Louis Vuitton has announced the Woody Wagon Colognes Collection. Details are still emerging, but it appears to be a new wood-focused direction rather than another typical citrus-aquatic LV release. Valentino is introducing Vendetta, its first completely new fragrance franchise in more than six years. It will include separate men’s and women’s fragrances rather than being another Born in Roma flanker. That makes it more significant than the average designer release. Sol de Janeiro is entering men’s fragrance. Its new Cheiroso Cologne Mist collection is the company’s first line created specifically for men. This is important commercially because prestige body sprays and lighter fragrance formats continue to take market share from traditional bottles. Sol de Janeiro has officially entered men’s fragrance The company is introducing two men’s releases: - Cheiroso 7 Cologne Mist - Cheiroso 10 Cologne Mist This is commercially important because it brings the inexpensive, high-volume body-mist model directly into men’s fragrance. It may also encourage more traditional designer houses to release lighter sprays, layering products, and affordable refill formats. A new masculine niche house called Urbanbeast is pushing traditional men’s perfumery. While much of niche perfumery has moved toward gender-neutral marketing, Urbanbeast is deliberately presenting itself as a return to clearly masculine scent profiles. That could signal a broader countertrend. Gourmands are still dominating niche perfumery. Coverage from Esxence 2026 shows that brands are not abandoning sweetness, but they are making gourmands stranger: salty beach accords, realistic lemonade, savory fig-and-tzatziki ideas and unconventional food references. So the movement is becoming more experimental rather than simply producing more vanilla bombs. The strongest industry trend I see: perfume is splitting in two directions. Mainstream brands are building easy fragrance “wardrobes,” mists and celebrity collections, while niche brands are going increasingly artistic, regional and unusual. At the same time, there may be a small return toward clearly masculine perfumery after years of nearly everything being marketed as unisex.

I make this post partially humorous but also to seriously ask you what your biggest pet peeves that beginners or people not as invested in this hobby as us are. I say outsiders carefully as not to say it in a clique kind of sense. Because I’ve unlocked a pet peeve that’s so weirdly specific, to anyone outside of the bubble, I look psycho! So asking you guys, what are yours? And do any of you relate to this specific one that I have? My biggest, most frustrating issue is so irritating to me because of how ridiculously widespread it is, and it comes with the misconception of cologne, perfume, and gendered fragrances. It strikes a positively DISSONANT chord within me when someone refers to all men’s fragrance as “cologne”. Makes me like unreasonably irritated. Crazy right! But hear me out. One of the biggest misconceptions in fragrance is the idea of A), gendered fragrance, and B), men’s fragrance is all “cologne”. Traditionally, cologne is a concentration of alcohol to oil, and actually one of the weakest concentrations. Most fragrances nowadays for men aren’t colognes at all but Eau de toilettes and Eau de parfums! They don’t wear cologne! They wear perfume! Gendered fragrance in and of itself is a western marketing construct used by companies to get men to start wearing it, to make the market less intimidating and fit in with the stigmas and social values at the time. Along with that, the word “perfume” had a largely feminine connotation, and men at the time did not feel comfortable wearing something with the name of something that sounded so well… feminine. Considering there WERE popular men’s fragrances that were cologne concentrations like from Acqua di Parma, and the word “cologne” sounded rugged, masculine, and less feminine, so it became synonymous with all men’s fragrance. Now as to why this particular stereotype and misconception bothers me so much, I’ll get into that. A), I hate the word cologne. Always have. When I bought my first Versace my girlfriend at the time was like “how’s the cologne?” And bro it bothered me. I wasn’t mad at her or anything lol, but I associate the word with the absolutely terrible chemical bomb my dad would wear with his axe body spray. So when I hear “cologne”, I think of that. Even I look at my older posts and see myself use that word and I criiiiiiinge