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Cologne vs Perfume: Two Questions, One Query | Première Peau
Cologne is a concentration. It is not a gender. Those two sentences resolve most of what gets argued about under the heading cologne versus perfume...
Ziryab: The Man Who Invented Seasonal Fragrance, Deodorant, and the Three-Course Meal
Ziryab: The Man Who Invented Seasonal Fragrance, Deodorant, and the Three-Course Meal
Fragrance Wardrobe: The Case Against the Signature Scent
Fragrance Wardrobe: The Case Against the Signature Scent
Perfume as Involuntary Autobiography
--- You chose your fragrance this morning. Or you chose it years ago and have been wearing it on reflex since.
Clean: How Soap Became the Dominant Smell of the West
--- A smell that most Westerners cannot identify as a smell at all. It is the smell of clean.
Nag Champa: How a Stick of Incense Became a Religion
A smell that needs no introduction and resists all explanation.
Patchouli: Rehabilitation of an Olfactory Pariah
Ask someone who does not work in perfumery to name the single smell they associate with the 1960s counterculture, and they will say patchouli.
Pour Homme, Pour Femme: The Invention of Gendered Perfume
Walk into any department store and the geography of fragrance will instruct you before a single word is spoken.
Niche vs Mainstream: Why the Border No Longer Exists
A particular kind of nostalgia that clings to the word "niche" in perfumery, a nostalgia for a time when the term meant something precise.