Designer houses offering 'Parfum' strength for men - the new trend

[Andrewthecologneguy]

Perhaps this has been going on for a while longer than was obvious but it seems 'parfum' strength for men from designer houses is the new trend and I think it is here to stay. Gone are the days of Intense, EdP, Extreme and Absolute carrying the torch for those who must have stronger iterations.
The gods have determined we need Cool Water Parfum and Polo Blue Parfum among others.

When Dior offered Sauvage in parfum strength (2019) on the heels of Bleu de Chanel Parfum (2018), I thought, really? who needs that?
Then I remembered Dior had previously offered Homme and Fahrenheit in parfum strengths as well (2014), bested only by Terre D'Hermes Parfum half a decade earlier (!)
I gave Dior a pass then, thinking it was perhaps a (befitting) swansong for the legend - no new Fahrenheit since then, and Sauvage was launched a year later. Same pass was given to Issey Miyake for Nuit d'Issey Parfum although L'Eau d'Issey should have received that treatment

What drew my attention to this trend is Paco Rabanne's 1 Million Elixir, a parfum intense strength version launched earlier this year.
While some designers make do with 'Eau de Parfum Intense' which I suppose is stronger then EdP but not as strong as parfum, others are full throttle to go beyond parfum.
A little research revealed Dior beat Paco Rabanne to the punch with Sauvage Elixir.
A curious one for me is Joop! Le Parfum launched this year after the Edp last year. Do we really need those versions?
There may be others...

So what do we now have in parfum (or greater) strength? Not an exhaustive list but quite eye-opening:
Terre d'Hermes Parfum/Pure Parfum (2009)
Fahrenheit Parfum (2014)
Dior Homme (2014)
Nuit d'Issey Parfum (2015)
Bleu de Chanel Parfum (2018)
Sauvage Parfum & Elixir (2019/2021)
Pasha de Cartier (2020)
1 Million Parfum & Elixir (2020/2022)
Cool Water Parfum (2021)
Stronger With You Absolutely (2021)
Polo Blue Parfum (2022)
Gucci Guilty Parfum Pour Homme (2022)
The Most Wanted Parfum (2022)
Joop! Homme Le Parfum (2022)
Narciso Rodriguez bleu noir for him parfum (2022)
Club de Nuit Intense Man Parfum (2022)

Noteworthy EdP and Edp Intense launches of recent:
Eternity EdP
Chrome EdP
Joop! Homme EdP & Absolute
Bad Boy Le Parfum
Drakkar Intense
Le Male Le Parfum
Acqua di Gio
Le Beau Le Parfum
L'Homme Le Parfum (YSL)
Y Le Parfum
Givenchy Gentlemen Reserve Prive

What are your thoughts about this trend? What did I miss?

 

[Bavard]

If I love a release, I'd be happy to try variations on it. I tried Dior Homme Parfum and Fahrenhiet Parfum, and they were good, but not enough of a match to my tastes to get a bottle of either.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I think it mostly boils down to money. I’m guessing the big designers see it as cheaper to tweak half a dozen ingredients and change the Eau de toilette designation to Parfum. In a way it’s low hanging fruit for them, but they’ll soon run out of the low risk, cheap releases and have to put out something original in the way of a new pillar.

The other side to it is what happened with music production a few years back when many of the big boys (ahem and girls) would keep compressing their mix for loudness until all high and low notes were squished into a narrow bandwidth with much of the air, finer points and subtlety of the music being lost.

One last thing is an idea being espoused of real men having to be spoonfed new behaviours by the big boys (ahem and girls) like put on a perfume, put on a dress its manly GRRR as opposed to splash on some aftershave after you’ve shaved your face, or spray on some Eau de toilette before going to meet with the lads at your local bar or to meet a woman. Make of that what you will..

 

[hednic]

Another I recently picked up - Kenzo Pour Homme Parfum

 

[cacio]

I concur with you that a lot of these feel redundant. And I wouldn't talk about parfum strength, these are not the usual parfum versions of the classics. They're flankers. Flankers have always existed, the new thing is that brands now think that they can simply be called edp or parfum.

In a way, that's progress. In the last century, the word edp or parfum for a product marketed to men would have been unthinkable.

cacio

 

[bgoc]

I tend to ignore the strength on the bottles. edt/edp/parfum etc are pretty much meaningless. I see some EDTs performing better than EDPs and some EDPs better than parfums or extraits.

I look for the performance, not the name

 

[Renato]

Hi Andrew,
As I own none of the parfum strength scents and haven't tested any either. My interest is how long do they actually last in practice?

The very few EDP strength scents I've owned only had performance of about 16 hours before becoming faint - which was about double the endurance of their EDT strength counterparts - and I've owned plenty of EDTs that lasted much longer than those EDPs.

So I'd be satisfied if Parfum strength scents lasted at least a day to a day and half with moderate strength, else I'd think them a bit of a con-job. In your opinion, have any of the Parfum scents you listed and have tested achieved that endurance please?
Regards,
Renato

 

[Ken_Russell]

Thank you for the extensive list.
While so far having not any further experience with further scents worth adding to these, most of the ones mentioned in the thread starting post do benefit not just from the added performance, but also in terms of increased complexity in the respective Parfum versions of each.

 

[sjg3839]

Definitely a fan of Dior Homme Intense and Club de Nuit Intense.

 

[StylinLA]

It's a pretty clear strategy to cash in more on an established product. Makes perfect business sense.

Some built in cost savings like using same bottle, just print "parfum" on it.

Plenty of people here buy the parfum version if it's a scent they like.

I'm waiting for Bois du Portugal Parfum myself...

 

[ShawnS]

Seems to be the trend but most are not home runs new releases have become stale still waiting for Chanel to come along to shake things up with something new. I’ve yet to smell Dior Sauvage Elixir so can’t count that one out yet.

 

[Andy the frenchy]

Perhaps this has been going on for a while longer than was obvious but it seems 'parfum' strength for men from designer houses is the new trend and I think it is here to stay.

There is no definition of concentrations. Now the EDT are released directly as EDP, and EDP are released as Parfum, but in terms of juice strengt, it's the identical thing. Just a label/marketing change.

 

[The Colognnoisseur]

Elixer is the new Parfum. 😉

 

[Deleted member 26357295]

There is no definition of concentrations. Now the EDT are released directly as EDP, and EDP are released as Parfum, but in terms of juice strengt, it's the identical thing. Just a label/marketing change.

Wow, is that true? I thought that the names EdC, EdT, EdP and Parfum were officially considered to be directly related to the concentration of fragrance. Did not everyone follow this classification? If now the EdT's are EdP's (but they are still EdT's) and the EdP's are parfums (but they really are still EdP's) it seems to me a rather dishonest form of marketing, doesn't it?
I am perplexed.😯

 

[Deleted member 26357295]

- double post -

 

[Redneck Perfumisto]

…
One last thing is an idea being espoused of real men having to be spoonfed new behaviours by the big boys (ahem and girls) like put on a perfume, put on a dress its manly GRRR as opposed to splash on some aftershave after you’ve shaved your face, or spray on some Eau de toilette before going to meet with the lads at your local bar or to meet a woman. Make of that what you will..

This has crossed my mind many times.

I think perfumers and male fragrance diehards were eager for the addition of parfum strength, and while the social engineers saw potential for their purposes as you describe, they knew that the “manly strong fragrance” psychology that might work underneath selling the change, contradicted their own agenda - to say nothing of the individualist messages of (when it might actually happen) stronger and more noticeable fragrances, against which so much work had been done. I think overall the “parfum is girly” and “parfum is beast boy” messages are mutually cancelling, leaving the gender narrative challenges and flag-waving to take place mostly on other turf, e.g., fragrances like “Girl”, Stronger With You, etc.

Net result as you say - guy parfum is mostly a moneymaker via a form of flankerism (that worked so well for ladies, I might add).

TdH Parfum was a bit of a genius move for the “fragrance liberty” position, IMO, because the net change was almost all for perfumers and fragrance-loving men, and next to none for any other agenda (well, except making money!). Plus Hermès got to put on their “eccentric innovator” hat yet again. It was a brilliant first flanker.

Male parfum is, IMO, too steampunk for a degenderizer or regenderizer cultural victory. It just kicks the eternal equilibrium down the road in a new old way, much like fashion itself. “O, horrid tradition made fresh yet again!”

 

[CookBot]

The very few EDP strength scents I've owned only had performance of about 16 hours before becoming faint - which was about double the endurance of their EDT strength counterparts - and I've owned plenty of EDTs that lasted much longer than those EDPs.

Seriously? I consider any fragrance that lasts a whole 16 hours to be a marathoner.

 

[Redneck Perfumisto]

Wow, is that true? I thought that the names EdC, EdT, EdP and Parfum were officially considered to be directly related to the concentration of fragrance. Did not everyone follow this classification? If now the EdT's are EdP's (but they are still EdT's) and the EdP's are parfums (but they really are still EdP's) it seems to me a rather dishonest form of marketing, doesn't it?
I am perplexed.😯

Technically, there are indeed concentration definitions (see Roja Dove’s book) which significantly overlap at their borders (cheat 1), and which are easily engineered around (cheat 2), so that functionally a strong and a weak fragrance can be anything one wants. What is perceived as one thing could be anything - particularly after drydown.

This is most easily seen in EDTs that project across a room all day, and EDPs that don’t, to say nothing of parfums that wear like skin scents and die in a few hours. Chanel changing its exclusive EDTs to EDPs with in some cases very little change, is an excellent example of the fuzzy border (cheat 1).

No parfum actually must “wear close”, as they say, nor must an EDT (obeying the concentration rules) be fleeting and volatile. It’s a beautiful mess.

There are rules, but they have limited control over performance.

 

[Darjeeling]

I get the feeling it has slowly been ramping up as a way to cash in on flankers.
It has also taken a bit of time because of the preconception that perfume/parfum means scent for women and scents for men are cologne, so it has taken a while to get the market to become more accepting of men's "perfume." Not having seen sales figures I have no idea how successfully they've overcome this barrier.
I haven't been into fragrance for long enough to know, but I'm sure these kinds of scents were being released earlier, albeit without the parfum name. LIDGE (2005?) would definitely fall under that category, but they obviously felt that Eau Extreme would appeal to men better, while the change to Parfum now probably reflects greater acceptance of the term in mens products.

 

[Deleted member 26357295]

I personally do not associate the word "parfum" as something feminine, my mind automatically associates it with concentration, but I suppose there will be people who associate it with something "feminine" as there are men who associate any type of fragrance as something "effeminate". In any case, I would be excited if there was a release like Chanel Sycomore or Dior Homme in a parfum extrait version in a beautiful bottle of 7 or 15 ml and a fragrance concentration of 20%

Sometimes I get the feeling that everyone is trying to please everyone and that is not only impossible but also greatly limits the type of releases that are made, it does not take risks. And someone has to be the first! I simply applaud the audacity, thinking for example of Brad Pitt to announce Chanel nº5.