Instagram has recently been recommending me reels by Derek Deng, a beauty editor and influencer who, in his most interesting content to me personally, surveys homosexual men and women on their tastes in, in this case, fragrance.

I think that fragrance hasn't interested me because in general I'm not interested in the things that fragrance seems to signify. Basically, as always, the marketing isn't right. I just prefer geeky marketing, so the best way to appeal to me in this way is to tell me "this scent is the most popular with the gayest of femme bottoms" and I go "hmmm, I don't know if I identify with that... what have you got for verse-masc heteros?"

I think that I'm reminded of this quote: "[don't] become lost in the world of signs and forget the things they signify" - I see the world of signs in fragrance, but they're manufactured, a black and white photo of a hot abercrombie model feels too manufactured to be meaningful to me. But data on what people actually purchase that grounds the symbols in something real? Now that's appealing. I think as well there's a legitimising aspect by asking homosexuals because they're known for style; a microcosmic swirl of competitive drive to define oneself through the market segmentative power of capitalism. Certainly I wouldn't trust hetero-men because they're just so much more likely to be un-experimental, un-nuanced and un-appreciative of little details. And little details to me really defines the human experience, building a mental model of a person requires hearing from them in as much detail as possible all the possible mental shapes that they use to navigate the world. In this case, with fragrance, I hope to understand how the signifier melds with the signified to form a symbol.

I want to post the fragances and their accords, and then go out into the world and smell them and say what I think:

Lesbians

Femme

The data shows that they're extremely segmented (according to Derek's videos on Instagram, the sources of information for this post are highly variable).

The more bottom and femme you are, the more milky and vanilla you seem to go, leading to the term "the lactonic lesbians".

What they wear

Glossier You (2017)

Bottoms - Both femme and masc.

Pronounced glossy-A you, it is in the top 5 most worn scents for gay guys and lesbian women, the only scent to do so, in fact, it is the most popular for gay women and #2 for the men.

It is meant to be a 'skin-scented' fragrance, containing ambroxan, a synthetic alternative to ambergris.

Only recently popular in 2023.

Dedcool - Xtra Milk

"If the gay guys have Lost Cherry, the lesbians have Dedcool Xtra Milk"

Margiela Lazy Sunday Morning

Median age was 24. The wearer of this "will find a way to bring up the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath into any conversation"

Scents they like

That is, scents that bottom-y and femme lesbians said they found attractive. In his work, Derek has said that vanilla and leather are particularly attractive to the lactonic lesbians.

Aesop - Marrakech Intense

Femme4masc coded.

Dave - Henry Rose

Femme4femme coded. Apparently this is a 'sapphic vanilla'.

Maison D'etto - I Dream

"Femme carrot cake lesbian had a baby with a butch motorcycle lesbian"

Carrot seed, warm milk, leather, vanilla.

Butch

What they wear

The butches tend to cluster around boozy, leathery and woody scents, leading to the term "The boozy butches".

Margiela - Jazz Club

The most popular signature scent. "Spiritually a butch fragrance", "as if the chain-smoker butch lesbian had a baby with the futch bartender with the stick and poke tattoo"

Tobacco leaf, rum, vanilla

"Jazz Club by Maison Martin Margiela is a Leather fragrance for men" - haha

Le Labo - Santal 33

Average age - 34, the quintessential butch millenial scent

Also popular amongst gay men.

Scents They Like

Alternative florals, jasmine, milky

Liis - Flower Glyph

Jasmine, honeysuckle, blueberries, ink

"Femme lesbian in a milkmaid dress eating blueberries in Oregon"

Miu miu - fleur de lait

Osmanthus, milky

Dries Van Noten - Soie Malaquais

Dries Van Noten perfumes are very 'futchy' coded

Blackcurrent, bergamot, silk, rose, chestnut, cacao

Futch

What they wear

Futches tended to have a lot of fig scents, leading to the term "The futch figgy". This is poetic as figs are not a traditional fruit, they have hundreds of flowers that grow inverted, producing fruits on the inside of their skin... i.e. something kind of inbetween.

Green? Sometimes in the smelling notes you just get a colour - green, violet. Green implies grass and greenery, and violet kind of literally means the flower, violet.

A fun word to note here that I'm personally keen to see is the word 'gourmand', which refers to scents that are... edible. I have this intuition from the term 'the figgy futches' that futchy scents will contain gourmands.

Phlur - Father Figure

Green fig note, jasmine and vanilla

Diptyque - Orphéon

More popular amongst futch tops

Margiela By The Fireplace

"The most lesbian fragrance"? I don't know exactly what Derek means by this.

Evenly split between femmes and butches, so I'm just putting it here.

The Gays

Apparently divided in generation by 'gourmand' scents like berries, vanilla, nuts, coffee type stuff.

As well, one interesting thing here is that I noticed that I associate top with masc with gay men more than I do with lesbians. So with lesbians I broke it down by appearance, but with guy men, by top and bottom. I think its because in my experience that's been the defining traits, are you a top or bottom is said of gay guys, and people talk more or femme or butch or lesbians.

Top-y

What they wear

Leather, woody

Dior Sauvage

Literally the biggest meme in the fragrance world. It it is one of the most popular fragrances around, as such, its the sort of thing a parfum nouveau would purchase: its popular, its canonical, its safe, its mildly bombastic. And its image is now tainted by a sort of inexperienced but flashy masculinity.

I'm very keen to try it.

Bergamot, pepper

Very top-coded

Dior Fahrenheit

Dior fahrenheit is right at the top of the most attractive fragrances that a top can wear (from the perspective of bottoms). There's a lot of poetry around why and I guess I'll have to find out for myself.

"Holy moly do I feel like a man with this one. Reminds me of turning wrenches and getting covered in grease. Wiping my oily hands on an old shirt turned to a rag."

Bottom-y

What they wear

Tom Ford - Lost Cherry (2018)

Power bottoms? High on the 'femme' and 'bottom' angle, lesbians do not wear this one.

Byredo - Bal D'Afrique

'Verse gay', bottom-y.

Random

Velixir - Uranus

This one I saw as a highly complimented scent - its a budget fragrance despite its marketing and name, and is meant to be an effective dupe of Météore by Louis Vuitton - how do we know? Honestly, its just that there's a lot of influencers comparing it to more expensive fragrances in their videos. There's a problem of repeatability however as its not blind, nor is it something I can personally test as I'm not going to buy the expensive ones.

Tom ford

Tom Ford Article

Tom Ford is a GAY fragrance brand, Tom Ford having been the creative director at Gucci and YSL.

Soleil Blanc

Black Orchid

Tobacco Vanille

Ombré Leather

Lost Cherry

Maison Margiela

If you sit and twink about it all the Margiela fragrances are spiritually sapphic. They're all androgynous. Their scents all portray like concepts of a memory and their descriptions are all strangely poetic and if there's one thing about the lesbians its that they don't play about their poetry. Compare that to the gay guys who love a Tom Ford fragrance, all of their perfumes are very luscious erotic fantasies whereas the Margiela fragrances are kind of like fuzzy little fever dreams.

You know there is a real thing I feel as I sit here culture-vulturing homosexuals that does give me pause. I think that there is an aspect of a 'shortcut' here that will forever leave me a dilletante. But I think that if I could meet a friend in the real world who knows this much about fragrance I would love to pick their brain for hours too, perhaps the reason that this feels specifically culture-vulture is the fact that I am basically completely plagiarising from one guy online and collating it all. But its much more convenient this way, his content is broken up between blog posts and instagram reels, its nice to have it all in one place.