Calling a classic fragrance an “Old Lady Perfume” has become such an accepted part of the modern beauty vernacular that it feels like a harmless, even humorous, descriptor. But is it either of those? (Spoiler: not really.)
The term is inaccurate at best, ageist at worst. We hear it from sales associates, assuring us that we don’t want that older fragrance because it’s too powdery, too strong, or too much … something. We read it in editorials telling us about the latest perfume launches, usually as a caveat along the lines of, “Don’t worry, though, this new perfume isn’t like that.”
— Read more in Why "Old Lady Perfumes" Never Go Out of Style at Harper's Bazaar via Yahoo.
I am team Shalimar old lady perfume
Which means you win. Unless Mitsouko shows up, then it’s a draw?
Someone wrote a fabulous rant years ago about “old lady” perfumes. Basically that young girls used to want to smell older, more sophisticated and couldn’t wait to wear a grown up perfume. Now too many scents are candy or fruit oriented, that smelling childish/babyish is in (ick) with their prevailing color of pink driving the point home.
I saved it on my desktop. I need to find it and post it. It’s quite long, maybe I’ll send to Robin…maybe I read it HERE?
Yeah, I’ve been saying that for years, too. Teenage girls wore light airy things like Love’s Fresh Lemon and Apple Blossom, and yearned for the day when they could wear something grownup and sophisticated, the kind of thing you’d smell on your mother as she swooped in to kiss you goodnight before a night out. Nowadays, do teenagers aspire to anything adult? Sophisticated scents hardly seem to exist any more, and the ones that do are derided as old-lady. It’s so dispiriting.
Okay, here it is. I do not know who wrote this but I love it.
I’m sick of child-like innocence being a sexual ideal in American society. It’s so creepy. When someone calls a complex, sophisticated fragrance an “old lady” fragrance, I imagine they’re thinking a sexy scent is one that smells like lollipops and children.
Fabulous scents have layers of complexity and displaying them shows that the wearer has sophisticated, sensual knowledge and worldliness (they know what Morocco or moss smells like, they’ve had a drink of wine before, they remember many Summers with varied humidity and other conditions amongst them all, they’ve smelled coffee steeping, on a veranda, at dusk). Years ago, young women — yes, even teenagers who wanted to pretend they were older! — used to wear these complex scents to give the impression that they were refined, intellectually savvy and mature. Instead of trying to trick suitors into thinking they were younger, they tried to trick them into thinking they were older and more sophisticated than they really were . “Mature”, seeing that it implied a fully and complete travel through adolescence, was considered sexy because at one time, sex (its innuendo in mainstream culture), had something to do with adults.
And no, I’m not saying guys need to automatically consider a woman who is 20 or more years older than them, to be a suitable romantic partner, but they should expand their scent associations and women shouldn’t cater to the lowest common denominator of scent tastes (sorry, all you sophisticated male sniffers; the, supposed “old lady perfume” insult is most often dished-out by guys or considered by those girls who want to attract such mental lightweights). They just shouldn’t be trying to revert their own age group back to 13 years old (unless they, themselves are 13 years old).
Now, we have Katy Perry dressed-up in cupcakes, pretending to be a “Candyland” image on a board game aimed at 4-7 year olds. I don’t mind the pleasant nod to nostalgic scents, but I find our culture’s fixation with connecting “sexy” with “as low an age as we can go”, frankly, disgusting.
If a man calls a beautiful but sophisticated scent an “old lady” scent, I tend to think he’s a creep, who still carries images of Brittney Spears in school girl stockings in his head, fondly — as his primer of “sexy” (which, apparently, hasn’t changed since Middle School) and that I’ve avoided a lot of heartbreak just by learning that much about his subconscious desires.
My two “scents”! This topic gets me going.
This all sounds very familiar, but I swear to nothing. Probably something I posted a blurb from…
Found it! It was a comment by Nlb under this NST post 🙂
Hmn? Exactly which stores have these terrible salespeople? Very few stores have any fragrance sales people at all.
In my experience, most peiple’s reaction to scent is either, malls good, or I have a physical reaction (headache or allergy), The subtlety of release dates,
It seems that most scents currently aimed at a mass(young) market are very sweet, but young people really into scents range all over the place in their preferred styles, or are Eccles to
Yes, all true, but I still see “old lady” kicked around here from time to time. It is indeed a commonly used perfume descriptor.
Yes, I see it too – I mainly still read print journalism (glossy magazines and weekend newspaper supplements) and regardless of the quality nor expertise of the beauty writer, the “old lady” phrase still gets used, and used negatively. I have learned so much about perfume from the ladies in my family who are now older than ever..for me it means excellent taste but it does not have that positive meaning in a lot of writing!
For better or worse, I think some people recall the “old lady” perfumes because they smelled strong compared to some of today’s lighter feminine scents. But I wonder if it is because back in the day, before all these laundry fresh body washes and shampoos, maybe our grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and teachers had only one thing that smelled and that was perfume. So that was ALL we smelled on them? I can recall my older female relatives wearing green, powdery or rose scents. But to be fair, all my older male relatives smelled like cigarettes, or worse, PIPES! My favorite aunt wore what seemed like buckets of Paloma Picasso Mon Perfume. I will take that over a pipe smoke smell all day, everyday.
I have to wonder if the recurring use of the term “Old Lady Perfume” is a thinly disguised fear of death. Never mind that young people die, too.