Solar notes and aldehydes, and orange blossom making an entrance… men’s fragrances are boldly going where none had gone before. This is likely due to the influence of alternative brands like Lutens and L’Artisan Parfumeur. But, for designers and consumers alike, something changed thanks to the fragrance Dior Homme and its iris note. Among the new products being launched for spring 2007, Fleur du Mâle by Gaultier and Fahrenheit 32 by Dior are two new men’s fragrances that you could hardly have imagined a year or two ago. They both feature orange flower notes, and solar, oriental waves of scent. Indeed, they probably won’t leave women indifferent either. Just as some women appreciated Dior Homme as soon as it came out, and Fahrenheit – the original one – when it had its unforgettable violet note. Are men’s scents becoming more feminine? Not necessarily. But there is clearly greater daring on houses’ part, greater trust granted to the fragrance designer too. And perhaps, too, a desire to give men who want it the right to wear notes that once would have been reserved for women’s fragrances. After the balmy iris notes in Dior Homme, maybe men will now feel free to wear a gourmand iris. Like Iris Ganache, the latest scent in Guerlain’s L’Art et la Matière collection, built around a woodsy oriental white-chocolate-and-iris accord.

Audacity and freedom… for alternative brands, the masculine-feminine border is often subjective. Like the brand Etat Libre d’Orange, which, having already launched a tuberose revisited for men, is innovating again this spring with Delicious Closet Queen. A fragrance whose masculine – almost to the point of macho-ness – opening, highlighted by designer Nathalie Feisthauer, is a mask behind which you’ll find notes borrowing heavily from the feminine vocabulary: iridescent raspberry, rose absolute and notes evoking lip gloss and face powder.
Along with the creative impulse to use ingredients more freely, women’s scents are treading in male olfactory territory too. Thus ange ou demon (Givenchy) and Eau des Merveilles (Hermès) innovate with waves of oak; and Belle en Rykiel features lavender and coffee, notes which have always been rare in feminine scents. When you ask Nathalie Rykiel, ‘What if a man wore Belle en Rykiel ?’, she replies ‘(thrilled) I’d love it! It’s such a totally feminine scent, and yet the juice is so unusual and sensual that a very, very self-confident man (laughter) could wear it... maybe.’