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BECAUSE THE QUALIFIER \"MOON\" USED BY THE MOST FAMOUS OLFACTORY FAMILIES IS ACCUSED OF DISCRIMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES, THE CONTROVERSIAL SEMANTICAL ISSUE IS MAKING AN INDUSTRY OF SENSORY SENSATION INSANE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laurence F\u00e9rat<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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It all began last summer, following an article in Harper\u2019s Bazaar: \u201cWhy do we continue to classify some perfumes as oriental?\u201d Asked, the expert Tania Sanchez replied, not without controversy: \u201cOrient comes from a word that means \u201cis.\u201d The question is: where is it from?\u201d In this case, from France, where the perfume genre was born. This vague, always exotic and mysterious orient includes the Persian carpets of Iran, the Taj Mahal of Shalimar, and what is sometimes called the extreme orient.\u201c Considering the term \u201dconfusing and Eurocentric,\u201c she continued her argument on the issue of advertising imagery: \u201dEuropeans have historically fetishized and sexualized people and my Asian cultures, and the marketing of perfumes has unfortunately often played into this harmful fantasy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although one might be surprised to see Orientalism associated with Asia from the Eiffel Tower, the adjective evokes memories of a discriminatory past in American culture. In this country, which permits the census to be conducted by separating the origins, \u201cOriental\u201d was indeed used informally until the 1960s to refer to communities with an Asian ancestry, just as \u201cyellow\u201d or \u201cAsiatic\u201d were used. Tout a commenc\u00e9 l’\u00e9t\u00e9 dernier, \u00e0 la suite d’un article de Harper’s Bazaar : “Pourquoi continuons-nous \u00e0 qualifier certains parfums d’orientaux ? ” Interrog\u00e9e, la sp\u00e9cialiste Tania Sanchez r\u00e9pondait non sans pol\u00e9mique : “Orient vient d’un mot qui signifie “est”. La question est : l’est d’o\u00f9 ? En l’occurrence, de la France, o\u00f9 le genre du parfum est n\u00e9. Cet orient vague, toujours exotis\u00e9, myst\u00e9rieux, comprend l’Iran persan des tapis, le Taj Mahal de Shalimar, et ce qu’on appelle parfois l’extr\u00eame orient.” Jugeant le terme “confus et eurocentrique”, elle poursuivait son argumentaire sur la question de l’image publicitaire : “Les europ\u00e9ens ont historiquement f\u00e9tichis\u00e9 et sexualis\u00e9 les personnes et mes cultures asiatiques, et le marketing des parfums a malheureusement souvent jou\u00e9 le jeu de ce fantasme n\u00e9faste.”<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analyses-tendances"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1768,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767\/revisions\/1768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinquiemesens.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
A generic term used for more than fifty years
The story could have ended there if the Australian Michael Edwards, author of Fragrances of the world (a classification of new products on which many companies rely), had not subsequently stated: \u201cThe time has come to replace the outdated term \u201cOriental\u201d with a more inclusive word\u201d, thus qualifying the affected perfumes as \u2019amber\u201d. A move followed by the Fragrance Foundation USA, the organization responsible for the promotion of brands\u2026and, since the market is globalized, by the majority of ingredient suppliers, who have changed their terminology.
Even the ISPC (International Society of Perfumer-Creators), based in France, has aligned itself, replacing oriental with amber. Yet, just typing \u201coriental perfume\u201d into a search engine reveals the importance of this family, with great successes such as Angel by Thierry Mugler and Black Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, presented as two \u201cgreedy orientals\u201d. Naturally, the debate heats up off the record: \u201cOrient is a vague term whose perception varies from civilization to civilization,\u201d says the perfumer from a global fragrance house, who surveyed his colleagues about their understanding of the word. For Europeans, it refers to an area ranging from the Middle East to India. For India, it concerns everything east of its borders, namely China and Japan, countries that do not use this term. As for the perfumers of the Middle East, they are keen to keep this adjective, which, in their opinion, defines their style of perfumery, such as oud and attars. Moreover, they describe Shalimar as oriental to the European eye. It is true that Shalimar is the archetype of the genre, to the point that Guerlain presents it as \u201cthe first oriental perfume in history\u201d on its website. The term \u201camber\u201d (already) was replaced by \u201camber\u201d at the end of the 1920s in order to be more accessible to the general public, especially the Anglo-Saxons, who are passionate about French fragrances. Advertising catalogs from that time bear witness to this. \u201cFor professionals, the first oriental fragrances date back to three symbols of our perfumery: Habanita by Molinard (1921), \u00c9meraude by Coty (1922) and Shalimar by Guerlain (1925),\u201d explains Isabelle Ferrand, president of the Cinqui\u00e8me Sens training organization in Paris. This terminology is explained both through the universe projected by their name and their advertising and through their olfactory similarities: sweet, amber-like notes, such as benzoin, cyste, and ambergris, as well as patchouli and spices. The amber note alone does not contain either patchouli or spices. For the time being, Cinqui\u00e8me Sens maintains the oriental family in its teaching, except in the United States, where students have the choice of using one of the two adjectives \u2013 oriental or amber. \u201cWe explain the history of perfumery and, although the word \u201doriental\u201c has been used for several decades, it is difficult to eliminate it,\u201d emphasizes Isabelle Ferrand. The Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise des parfumeurs, on the other hand, does not have to decide since its classification has always referred to an amber family; its president, V\u00e9ronique Dupont, believes that the perfume called \u201dOriental\u201d is a historical and technical definition: \u201cIt is a promise of escape derived from the Orientalist artistic movement of the 19th century. For a whole generation of perfumers and consumers alike, it refers to an olfactory family comprising sensual fragrances with enveloping, slightly animalic undertones\u2014think of the velvety facets of vanilla and patchouli, but also of notes of extracts from beaver or civet, common in the era.\u201d Shalimar is unanimously considered a masterpiece.\u201d Now the all-powerful notion of inclusivity no longer stops at non-gendered flavors or the choice of a consensual icon\u2026 In Grasse, a retired perfumer, surprised by such controversy, asks, in turn, whether \u201ccancel culture\u201d should not then take down all the odalisque paintings in museums. And is more concerned about climate change, which threatens the cultures of fragrant plants, than the American semantic debate.
Edition: February 2, 2022 P.28-31 <\/strong>Journalists: LAURENCE F\u00c9RAT
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