In Tom Robbins’s 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the smooth-riding cowgirl Bonanza Jellybean is explaining to a bunch of ladies visiting the ranch that they shouldn’t be ashamed of their natural essence and that it, in actual fact, works of their favour. “Here’s somewhat self-celebration I bet you ladies never considered,” Bonanza tells them, “What you do is reach down together with your fingers and get them wet together with your juices. You then rub it in behind your ears.

It’s an exquisite perfume,” she says. “Very subtle and really mischievous. Men are attracted, I guarantee you.”

It’s an unusual trick, and one I imagine not many readers will go for, but there has recently been quite a lot of perfumes released that play on this concept of enhancing one’s “natural essence” so that you may smell uniquely like yourself. Glossier’s aptly named perfume, You, for instance, is designed to smell mostly… such as you. Or as Glossier puts it: “that familiar human-y note” that’s “creamy” and “warm.” (I imagine Bonanza Jellybean winking in her grave at their alternative of words here). DSH Perfumes Special Formula X fragrance is similarly described as the final word skin scent. “It’s YOU,” their adverts cry, “only higher!” A natural smelling scent, “Special Formula X” morphs to amplify everybody’s skin in order that the fragrance “just smells like more of themselves…in the very best possible way,” explains founder Dawn Spencer Hurwitz.

“Elevator Music really needs a wearer, it really needs an individual. It has no value by itself.” Ben Gorham

Escentric Molecules’ Molecule 01 is described by perfumer Geza Schoen as “one in all those skin-sexy scents that makes you need to nestle into it.” Designed to mix with the wearer’s “natural pheromones” to reinforce their allure, the perfume creates a singular, indefinable radiance that’s different for each individual. Similarly, Elevator Music, the fragrance collaboration between Byredo and Off-White, was created to permit for private expression. It’s “less dictating” than traditional scents, “you will have a tough time describing or placing it” Byredo founder Ben Gorham explains. “It really needs a wearer, it really needs an individual. It has no value by itself.” A sentiment echoed by Glossier: “Please be advised that the formula comes incomplete,” they are saying of their perfume, “You’re the primary ingredient.” 

But where has this demand for my-smell-but-better, emphasis on YOU, skin scents come from?

Perfume has at all times been a great indicator of what’s happening in contemporary culture. There have been the earthy patchouli and sandalwood scents popular within the hippy Sixties. The wealthy, heady perfumes of the Eighties – think Poison by Dior – which accompanied big hair and even larger shoulder pads. “The American woman has acquired a taste for eaux de toilettes and colognes which might be often strong and lasting,” reported The New York Times in 1988. Then got here CK One. Calvin Klein’s clean, unisex scent reflected the stripped-back androgynous 90’s aesthetic. Minimal and effortless, it signalled the tip of 80s decadence. A sheer scent Kate could wear together with her sheer dress.  

What elements of our culture today, then, are these skin-centred scents symptomatic of? I imagine there are specific people – the form of individuals who wield the word “snowflake” like a weapon and wish to accuse the younger generations of killing all the pieces from handshakes to the marmalade industry – who would point the finger at millennial narcissism. The selfie generation so obsessive about themselves that they are actually making perfume so that they can smell like themselves.

Special Formula X got here about organically, nonetheless, never intended to be sold as a perfume. Originally a skin-analysis formula designed by perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz to get a feel for the way her clients’ skin would react to fragrance, most of the time the clients would ask for among the “test patch” too. “I realised with my clientele that just a few of their needs could possibly be met by this one fragrance design,” Dawn explains. “They might have a straightforward, unique fragrance that at all times suits them and a lightweight, non-invasive, easy to wear scent that wouldn’t feel ‘an excessive amount of.’”

Lots of Dawn’s clients couldn’t discover a fragrance in the marketplace because the present perfumes were “an excessive amount of fragrance,” she says, “too strong or too complex.” Similarly, Molecule 01 got here about because Escentric Molecules’ perfumer Geza Schoen desired to “create something unconventional, not too perfumistic, something for my friends who said they didn’t like fragrance.” It’s a subtle scent that “doesn’t go in all guns blazing, flashing its wares like a can-can dancer,” the web site tells you.

“Up to now, the sweetness business has invoked the ‘natural’ to be able to counter negative connotations attached to artificiality, frivolity, or the synthetic. There also could also be an idea of anti-branding, that you need to smell like yourself, not a star.” – Kathy Peiss, American History Professor on the University of Pennsylvania

Is it, then, from a desire to not infringe upon one’s own or each other’s space that these non-offensive, unaggressive scents stem? “Elevator Music” was created to vanish into the background. “We tried to capture a scent that was kind of elevator music on your life,” explains Off-White founder Virgil Abloh. “It’s not on the forefront.” The perfume equivalents of staying in your lane.

Or does this desire to smell like oneself come from a craving for authenticity and individuality? In a time when all the pieces and everybody could be altered and enhanced – whether that be digitally or cosmetically – what’s authentic is now more meaningful. #nofilter #nomakeup #noperfume. In an article titled “Authenticity: The Way to The Millennial’s Heart,” Karl Moore, an associate Professor at McGill University, writes that authenticity is considered of 1 probably the most essential values to millennials, while Dr Heather Ford from Leeds University writes that we’re “witnessing a renewed interest and valuing of authenticity. Where content that’s seen to be ‘real’ is more more likely to succeed.” It doesn’t mean that these items are necessarily true, mind you (the thought of performed authenticity is one explored within the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”), but the looks of authenticity, of effortlessness, of naturalness, is one which is wanted and valued. And now you may smell uniquely and authentically like yourself (just somewhat bit higher).

“It’s hard for me to know whether this trend is something truly meaningful, or just one other stab by marketers at reaching consumers,” says Kathy Peiss, American History Professor on the University of Pennsylvania and writer of Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. “Up to now, the sweetness business has invoked the ‘natural’ to be able to counter negative connotations attached to artificiality, frivolity, or the synthetic. There also could also be an idea of anti-branding, that you need to smell like yourself, not a star.”

Or possibly it’s simply that after 1000’s of years of creating perfume we’ve just run out of latest aromas! Who nose.

Regardless of the case, with the present demand for bespoke and personalised products and the ever-increasing advancement of technology, smelling uniquely like yourself is a trend that’s more likely to develop even further. In her 2014 short film Swallowable Parfum, “body architect” Lucy McRae explored the possibly, possibly in the future a reality, of a cosmetic capsule that, when eaten, synthesises with the body in order that whenever you perspire you sweat your individual biologically enhanced fragrance. “Nobody would have the identical excretion of fragrance other than an identical twins due to the way in which our DNA is structured,” Lucy explains. “It’s a perfume that works from the within out. The body is the atomiser.”

P.S. In case you were intrigued by Bonanza Jellybean’s opening perfume trick but don’t feel quite able to use your individual natural scent, allow me to point you within the direction of Vulva Original, a vagina-scented oil that is available in “Original” and the distressingly named “Exotic” and “Eighteen”. Personally, I’d recommend sticking to the natural stuff.