Are there different "cliques"/"tribes" within the fragrance community and what are they?

I would identify fragrance users thus:

  • The One & Dones: Casual users of perfume, they own one to three bottles total, and their purchases account for the bulk of perfume sales globally. Their perfume preference is heavily dependent on what's available at their counters.

  • Oil Perfume Users: For a variety of reasons, they may dislike spray perfumes (not counting those "dry oil" sprays). Arguably dividable into subsets:

  • Arabian oils users. Maybe they first bought Abdul Kareem Egyptian Musk from a vendor on the street. Maybe they're from a region where they have access to mukhallat, attars, etc at their local stores. The rest of 'em rely on online sellers for their fix.

  • Essential oil evangelicals. All they wear is straight EO picked up from groceries. Sometimes they argue with you about whether Kuumba Made or Auric Blends are all natural.

  • Indie oils such as by BPAL or Possets or dozens of other companies.

  • Naturalists: For various reasons, they only want to use all-natural, sometimes all-botanical perfumes, whether sprayed or oil. Sometimes they were formerly EO Evangelists, but wanted more complexity and didn't want to mix more than 3-4 EOs by themselves. Sometimes they want to talk about The Chemicals in perfume.

  • Indie Fumeheads: A subset of niche fumeheads, but in my experience there's not necessarily an overlap; sometimes there's an overlap with oil users, depending on the specific community. Their buying habits range from directly buying from the cottage industry artisans themselves at their Etsy/Shopify/whatever or from retailers that stock other brands. They usually recognize designer perfumes as well as a couple dozen indies, out of the hundreds of indie perfumeries available. I myself keep a list of 200ish indie brands.

  • Vintage Seekers: This can range from Really Old Perfume to Specific Production Years of a perfume that has gone through more than 2 noticeably different formulations. Sometimes they have strong opinions on EdT vs EdP vs PdT vs Extrait vs EdC in various flacons released during key decades. Some of them would commit crimes for Iris Gris and certain old original formulation Guerlains.

  • Niche Only: Sometimes they're new to fragrance, but in my experience they've usually spent some amount of time/money on designer/whatever perfumes before getting SUPER into niche only. They were Very Upset when large companies bought out certain niche brands because niche is unfettered by boring mass appeal that drives the bottom line of designer companies, or something.

  • Brand Loyalist: It doesn't matter whether it's an indie, niche, designer, whatever - they cannot be budged. They might even argue with you about their favorite, especially regarding perceived transparency or value of the product. Favorite Brand is the best brand. Because they sometimes try other companies, they show up in other communities, as well as their own brand-specific echo chamber.

  • Platform-Dependent/Sub-Specific Cliques: Catch-all for all the different fragrance discussions that happen on different platforms or forums. They're all distinct from each other. The conversation about fragrances is definitely not the same on /r/fragrance vs Fragrantica vs NST. You still get an assortment of the above individuals though.

/r/fragrance Thread