How is the gender fluid movement affecting your perfume choices?

Going back to medieval times, scents were made with natural ingredients and worn by all, either to mask body odour or, as a form of honour—it’s thought that knights wore the same scent as their female partners going into battle. Fast forward to the late 20th century, and a clear male-female split had formed in the perfume world, with gendered marketing an obvious, easy-win for sales—think Gucci’s Envy for women, and Davidoff’s Cool Water, definitely for men. However, there were still some disruptors.

In 1994, Spanish perfumer Alberto Morillas and French perfumer Harry Fremont launched CK One: with its utilitarian bottle and clean scent, it was one of the few products at the time created to appeal to both men and women. It democratised scent and, like Kate Moss, cargo pants and grunge, defined the decade: everyone smelled like CK One. “With CK One, it is this feeling of freshness that everyone has grabbed without thinking about the distinction between men and women. It is this emotional freshness that prevails,” says Morillas.

The concept of a unisex fragrance does, however, raise the question of whether that means genderless? It’s a fluid definition.

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