This March, Belgian magazines Knack Weekend, Le Vif Weekend, FEELING and GAEL once again handed out the Belgian Beauty Awards. Besides make-up and personal care, there was also a category called Niche Perfume. But are the three nominated perfumes really 'niche'? Time for an analysis ...
X pour homme, Y pour femme: you can easily replace the X and Y with countless perfume brands that explicitly state on the bottle whether you are holding a perfume for women or for men. Other brands do it more subtly and choose a neutral name, but do have a category for women and a category for men on their website. Similarly, when you walk into a classic perfumery, you usually find a women's department and a men's department. At a time when gender identity has long ceased to be reducible to this binary division, this is remarkable. So who and what exactly determines whether a perfume is suitable for women or men?