What is the scent of a man? For most of us—especially those born in the '70s and '80s—our first thought is likely to be a clean yet spicy eau, the whiff we got a noseful of when we hugged our fathers or kissed junior high school boys: Brut, Polo, Drakkar Noir...fragrances evocative of muscles, clean sheets, stiff drinks. In those days, to paraphrase an Aerosmith song, dudes may have sometimes looked like ladies, but they certainly weren't okay with smelling like them. Now, though, there's something new in the air—and it's decidedly flowery.
Traditionally, men's and women's scents have fallen into categories: In general, the fellows wear fresh-but-earthy fougères (from the French for "fernlike"), citruses (the basis for all true colognes), and woody notes, while the ladies float about on clouds of florals and fruits. Recently, however, notes typically assigned to women's scents have been creeping over into the men's department like olfactory cross-dressers. The Chris Evans–fronted Gucci Guilty Intense Pour Homme, for example, has the ladylike orange flower at its heart; lily-of-the-valley and jasmine bloom in Clive Christian's self-proclaimed most expensive scent in the world, No.1 For Men ($865 for 1.7 oz); Ralph Lauren's Polo Double Black features a bright mango note; and Paco Rabanne's European-market-dominating 1 Million—really, that's what it's called—contains a distinct whiff of rose, as does Burberry Brit.
In many of these cases, the girlier notes are roughed up by more virile touches of patchouli, sandalwood, musk, oakmoss, and amber, but there's also a growing market for guys who yearn to smell more precisely like a bouquet. Le Labo's Rose 31, Les Parfums de Rosine's Rose d'Homme (described by New York Times fragrance reviewer Chandler Burr—an avowed rose lover—as "not flowery but floral...a scent like a labyrinth at dusk"), Hermès' Eau de Pamplemousse Rose, Fresh's Cannabis Rose, and By Kilian's Arabian Nights Rose Oud all feature the thorned beauty front and center. "I feel like the boundaries are collapsing," says By Kilian founder Kilian Hennessy. "There may be a few flowers that are still considered extremely feminine and harder for men to wear, such as tuberose. But I'm finding that Sweet Redemption, The End, a By Kilian fragrance based on orange blossom, is doing well among men—and I myself wear rose."
Indeed, anyone who thinks that smelling straight-up pretty is unmanly should talk to Tommy Lee. The Mötley Crüe rocker and former Pamela Anderson romancer has been wearing the white floral Kai Perfume Oil for 10 years. (The brand's reps maintain that David Duchovny, Slash, Bob Dylan, and Usher are all Kai fans too.) "I love the scent of gardenia and looked forever to find the right perfume but couldn't find one that captured the fruity essence of the flower," Lee says. "So when a friend turned me on to Kai I flipped the f--k out. I like smelling like a gardenia. And trust me, girls don't seem to have a problem with it either."
The idea that some fragrances are masculine and others feminine is actually a relatively modern concept. Throughout most of recorded history, there has been no distinction—ancient Greek men and women both scented themselves with perfumes derived from lilies and roses; Victorian men wore rose, violet, lavender, lilac, honeysuckle, and mint. One could argue that eau de cologne is the first known modern fragrance to acquire a gender assignation, possibly courtesy of Napoleon: The emperor reportedly doused himself in 60 half-gallon bottles per month of the original Eau de Cologne—a concoction of grape spirits, citrus oils, and herbs created in 1709 by Italian barber Gian Paolo Feminis—and encouraged its use by his soldiers, perhaps sparking an enduring association of that type of scent with manliness. Fougère, a fragrance class defined by a fusion of notes including lavender, geranium, oakmoss, and coumarin, became embedded indelibly in men's fragrances in the wake of Houbigant's Fougère Royale, launched in 1882, and has been the defining accord in nearly all scents marketed to chaps over the course of the twentieth century. "The fougère structure is in about 95 percent of men's perfumes," Hennessy says. "It's considered typically masculine because it reminds men of something clean, like shaving cream or a barber shop. It's perceived as fresh and reassuring, and fragrance companies know it will sell. But what's interesting is that the fougère accord is actually very flowery. It's only perceived as masculine because we've been taught that that's what a masculine fragrance smells like."
While most scent preferences are personal, the result of cultural influences and memories stored in a sort of olfactory data bank in our brains, some scientists argue that the way we actually perceive aromas—that is, whether they're bitter, smoky, earthy, or fruity—is less subjective. This could extend to why we might automatically perceive some odors as masculine and others as feminine: A comparative analysis of odor maps and perfumery databases published by Manuel Zarzo and David T. Stanton in 2009 found that scents deemed "sweet" were overwhelmingly associated with women, whereas those perceived as "dry" were considered more manly.
In an admittedly unscientific attempt to determine how early scent-related gender stereotyping begins, ELLE dispatched teams with drams of iconic fragrance notes—courtesy of legendary fragrance house Givaudan and indie-favorite Fresh—to conduct informal surveys of the under-10 set in San Francisco and New York. After smelling a selection of notes (they weren't told what was what), groups of kids were asked which ones they thought smelled like boys and which like girls. While some were fairly consistent—rose, for example, was almost always assigned to girls ("It smells like powdery makeup"; "It smells like a lemon gummy")—others were less predictable: Chocolate ("It smells like a cookie") and white musk ("It's eye-watering") skewed toward boys. Interestingly, when the kids smelled a note they particularly liked, they assigned it to their own gender.
Fragrances, particularly those geared toward men, have long been marketed as olfactory aids to sexual conquests: If you wear this, it will make you more attractive. The idea that smelling virile would incite lady-lust ran rampant in the '70s and '80s, resulting in the type of eau so brilliantly parodied in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, when Paul Rudd's character takes a moment to "musk up" with a "formidable" cologne called Sex Panther prior to a rendezvous, saying, "They've done studies, you know: Sixty percent of the time, it works every time." Ultimately, however, the actual notes might not matter: In a survey of 2,000 women across America conducted by Axe, maker of body sprays beloved by middle schoolers, and Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, two out of three said they were more likely to make out with a guy on their first date if he smelled good—but women in different cities deemed different scents more appealing. In New York, for example, the ladies go wild for the aroma of coffee; in Los Angeles, lavender; in Atlanta, cherry; in Philadelphia, clean laundry; and in San Diego, suntan lotion. The lesson is that perhaps there's no knowing what's going to turn anyone else on, so the best thing to do is just buy whatever suits your own tastes. And if that happens to be a perfume that smells like a gardenia, enjoy.
"To a perfumer, no ingredient has a sex," says Marypierre Julien, a nose at Givaudan. "You just smell it, and depending on how much of it you use, it can skew a fragrance more masculine or feminine. We're seeing more clean, fresh fragrances with notes such as ginger, spicy citrus, and galbanum. There are also more fresh aquatic notes and more fruit, which men have become accustomed to in personal care products such as shower gels. Now it's not unusual for men's fragrances to have apple, mango, or pear."
The broadening of the men's fragrance category to welcome a girlier palette could be the result of a number of factors. Maybe the ozonic unisex scents that stormed the planet in the '90s opened men's minds to the prospect of not having to smell like scotch and leather, or maybe it was a positive aftereffect of the early-2000s metrosexual moment. "Men still want things that make them feel masculine, but I think the definition of masculinity has evolved," says Karyn Khoury, senior vice president for fragrance development worldwide at Estée Lauder Companies. She references Tom Ford's Private Blend fragrances, including Tuscan Leather and Jasmine Rouge: "He's never identified notes as male or female. It's more about the pleasure and the experience of the scent."
Fresh cofounder Lev Glazman says it's still hard to sell a floral fragrance to a man if it's described as a floral. "However, if you don't tell them what it is and just spray it on their skin, they'll like it." There's also the fact that even feminine fragrances will automatically smell more masculine on a man: "It's body chemistry," Glazman says. "Everything automatically smells muskier on male skin." So perhaps a rose isn't a rose isn't a rose after all.
"Both men and women are willing to understand that notes they might previously have thought were geared to the opposite sex are not only okay, but actually add a dimension of sensuality or modernity to a fragrance," Khoury says. "Nobody likes being put in a box." Or a bottle.
Does your favorite cologne have unisex appeal? Check out our gallery to see where your fragrance falls!