There have been all sorts of studies done on what influences buyers. Even when we are sure we are not being influenced, there is lots of evidence that we are.

That said, I try not to be influenced by the label or the hype.

Great discussion! I'm going to agree with what you and 30 Roses have said, but I want to take a different viewpoint - that it's OK to knowingly allow yourself to be influenced by associations (or as I love to view them, appropriations).

The color of the juice is a great example. It's just a cue. But we find that an inconsistent color is not as pleasing as a consistent one. Yes, we can be Diogenes, and curse the dishonesty of a color that tries to help make the fragrance smell cooler, warmer, or more exotic. Or we can be Dionysus - and just let it happen, and savor the beauty of the whole. I prefer to do the latter. Women are experts at the appropriation of beauty, and use it to remarkable effect. I want to love fragrance like I love the beauty of women. When I see a beautiful woman, I don't try to imagine her rolling out of bed in curlers, bleary-eyed, in some effort to see the authenticity of the base physical form. Rather, I admire the waves in her hair that expertly complement her dress and her form, and love the beauty of the entire ensemble. Do I also love natural beauty? Of course! Sometimes I make a determined effort to single that out for appreciation. But I never let that get in the way of the pure enjoyment of the whole.

So what am I saying?

Give in to the hype! Love the bottle! Enjoy the presentation, the pretty women with Chinese fans and English accents who wave the ridiculous fragrance our way! Laugh at it all as well, and get twice the enjoyment!

Sometimes, it's more fun to just allow yourself to be the chump, and enjoy the ride.

RP, I wouldn't have a problem if that was what usually happened, but what happens so often is the reverse... maybe something like this:

People met the girl's friends or family years ago, and found them rather dull. Not bad people necessarily, just not particularly interesting. Some of them were the type who started wearing trucker caps the moment they became popular, and watch shows like Jersey Shore and Bad Girls Club. Some of them were just so timid and quiet you never got to know anything about them at all. Some were flighty and flaky.

So now, you meet her and you know that these are her friends and family, and you can't help but see them everytime you look at her. You can't see her charm because of their dullness. Immediately upon meeting her you expect the worse and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's what I see happen most around here. If it were just confined to that individual and their personal loss of not getting to know a funny, charming, sweet, beautiful girl - well, no big loss. It becomes a bigger deal though when those people start saying bad things about her to all the other guys in the community, though.

Interesting discussion - not doing the Chandler Burr thing but following it from a distance.

l also think the label matters to a lot more people than would care to admit it, actually. How many times have you read here 'I was expecting' followed by dismissal, or a criticism of some sort?

It doesn't happen quite so much if the scent is a 'success' for the person writing because usually it's a pleasant surpise, a discovery, and that's shared more as a celebration of the composition itself. No-one really wants to overdo the praise of the label for fear of being seen as a fanboy or a shill or whatever, but with a disappointment it's generally open season - 'they let me down, hell, they let us all down' - 'they' being the house of course, the label. I can only think of one person here who strikes me as truly brand / label agnostic but we have quite different tastes so his comments aren't all that much use to me

Of course it's the juice that matters, but I wouldn't underestimate how much the label, and often the perfumer, plays in terms of expectations before trying something. It works both ways - sometimes we might feel betrayed, sometimes we might allowances that we wouldn't for another label or perfumer and sometimes, worryingly, if it's XYZ it has to be good.

I wish I could be as open minded as some here but I can honestly say that if I know a piece of work is from a couple of particular labels I will approach it (if forced) solely to see if there are any redeeming features whatsoever because I expect none based on the sum total of my experience of their previous work AND what I know about the corporate culture and business model of the brand and the way they arrive at a release - that's pure prejudice at work . . . but ultimately it saves me a lot of time.

Great points - and yes - we do tend to do this. This is one of the reasons that my tastes shifted back to more mainstream scents, I think. I have always had this thing about looking for diamonds in the rough, hidden gems, and that sort of thing. Another was realizing that the mainstream classics were once new mainstream releases that made sense in their time. The combination gave me enough new loves that I doubted many of my old prejudices. To some extent, it has gotten me to be careful with labels - both the ones I read and the ones that I put on scents. Which is not to say that I still don't do it. I think I've got to be careful not to drift into a certain "ex niche-head anti-niche snobbery", which is not impossible, either.


Nice points. I think that we can forgive ourselves to some extent. Experience and expectations are extremely useful tools. Just because we can be cut by them, it's no reason to abandon them. I agree - we do not have infinite sniff time, and it pays to use it wisely.


I am so with you on Gucci Pour Homme II. I have felt the exact same WTF about the blue color. I think your suggestion of muted crimson sounds perfect!

Ideally, I would be able to sniff fragrances without knowing which house produced it. Forget all the hype. Just go for what you like.

I totally agree RP. And I'm not saying I'm above being influenced - positively or negatively - by branding, marketing, bottles, etc. My love of things like Davidoff Adventure, The One Gentleman, Play and even Play Sport!, and others, are at least indicative that I've come back from my old niche-is-obviously-superior mentality. I used to find - in first year or two of sniffing - that most designer scents DID smell the same to me although not because they actually did smell the same, but instead because of the niche snobbery I had then that would cause me to find only a single link of commanality between two disparate scents (say, an aquatic note) and instantly write them off as clones. I wasn't open to experiencing the scent because I had already decided it was inferior, and thus I truly didn't experience the scent, at least nowhere near fully, and it was my loss because of it.

Agreed about the anti-niche snobbery too, and I know I'm guilty of it sometimes. I'm not anti-niche as a whole, but I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction whenever I see people espousing the oft-repeated lies that have become a sort of accepted common wisdom that niche is inherently better, or that you need to spend > $X to really get a decent scent, or that a $200 scent is inherently higher quality than a scent 1/4th its price.

Speaking of scents that should not be the color blue: Azzaro Visit. Just.. wtf. Really? Who thought to make a dry dry dry woody, spicy nutmeg/cedar/guaiac, and color it blue?

Just some great points, SOS. One of the things you've really got me thinking about now is how the similarity of contemporaneous designer fragrances - an evolutionary result of the competitive environment - affects those who study it. This is kinda strange, but hear me out....

People who study fragrance basically come out of an initial environment where they view only a small part of smell-space - the part that they get in the familiar, narrow, closely-spaced competitive environment. That IS the world - or maybe their little solar system.

BAM. Niche happens. The scale is mind-boggling, and you realize how much nobody told you. It's like discovering that - whoops - there's a galaxy. The unspoken message: "Hey - you didn't NEED to know." Reaction? "LIAR! You never told me about this. And this new crap is WONDERFUL!"

The old solar system of designer scents looks puny. But it takes a while to realize that it's not. Grab your Feynman, and bonk yourself over the head, because you realize the real truth, that (forgive the horrible bad ways that you can take this) "there's a lot of room at the bottom". (Told you it sounded evil! ) But get serious, because it's saying that the real place to find the new and exciting stuff isn't off in G_d-knows-where - it's DOWN in the hot mix of crowded stuff right in front of you. If we go back into the HOT solar systems of similar designer scents where all the action is, we realize that there's a good reason people view the fragrance universe through such a distorted lens. The most valid solutions are globbing up near each other, and differentiating THOSE is where the big questions really are. Yes - there are valid questions about why Eau de Sawdust is palatable to all five Norwegian BN niche-heads, but not to the members of the New England Creed Appreciation Club. But the billion dollar question is what time-frame is needed to get cheap-n-girly note Y into macho pit spray X as a way to excite the market without losing it fan-base. And still make next year's juice 5% closer to truly fine fragrance than the year before, because that's the way it's all going. Yeah, one can say it's "the bottom", but personally, I think it's a vastly more exciting question.

I realize that this may actually be the most esoteric defense of designer redundancy ever made, but hey. Somebody had to do it!

Yes, the label does matter to me.

In the sense that I like to think that I can get a feeling for what the various brands, and various noses think is interesting. What the things are that they hope to set forward as representative of their own esthetic.

If I were to sample something blind....well yes, I would know what it smells like, and whether I liked it or not.

But if I were to later discover that it was a new release from Lutens, that would certainly add an additional twist to things.

Kind of like with cars. They are interesting for what they are, but knowing that it's the new Mustang from Ford has a level of interest to it as well.

So yes, from these sorts of standpoints, I am indeed interested in the label.

Even if, in a perfect Chandler Burr world, I would not see it until after I had smelled the thing and made my judgments.

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I try my best to only judge the juice, but like most people, I am influenced by the label, bottle and hype surrounding a fragrance.

Yeah, I don't really care about the label, if it smells great and draws me in, then I'll get it, or want to get it. But, there are some labels that I will out just because of the label because of past experience with it.

I think it's all about the juice and the price and then.... the label.

This.

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Put some Nautica into a Xerjoff bottle and some people will either love it immediately, or study it for hours and and wax poetic about it for a half a page. The same frag would be dismissed before hand its original bottle.

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I will not buy any Paris Hilton, Ed Hardy frag or the like on principle though....

Absolutely. There are plenty of mainstream frags that are absolutely worth a half page of poetry, if you give them the chance. And that includes Ed Hardy frags. The men's Villain is a very solid, beautiful fragrance by a perfumer who clearly has talent.

A lot of people think fragrance is egalitarian because it's the cheapest of luxuries, but I don't think they realize just how egalitarian it actually is.

Labels are meant to assure a certain level of quality and standards.
Some houses have secured the integrity tied to their labels while others haven't.

yeah this for me. i can't deny that i favour brands that package and name their stuff in a way that I like

Err.... I have standards. I don't want to be seen in a store sniffing a fragrance labelled 'Paris Hilton' - I have a reputation thanks

The label means squat. If the juice is good and combines with my skin chemistry, it's a sale. I don't care if Sam, Sam, the discount man is the label name.

Ok, to those who swear by 'only-the-juice-matters'-mantra, please decant out your fancy By Killian, Chanel, vintage Guerlain, Tom Ford or Xerjoff Murano glass bottles and send the empty vessels my way.





Edit:
What?? No takers? That's what I thought...

I've to admit, the label does matter to me.

It depends what you mean by "labels." I think presentation is of the utmost importance. You'd never put a plastic frame around a Dali. If perfume is an art then all of its elements must be considered, inside and out, and presented as such.

To some degree, I can relate to the sentiment that if the juice smells good nothing else matters, but I'm not being drawn to the juice housed in a big bottle of tack. I wouldn't be comfortable wearing something that doesn't fit with my own aesthetic ideals. I need a masterpiece to be just that, from start to finish. Give me something to really love and appreciate. A clever, creative or simple idea. Excite my eyes AND my nose. Much like food.

There is so much out there to choose from that I don't need to turn my attention to all those gaudy whores (niche & mass produced.) I'm probably in the minority, but if the presentation is bad I won't be interested in sniffing. I've never put a celebrity scent to my nose; and not just because they're often eyesores, but because their very essence is a cynical one. I need a little more soul in my scent, a little class and credence. It's so much more than the latest 6 pack or "accidental" vagina shot.

Unfortunately labels do matter to me. When you buy a brand that you like or a brand that you know, you know you are getting quality. Even if you don't particularly like the scent, you know you could sell it on if you wish and it would be more difficult selling a Paris Hilton on than a Chanel. Just my 2 cents