The first is that there are more small brands than ever: 271 this year, with 80 of those showing for the first time. This reflects the success of niche brands in general over the last ten years, where they’ve often outperformed the big boys – but it also suggests that the sector is becoming unsustainably overcrowded.
— Wallpaper evaluates "the pulse of the niche-perfume sector" at the Pitti Fragranze fair in Florence. Read more at Nosing out niche perfumes and bold packaging at Pitti Fragranze.
[Michael] Edwards’ data indicates that the niche category grew from 128 launches in 2003 to 395 in 2013. After a recent trip through the floors of Barneys and Bergdorf’s, I believe that we will see many more niche launches in 2014. However, one must ask at some point in the near future, will niche remain niche, or will this category also become saturated?
— Raise your hand if you think niche is already saturated? Read more at Rethinking Fragrance: Part I at GCI Magazine.
You had American women who had grown up with Charlie and had become part of the designer revolution of the 80s and were now looking for something different that not everybody knew about. And you had department stores who were desperate to pick up some new brands. That was what caused the revolution of niche.
And then of course the Internet happened. Suddenly the perfumistas took control of it. Unfortunately though, because the entry price is so low, any Tom, Dick and Jane can come up with a range of fragrance.
— That's Michael Edwards, author of Perfume Legends, talking about the rise of niche fragrance. Read more at The Revolution Of Niche - An Interview With Michael Edwards at Persolaise.
Rare Perfumes (the French version is called Parfums Rares) is a celebration of niche perfumery, in a coffee table format with large illustrations and plenty of white space (see images below). It was commissioned by the Osmothèque, the museum and scent archive in Versailles, and sponsored by The Fragrance Foundation France, InterParfums, Robert Piguet and Parfums de Nicolaï, among others. It was written by two fragrance journalists, Sabine Chabbert and Laurence Férat, and features a preface by Patricia de Nicolaï.
If you’re looking for a critical, in-depth analysis of how niche perfumes fit into — or don’t fit into — the larger fragrance market, or how niche influences mainstream or vice versa, look elsewhere (and tell me where you find it). This is not that, nor is it a niche version of something like Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends: French feminine fragrances, with its focus on perfume development and the interplay between brands, perfumers, marketers and designers. Other than in passing, you will learn relatively little about individual fragrances or how they differ from from their mainstream counterparts…
First there were too many mainstream perfumes, and too many of them smelled like each other. Niche, of course, was the answer for many perfumistas: find a smaller perfume house that wasn’t after the worldwide domination of the prestige (department store) fragrance market, and perhaps they’d be making something a little more unusual, and perhaps they’d even be making a reasonable investment in the raw materials since they didn’t need to spend millions on advertising. When I started getting interested in perfume in late 2003, being a “niche snob” was a viable option if you were tired of the same old thing.
Then the niche market exploded, and eventually there were too many niche perfumes and too many of them smelled like each other — or worse, smelled pretty much like the generic fragrances you could already find in the prestige market. And of course, the niche fragrances cost more, and it was harder to try them without spending money on samples. By 2007, when I wrote a little rant about the 800 perfumes that were expected to launch that year, the world of niche was already getting a little out of hand. Today, in 2011, at times it seems downright absurd.
Anyone hoping that the world financial crisis would provide a corrective can, I think, pretty much give up hope on that score by now…