Fragrance trends for 2012 and beyond

After the retirement of Serge Lutens (see his De profundis funeral liturgical prayer and last perfume) this fall begins with the end of an era which has started in 1992. With this fall all the modern myths are falling and a new perfumery begins with a younger generation of creators.

In the last 6 months I noticed the most alarming thing I shared in many short reviews. Some perfume houses are approaching an end, in maximum 5 years they will be almost out of the business. The reason is very simple. They forgot what making a perfume is. I’m not talking about aesthetic values or things open to debate, but those elements which are the base of fragrance design – tenacity, volume, diffusion, scent trail, signature. Emotion and beauty cannot exist if a perfume doesn’t breathe. And there are many perfumes like this in Paris right now. I do not compare them with a hypothetical “golden age” but with other modern creations, with those of the 90’s for example. With a lot of pain I noticed how many perfumers become “anosmic”, first there was a question of emotion because all these recent briefs had a profound negative impact, second it is a question of inspiration and renew because working in a glass cube without a direct contact with scent (not bottles) is a prison for the soul, third there is a serious technical decline which I cannot explain (you should be a better technician with age, not the opposite). Some will lose their jobs, other will abandon because the desire or the flame is exhausted. A similar change is happening right now in the fashion industry where the pressure and the amount of work are bigger than ever. Some great perfumers who signed several fantastic creations in the past 20 years will leave the scene in less than a year. This became obvious with their launches. (clique aqui para ler o artigo completo)