There was talk about the proliferation of perfumes, about the aestheticization of their bottles, but also about the immobility in offering scents that always resemble themselves, about gourmand ones that are easy to sell, and sometimes about scandalous proposals, such as the scent signed in Lady Gaga’s blood (let’s leave without attention to the fact that it actually tasted like strawberries) or as pseudo-artistic essences that interpret any unpleasant human odor (one of many is Stercus from Orto Parisi). The picture has remained the same for the past 5 years, peppered, if you will, with interesting molecular research and an increasingly attentive audience to the hedonistic and meditative effects of scents.
This weekend we discovered that the olfactory landscape had changed. Finally in Pitti Fragranze in Florence, a fair in which more than 190 creators of perfumes produced in Italy and abroad take part, we felt a new air, new raw materials and were shocked by emotions, immersing ourselves in new combinations of coffee and mountain air, musk and coconut, pistachios. or basmati rice. Perfume becomes a personal means of self-expression and satisfaction of psychological needs, including calming anxieties, satisfying narcissism or greed, replenishing childhood deficiencies, or banishing fears. Let’s remember Sexorcism from a new brand with the explanatory name Grammatik Drammatik. Or Teo Cabanel’s Encore, which just updated its image. Or “Indecent Cherry” by the Korean duo Borntostandout. Perfume is rediscovered in a new medicinal or narcotic guise, sometimes made from smoke and fireplaces, for those nostalgic for tobacco, sometimes from apple snacks.
Meanwhile, perfume influencers are shocking the public and reigniting sales with their destructive language: in detail: the “dusty” pyramid of the Night fragrance by Akro, built by Olivier Cresp and forgotten by many, has disappeared from the market after it was defined as the “smell of sweaty sex”. Which, between you and me, I really didn’t hear. But here I should open a chapter on the subjective value of what we feel and the memories that reveal us. The great thing is that people, especially Gen Z, want to discover and learn the art of perfume, its power and, most of all, how to use it to make your Tinder matches successful.
The packaging abandons the golden rococo aesthetic (except for the stated Middle Eastern one) and creates a cleaner, linear, designer look, sometimes without lettering, just with its own name. So, in this trend, which is called “haptics”, or tactility, you can try out ceramics, wood, cork, recycled plastic and various metals or stones. The material is non-linear and participates in the emotional state into which these new scents transport us.
In short, this is a pivotal year, a year in which major distributors of artistic fragrances truly and actively engaged with social media, with youth, with the future, abandoning certain dynamics of exclusivity that still made this beauty irrelevant. niche. The niche should be like this because it is artisanal, artistic, not obvious, but, in my opinion, it should also be transgenerational, open to genres, open to new means of communication, to who we will be.
That’s why in this edition of Pitti Fragranze we felt better, more inclusive, more active, more ready to create alliances and exchange views. We’ll hear some good ones.