It was no coincidence that right after the great wave of fashion came the grand era of glamorous movie stars. Marilyn Monroe, who dominated the cinema world in the 1950s, became an unpaid spokeswoman for Chanel No. 5 when asked what she wore to bed. (The answer, which is sometimes quoted as Two drops of Chanel No. 5 still ranks high on the famous quotation lists today.) Thus, it did not take long for perfume to be linked to fashion and glamour. (Even today, celebrities like to lend their name to line of fragrance products but perhaps the interest nowadays is more mercantile than image.)

It would be hard for men to reach for that bottle of Chanel No. 5 once Marilyn cooed over it. And yet the idea of fragrances for one gender only was a relatively new concept.

For centuries before that, kings and noblemen wore perfumes (including floral scents). But a couple of years worth of hardcore advertising turned the perfume world into a women's only party.

The emergence of products like after-shave and men's cologne (note it's never called men's perfume) were studied attempts to try to capture the attention of modern men who somehow got the notion that fragrances were not for them. These first efforts to win men back to perfume (Old Spice, Burma Shave, Aqua Velva, English Leather) embraced a utilitarian theme. These weren't fragrances, they were products related to shaving.

Eventually, men's colognes hit the market and more and more scents appeared on the scene. Yet the dividing line was in place in that certain fragrances were considered suitable for men and they were definitely not florals. Men wore scents that were spicy, leathery, woodsy, light and fresh, or even musky.

Again, that is a modern notion, not some venerable old tradition. The scents that wowed the men of the French court in the 18th century were florals and citrus brews.

Meanwhile, in our own day, the scents that were reserved for men only found some resonance among females. In fact, most perfume manufacturers today recognize that women have an interest in a lot of masculine types of scents and vice versa.

The emergence of the so-called fresh scents may have been an attempt to try to harmonize those worlds. Many fragrance products today are deliberately light and ambiguous, as if trying to woo women who are not thrilled with the sometimes more complex and/or flowery perfumes in the women's section.

A recent landmark in the notion of male-vs.-female fragrance occurred with Calvin Klein's CK One. CK One was created and sold as a single product for use by men or women. It was marketed as the one fragrance for both men and women. Because most of us really do not know very much about perfume, we thought this concept was delightfully revolutionary and modern. (By the way, CK One is a citrus scent-like the original 4711 Cologne, likewise a gender-spanning fragrance, albeit from the 18th century.)

The perfume company Bond No. 9 in Manhattan offers many eau-de-parfum products it labels simply for him or her. One of my favorite of their both-gender scents is Gramercy Park, a peppery fresh fragrance. Most women like the scent but then ask cautiously, Is this for women? It's not a typically girly-girl aroma. Fortunately, for the faint-hearted perfume-wearer, the manufacturer gives permission for men and women to put on this scent.

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