Are "Dark Blue" Fragrances a Return to the Past?

Knock Knock. The Eighties are Back. 

One of the things I find amusing about perfume history is how the "powerhouse" trends of the eighties and nineties met their demise. We in the fragcomm like to tell ourselves that it was simply a gradual culture shift, that finally, after twenty-five years, people had grown tired of the bombast, and just wanted to tone it all down a few notches, but those of us who remember the nineties know what really went down: "Fragrance-Free Zones."

The nineties saw an upswell of public places that prohibited perfume, from doctor's offices to schools, gyms to town halls, all posting signs, some permanent, that forbade the obvious use of personal fragrance. There was a movement in the late nineties of people who took issue with fragrances in all products, because they were considered allergens and endocrine disruptors. This culminated in the 1999 report by The Scientific Committee on Cosmetic Products and Non-Food Products Intended for Consumers (link) which identified dozens of common fragrance ingredients (cinnamal, eugenol, geraniol, etc.) as allergens, and extensively investigated their potential for causing harm, all in the name of preventing eczema. This inevitably led to the IFRA crackdowns we've all seen in the last twenty years, with many once-common materials used in hundreds of perfumes no longer available for perfumers to use, or for the public to enjoy.

This was precipitated by over-sensitivity and hyperbolic reactions on the parts of small minorities of the public. All it took was a loud and very vocal fraction of the public to rapidly turn the tide on how we all perceive certain kinds of fragrance. Think about it: Let's imagine a physician with a practice that sees one hundred patients. One day, two patients in a row complain about a physician's assistant wearing Dior's Poison, perhaps one spray too many. The doctor asks the assistant to tone back the perfume, just to avoid offending patients, and she does. Three months go by, and the same two patients return for follow-ups, and again, despite the assistant wearing less Poison, they complain that the perfume "bothers" them, and elaborate that they're "sensitive" to fragrances.

The doctor returns to the assistant and tells her to stop wearing the fragrance, and all fragrance. She complies, and another three months goes by, and the two complainers visit and leave without incident or complaint. Then one day the physician's secretary wears a little Chanel No. 5, and the whole cycle starts again with the same two patients, only this time it's followed by an annoyed phone call from the husband of one of them, who says his wife needs something for the migraine she got from the smell of No. 5 that she was hit with when she paid her visit a few hours earlier. This prompts the physician to implement a "Fragrance-Free Zone," covering his office, the waiting room, and any area of his practice. In the span of a year, he's received at least six complaints from two percent of his patients (and their family), and that was enough to take action against all perfumes and extraneous fragrances at work. 

Ninety-eight percent of his patients didn't care or didn't notice that his employees were wearing perfumes, and said nothing, but because of how frequently and emphatically the two percent piped up, that was it for anyone who wanted to wear fragrance to the doctor's office. But it gets better still! Let's say that the physician himself regularly wore three sprays of Green Irish Tweed, and he was aware of the whole Creed in-bottle maceration phenomenon, so his GIT was pumping. Let's also say the same two patients who complained about the Poison and No. 5 never commented on the doc's fragrance, and acted as if he was fragrance-free. How could that be? It's possible the patients had zero sensitivity to fragrance, and acute sensitivity to the mere existence of other women. Perhaps they simply crushed on the physician and would never say anything bad about him, but enjoyed exercising a little power against others. Maybe they fantasized about exerting enough influence that their crush would "do something about it," just for them. 

This is all hypothetical, of course, but it goes to the broader narrative about how louder fragrances were perceived, why they were frequently banned, and the sorts of things that were likely happening in the background. That brings me to this thread (link) on Basenotes, in which the OP goes on a tirade against "Dark Blue" fragrances, a category of scent that I hadn't really considered all that much. This led to an interesting discussion, in which people concurred, mildly disagreed, and debated which fragrances fell under this moniker. What struck me was that the overall tone of the OP's first comment seemed in league with the stuff I would hear back when I was in high school. 

For example, he writes: 

"One of the problems with the dark blues is how bombastic they are from first spray . . . The experience of smelling these fragrances on other people is repulsive . . . Ultimately I don't care what other men wear. I am not seeking to be enamored by another man's fragrance. But this stuff is literally unavoidable in many public places and so demands attention." 

When I read this, my first thought was, really? I rarely smell fragrance on anyone else, and sometimes I'll go a whole week without smelling anything on my coworkers, including women. Americans aren't interested in perfume, and those who have a fleeting interest are often sucked into the dirt-cheap body mist crapola at Bath & Body Works. 

My sentiment was echoed by a couple other respondents, and some of them agreed that the supposed "Dark Blue" trend was mildly offensive. What I found confusing was the breadth of scents this "Dark Blue" category encompasses, including things like Hugo Dark Blue (1999) and Polo Blue (2003), far from anything recently released, yet lumped in with Versace's Dylan Blue (2016), Dior Sauvage (2015), and Bleu de Chanel (2010), all of which are also starting to grow whiskers. 

The thread was noteworthy to me because I have rarely but certainly encountered Sauvage in the wild, and every time it happens, I'm left wondering. The intense Ambroxan buzz, deep and woody and unmistakable that emanates from Sauvage is reminiscent of earlier landmark aroma chems, stuff like Iso E-Super, Dihydromyrcenol, and Calone 1951. Ambroxan is the chem of our time, having arisen in 2010 and now dominating many of the most popular men's releases, in the aforementioned scents, and things like the Armaf Club de Nuit range. Ambroxan can be subtle, or it can be loud, and there's no doubt it's being perceived as loud by some, who are in turn being the loudest among us in protesting it. 

But compare Ambroxan to the relatively suave woody oakmoss smoothness in something like vintage Halston Z-14, probably the loudest fragrance in my collection, next to Joop! Homme. It smells like a secondary player, more of a texturizer than an actual note, just as Iso E did back in the seventies. (Note that Iso E-Super is a combination of molecules, not a single material.) Compare it to to the very different in-your-faceness of Dihydromyrcenol, which was fire-hosed into our collective consciousness from 1982 onward. Compare it to Calone 1951, which by 1995 was crashing on our shores in olfactory tidal waves. These materials were intense, and fiendishly used in literally every other perfume. Aramis New West, CK's Escape for Men, Acqua di Gio, all left pink clouds of abstract salty melon, and with time they got louder. Calone is unique in that it is one of the few chems that we perceive as stronger the more we are exposed to it (olfactory fatigue in reverse).*

Those were the trends of the past, and now we're in the present, and people are still complaining about fragrances being "too strong." I think ultimately this holds less water now, given the age of the culprits cited in the thread (the newest is eight years old), and the fact that people barely wear perfume anymore. But the need to push for change, even where none is needed, lives on. I thought I'd close by commenting on the fact that the color "Dark Blue," whatever that may encompass, had me thinking about how strange it is that colors are still being associated with perfumes. If you were born blind and smelled any one of the fragrances I've mentioned, you would simply isolate the sensations as familiar or unfamiliar, and conjure up your own subjective imagined interpretations of them, which would likely be devoid of color. 

Yet for the rest of us, we associate colors with perfumes. What does something meant to be "Dark Blue" to the suits at Dior smell like to me, the average Joe? Interestingly, I don't really consider Sauvage to be a "blue" fragrance, and instead found it to be a rather novel take on a modern leather accord. More "brown" than "blue," and not that much. I have something called grapheme-color synesthesia, which means I automatically associate specific colors to specific numbers. For example, when I think of the number 2, written as the numeral itself (not spelled out), it is invariably Kelly green. The numeral 8 is very dark purpley-blue, almost black, but obviously color in the sunlight. Numeral seven is always banana yellow. Weird, right?

I experience a similar sensation with my sense of smell. My brother got me a bottle of Davidoff Hot Water (review pending) for Christmas. One sniff had me immediately thinking it smells candy-apple red. But it gets more complicated with fragrance than with my synesthesia. The latter is a genuine psychological trait that I was born with, and it operates independent of any outside influence, although one might argue that something in my formative years aided in matching the colors to the numerals. Yet with fragrance, I'm clearly being influenced by externalities. This isn't my mind experiencing multiple and simultaneous sensory stimuli; I am experiencing the physical color of the fragrance itself. Hot Water's box and bottle are both bright red. Of course the smell has me thinking in that shade - it wants me to!

Ditto my experience with Green Irish Tweed, which evokes a field of dark purpley-green whenever I smell it. Grey Flannel, same colors. Both are ostensibly "green" fragrances, both come in dark bottles, Grey Flannel's matching the shade in my head. Cool Water, light blue. Look at Cool Water's advertising and bottle, and it's no mystery why I think of that light, sky-like shade whenever I wear it. Does that mean the "Dark Blue" genre does the same? Should it?

A weirder thing happens. Polo Blue, for example, elicits images of white and pastel pink. Polo Ultra Blue gives me a beigey-grey vibe, with flecks of dark green and bright yellow. Avon's Mesmerize for Men is a melange of warm autumnal colors, despite its dark purpley-blue bottle. Chrome legend smells like white and pastel green. None of my darker blue fragrances (in packaging, if not name) get me to a dark blue color in my imagination. My green frags elicit green, my red frags bring the mean reds, and my "noir" or black-bottled frags can sometimes be fairly dark and lacking in color altogether, so some sort of synesthesia is at play here. It just doesn't seem to align neatly in the "Dark Blue" category, at least not as loosely defined by the guy who posted that Basenotes thread. 

Color and fragrance are inextricably linked, and I guess that will never change, at least not as long as people engage in color-coded marketing. But my guess is that the supposed "Dark Blue" fragrance phenomenon is more of a colloquialism for "stuff packaged in dark blue bottles," and doesn't exactly mean the fragrances themselves smell dark blue. 

*Luca Turin, The Secret of Scent, p. 50