What you see on the picture is Mohur extrait by Neela Vermeire Creations. It costs 350 euros and is the most expensive perfume I own*. By niche perfumery standards, even a 500-euro fragrance is no longer anything shocking, as the prices keep climbing. For a normal person, this is of course a huge amount of money that most people cannot even imagine to spend on a bottle of fragrance. However, the reason I’m talking about Mohur is not the price (that was just to get your attention), but the quality.

Nominally, Mohur is a rose scent and indeed, there is some gorgeous rose in there, no doubt about it. But if it was only rose, I would probably not be very interested in it – straight up rose perfumes smell boring to me, no matter how beautifully done. Mohur on the other hand is a complex, multilayered, intricate spicy-woody rose. The notes include cardamom, almond milk, jasmine, sandalwood, oud (the most refined oud imaginable) and even leather, although the latter is so fine that I’m not even sure I smell it. There are two versions – the lighter Eau de Parfum and the richer extrait, the star of this post.

Of all my perfumes, Mohur seems to be the one that is instantly and almost universally liked. People spray once and their eyes light up. Partly because unlike some other niche offerings, it is not an edgy or challenging scent. But I’m absolutely sure it’s also because people are not imbeciles and can smell the quality. And it is undoubtedly a quality perfume, both in construction and materials. It’s been created by Bertrand Duchaufour, one of the most prominent noses currently working, and I have it on good authority that the ingredients are very, very carefully sourced.

My point is not to say that quality in scent can only exist for a prohibitive price – there are many great perfumes that cost a fraction of this -, I’m simply using the best evidence I have to postulate that enjoying a refined, well-made perfume is not only for a select group of connoisseurs. Everybody is capable of that, it’s not true that ‘ordinary consumers’ are and should be happy with some entirely unoriginal sweet plasticky-smelling stuff. Most of the time, people will recognize and appreciate when something is made with care and with respect towards the wearer.

Mainstream perfumery seems not to believe this. Most of the budget is spent on huge, usually sexist sleep-inducingly unoriginal advertising campaigns and on the bottle design, very little is left for the fragrance itself. Instead of creativity, there are endless flankers and instead of a meaningful message to the consumer, there is deliberately obscure marketing babble.** These are longstanding complaints of the perfumista community and therefore a bit boring and possibly naive – if it works, why break it?

Only I’m not sure that it does work or even if it still does (for some), than for how long? There is a reason behind the rise of the niche and it’s not that people desperately want to pay hundreds of euros for their perfume (it’s not only the expensive niche that is rising, it’s also DIY oils and affordable indie lines and much else). I therefore have this crazy idea that maybe, just maybe it would make sense also for the Big Mainstream to invest in the juice, to create something that smells beautiful, maybe even a little different than everything else on the market! And if this means a bit less magazine space or time for TV ads, I think in today’s world this is not a tragedy. There is much to learn from smaller brands, whose first priority is to ensure people can smell and test the fragrance, who engage with consumers and help them understand the experience, who do not talk down to the wearers of their scents. Sure, this respect comes out of necessity, but it’s there.

It is my radical belief that people don’t in fact want to smell cheap and boring – even if they don’t want to smell TOO interesting either – and they will eventually get frustrated if this is the only option presented to them. Yes, some of the sugar water sells well***. But things change and what seemed so certain 10 or even 5 years ago may soon be in doubt. I used to work for Coca-Cola, I know.

*It was a gift. My own pain threshold seems to be around 200 euros for a bottle.
**I am not anti-marketing, I LOVE good branding (possibly a little too much), but it’s rarely found in the mainstream perfume world.
*** And it’s the higher quality sugar water that sells well.