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From Guerlain’s Shalimar to Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium, for more than a century Western perfume houses have looked to the East to create stories behind their products. But, over the past few years, a backlash has been growing against the industry’s use of “Oriental” — the term historically used by those in the West to describe the East — both as a scent classification and in marketing. Now, younger perfume fans are taking to TikTok to pick up the fight.
“It’s offensive, it’s outdated and it is not useful when describing fragrance,” said perfume reviewer Leila Inocentes (@leilainocentes) in a TikTok video posted last month. Inocentes called on fragrance houses to stop using the “O word” due to the “racist and violent history” attached to it. Vietnamese-Canadian marketing consultant and TikTok creator Han Tang (@theperfumemenagerie) also posted her thoughts last month on the term and how its usage in perfume perpetuates stereotypes.
They are adding to a wider movement that grew during Black Lives Matter in 2020 and Stop Asian Hate in 2021, when consumers and industry professionals began to question the use of Oriental to describe perfumes. Since then, some brands have been quietly moving away from the word and associated imagery. However, experts and TikTokers say progress is too slow, held back by resistance from some brands, and there is more to be done to decolonise perfumery.
Critics say the word Oriental is outdated and paints a view of the East, from a Western lens, that perpetuates stereotypes and results in the homogenisation of multiple cultures. In perfumery, it has been used to denote rich, spicy scents since the early 20th century (Shalimar — one of the earliest examples — launched in the 1920s). “In perfume teaching, Oriental is used to denote a warm, sensual note, which could be vanilla from Mexico, tree resins from the Middle East or spices from India,” explains Tasha Marks, founder of AVM Curiosities, which curates interactive sensory experiences for cultural institutions including the V&A, British Museum and National Gallery. “Out of context it can just denote a general ‘other’. By using that word, we’re not doing justice to [raw materials from those countries], we’re not doing justice to those cultures.”
In 2020, a group of perfumers of colour formed a collective called Future Olfactives, which aimed to increase the visibility and foster the growth of underrepresented BIPOC members of the fragrance community. “[We] publicly talked about how we’d like to reframe the eurocentric standards of perfumery [and] to transform the industry with new nomenclature,” explains founding member Dana El Masri, who is also founder of Jazmin Saraï Parfum. Other members included Yosh Han, founder of the Yosh perfume brand. Although the group is no longer active, its database was transferred to Scent Festival, an online resource that aims to decolonise perfumery through education.
In 2021, Scent Festival launched a Change.org petition to “Reclassify ‘Oriental’ and ‘Floriental’ (floral oriental) in the fragrance industry”. It argues that “these terms are outdated, derogatory and offensive”, adding: “These words were formed through the lens of colonialism when Anglo-European countries viewed themselves as the centre of the world and everything else was East; sensual, exotic and fetishised.”
Orientalism often paints the East as irrational, unpredictable and emotional compared to the rational, logical West, says Dr Seyed Ali Alavi, professor at SOAS University of London. This narrative has resulted in violence against Asian communities, which heightened following the Covid-19 pandemic. “Asian Americans in America found themselves walking along the street, [having] insults hurled at them,” says Michael Edwards, fragrance expert and creator of Fragrances of The World’s fragrance wheel, which is used by companies including Sephora, The Perfume Shop and Ulta.
In July 2021, Edwards changed the Oriental scent classification on his fragrance wheel to “ambery”, which is also commonly used to describe warm, sweet notes. “Who would want to keep with a term which evokes such anger, antagonism? It’s not important when amber solves our problem,” he explains.
Inocentes argues that it makes no sense to use Oriental as a scent classification. “What does it mean to smell Asian?” she asks in the TikTok video. “More accurate ways to describe smells would be ambery, woody, spicy.” Linda Pilkington, founder of London-based perfume house Ormonde Jayne, agrees: “Oriental is referring to a region, an area of the world. And nothing to do with a type of aroma.”
Many brands now use amber: among them, Guerlain, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Dior and Ormonde Jayne. Still, a search for “Oriental perfume” online returns a slew of results from brands. Some overtly use Oriental in their perfumes names, accompanied by marketing copy summoning images of “ancient Persian oasis gardens glistening gold with evening dew” or “the distinctive, almost magical, atmosphere of an oriental palace”. Several European multi-brand retailers use Oriental to describe a family of scents.
Resistance to change
Yosh’s Han, who also provides consultancy services for clients including Liberty London, Barneys New York and Anthropologie USA, points out that the perfume industry is still primarily based in Europe — unlike fashion, for example, which is more global. “Even though historically, the French have dominated fashion or Italy, there have been such strong powerhouses from Japan, Korea, China,” she explains.
Colonialism is deeply rooted within the industry, partly because many raw materials come from “countries that were colonised and still experiencing the aftermath,” Han adds. “When you have fragrance suppliers who dictate the price in their fancy air conditioned offices while the farmers have no power over those costs, the dynamics are not favourable to POC.”
AVM Curiosities’s Marks says the marketing values of orientalism have contributed to its long-term usage. “Oriental is a word that plays to the imagination, that is the positive side of it. However, you look back at a lot of that advertising about perfumery, and it’s not just the word, it’s the visual and everything that goes with it. It is horribly colonial,” she says.
Consumer awareness may drive change. “Consumers want more information. They want more transparency, not just the sound bites,” says Han. “The wave is changing because of perfume TikTok, young people, and there are certainly younger perfume TikTokers of colour. They are eager to learn about perfumery. They want all this information. And, because we have Tik Tok videos, all of this information can be more easily disseminated. Young people have a serious hunger for it.”
El Masri, of Jazmin Saraï, points to a lack of tolerance for ignorance. “The way that people speak, the way people perceive things has been shifting. And I think this is a perfect time for the fragrance industry to shift too. It is a constantly evolving industry, because we have to be, whether it’s ingredient wise or regulation wise or environment wise. So why can’t we change culturally, too?”
Shifting mindsets
Moving away from using Oriental as a classification is a good first step, but experts say brands also need to examine how they represent different cultures more broadly, including through the imagery used in marketing campaigns. If the name of a perfume is inspired by the East, “how it is represented is very important”, says SOAS’s Alavi.
“Travel is inspiring, and you can be inspired by a place and create something for that place and an homage to that place. But, I don’t think it’s necessary to continuously create an entire brand out of that,” El Masri says. Western brands should consider who the fragrance is for and what culture they are “piggybacking off”, and “stop taking from other cultures”, she adds. Inspirations can be abstract. “There’s a lot of stories that can be told without appropriating [other cultures],” she says. For example, she created a perfume that evokes the smell of “mountains and misty clouds”.
Han agrees. “Too many brands culturally appropriate concepts and continue to launch brands and fragrances that are offensive,” she says. Many Western fragrance houses are still guilty of this, she says.
Education will play an important role in bringing about change, experts agree. The top perfume schools in France have pushed a historical narrative that “Europe is the cradle of modern perfumery”, which has led to “erasure of thousands of years of scent culture from Asia, Africa and elsewhere”, Han says. Brands also have a responsibility to educate their teams. “This should be part of [brands’] diversity and inclusion programmes,” says Yosh’s Han.
Companies also need to examine the diversity of senior management teams. “We need to educate and bring people up so that we can have more voices,” Han says. “Those voices matter.”
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