The language of scent: why fragrance vocabulary is overdue a reformulation

The language of fragrance is, by nature, rather elusive. It is invisible, intangible, and resistant to precision. You cannot point to it. You cannot hold it up to the light. And so, for over a century, the industry has met this challenge through language, writing around what cannot be held or seen.

The result is a language system that is less about describing scent, and more about constructing it. A language built on metaphor, projection, and at times, convenient fiction. This is not accidental. Fragrance has never been sold as chemistry; it has been sold as narrative.

But narrative ages. And increasingly, the language of perfumery is beginning to show where it came from – and who it was written for.

A common language that was never neutral

In the 20th century, perfumery needed structure. The rise of global distribution, department stores, and later e-commerce meant that scent had to be translated into something legible. Classification systems emerged as a solution. Most notably, Michael Edwards’ Fragrance Wheel created a shared vocabulary – floral, woody, fresh, oriental – that allowed brands, retailers, and consumers to speak about scent with a sense of order.

While it has worked, it has also simplified. And what these systems offered in clarity, they often lost in nuance. They categorised not only scent profiles, but expectations. They told consumers what something should smell like, and, more subtly, who it was for. Crucially, these structures embedded cultural assumptions into what appeared to be neutral, technical language.

Even today, industry-standard terminology carries traces of its origins. The term ‘oriental’, long used to describe warm, resinous compositions, is now widely recognised as both imprecise and culturally reductive. In 2021, Edwards formally replaced the term with ‘amber’ in his book Fragrances of the World, signalling a meaningful shift within the industry’s own classification system. Major publications like Vogue have also reported on the growing discomfort around the term, noting its roots in Western generalisations of ‘the East’ and its lack of descriptive precision.

When description becomes projection

Some words linger long after they stop being useful. ‘Exotic’ is certainly one of them. Even today, the term appears frequently in fragrance copy, often applied to florals, spices, resins, and entire compositions. It is meant to evoke distance, intrigue, sensuality. But in practice, it does very little descriptive work. It tells you nothing about the scent itself, only that it exists somewhere outside the assumed norm – and that is precisely the problem.

Terms like ‘exotic’, ‘oriental’, and other vague geographic references do not describe materials; they describe perspective. They reduce complex olfactory traditions into a single, consumable mood. In other words, they flatten.

This critique is not limited to perfumery. Editorial and institutional style guides have begun to flag ‘exotic’ as othering and rooted in a colonial worldview. The Van Gogh Museum’s inclusive language guide explicitly notes that the term positions Europe as the default standard, while the Associated Press Stylebook cautions that it perpetuates stereotypes when applied to people or places (Van Gogh Museum, 2022; ACES, 2020).

Placed against the actual history of perfumery, this becomes even more pronounced. Many of the materials and techniques that define modern fragrance (resins, distillation methods, aromatic woods) have deep roots in regions that Western fragrance language has historically grouped together under broad, romanticised labels.

The industry has often borrowed with precision but described with approximation. For contemporary brands, this creates a tension: what once read as evocative now reads as vague, and what once signalled luxury now signals distance. Increasingly, industry analysis points to a recalibration. The Business of Fashion identifies a growing emphasis on transparency and material-led storytelling within fragrance, reflecting a more informed and discerning consumer (Business of Fashion, 2022). In parallel, Mintel reports rising demand for authenticity, ingredient visibility, and clarity in product communication – particularly within premium beauty (Mintel, 2023).

The implication is difficult to ignore. The language that once sustained the category is no longer sufficient to describe it. Distance, once a proxy for allure, now reads as imprecision. And what consumers are responding to instead is specificity: language that reflects composition, origin, and construction, rather than relying on inherited shorthand.

The shift from fantasy to articulation

The most compelling fragrance writing today does not attempt to transport; it seeks to articulate with intention and precision. Instead of leaning on abstraction, it moves closer to the material: saffron, benzoin, iris butter, smoked sandalwood. Instead of describing a place, it describes a structure: mineral, airy, resinous, lactonic, skin-soft.

This is not a loss of poetry; it is a repositioning of where poetry resides.

Because specificity does not diminish imagination, it disciplines it. It introduces a level of rigour that allows language to operate not as embellishment, but as a form of translation – bridging composition and perception. In this sense, fragrance writing begins to mirror other design-led disciplines, where material knowledge and technical fluency underpin aesthetic expression.

There is also a commercial logic at play. As the category becomes increasingly saturated – particularly within niche and premium segments – differentiation is no longer achieved through narrative inflation, but through clarity of articulation. The brands that stand out are those that can describe not only what a fragrance evokes, but how it is constructed, how it behaves on the skin, and how it evolves over time.

This aligns with a broader shift across luxury, where authority is being redefined. It is no longer enough to suggest; brands are expected to demonstrate. Craft, provenance, formulation, and process are moving to the foreground, and with them, a language that is more exacting, more literate, and more accountable.

In this context, articulation becomes a form of credibility. Not because it removes mystique, but because it replaces ambiguity with intention.

Gender was always a language decision

If fragrance has one enduring fiction, it is this: that scent is inherently gendered. For decades, the industry has divided itself neatly in two. Florals for women. Woods, leather, and aromatics for men. Bottles have been coded accordingly, and campaigns have reinforced the message. But the reality is less stable.

Academic research into perfume categorisation suggests that so-called ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ scents overlap significantly in their olfactory composition, and that these distinctions are more commercial than chemical (ResearchGate, 2014; ResearchGate, 2021). The divide exists less in the formula, and more in the framing.

Notes do not have gender. Narratives do. Rose can be powdery and delicate, or sharp and green, or dark and almost animalic. Vanilla can be sweet, but also dry, mineral, or smoky. Iris can feel cosmetic, or architectural. The same material can take on entirely different meanings depending on how it is described. What changes is the language around it.

This is why the current shift toward ‘unisex’ or gender-neutral fragrance feels less like a revolution, and more like a correction. Reporting from The Business of Fashion positions gender neutrality as a key direction for the category, while the Financial Times notes that many contemporary fragrances are already effectively unisex, despite lingering legacy cues (Business of Fashion, 2022; Financial Times, 2023).

The materials have always been shared. The difference is that brands are beginning to remove the linguistic boundaries that told consumers otherwise. Increasingly, fragrance is being described in terms of texture, atmosphere, and composition rather than gender. And in doing so, it becomes more open, more inclusive, and more accurate.

The future belongs to brands that can speak scent well

Fragrance will always rely on language, but the role of that language is changing. Where it once operated as a layer of fantasy – something that sat on top of the product – it is now becoming part of the product itself. Fragrance language is increasingly used as a tool for clarity, differentiation, and cultural awareness.

The brands that are moving forward are not necessarily the ones with the most complex formulas, but the ones with the most precise articulation. They know when a word is doing real work, and when it is simply filling space. They understand that replacing ‘exotic’ is not about political correctness; it is about accuracy. That moving beyond ‘oriental’ is not about losing heritage, but about describing scent properly. That removing gender labels is not about neutrality, but about expanding interpretation. Because in the end, fragrance is not just what you smell, it is what you are told you are smelling.