It’s genuinely both — there’s real marketing repositioning happening industry-wide, but it’s riding on an authentic underlying shift in how people actually choose fragrance, rather than being pure spin with no substance behind it.

Separating the substance from the label

Sales patterns and the sheer number of niche and independent houses building fragrances without gender framing from day one suggest this isn’t simply a rebranding exercise — people really are choosing scent based on what they like rather than what aisle it’s marketed in. At the same time, plenty of brands have simply relabelled existing fragrances as ‘unisex’ without materially changing anything about them, which is where the marketing angle is fair to call out. The honest answer is that the shift in consumer attitude is real, even where some of the marketing around it is opportunistic.

  • Genuine shift: more fragrances designed unisex from the start, not retrofitted
  • Marketing opportunism: some existing scents simply relabelled without real change
  • Worth judging each fragrance on its own merits rather than the unisex label alone

Ultimately the fairest test is simple: does a specific unisex fragrance genuinely work well on a wide range of people, or has it just been repackaged with new wording and a more neutral bottle design.

Our unisex fragrance guide and our complete guide to perfume both look at this honestly, and our unisex range is worth exploring on its own terms.