Of course, maybe what the manufacturer says should not matter so much. After all, perfume products are marketed by people interested in selling them, not by the people who wear them. In other words, marketers are always reaching out to a target, but that target is not necessarily the entire universe of people interested in the product.

Apparently, it makes good marketing sense to keep the genders distinct in the perfume aisle. Right after Calvin Klein offered CK One, he came out with a scent called In2U which exists in two versions: one for each gender. The idea here is that men and women can wear the same fragrance family, but the products, of course, would have to be different.

There is really no traditional or fashion-based reason for doing that, other than the fact that it seems to make some of us feel more confident in our perfume choices.

While urban dwellers, the tragically hip, and unbearable perfumistas may be deemed the most likely to cross gender lines in perfume, the fact is the line we have now is not only moving and blurry it is largely artificial! There is no reason why women can't wear fresh, woodsy, or leathery scents or why men need to shy away from some of the great classic perfumes.

A good deal depends on how well we like the fragrances we're wearing and how the fragrance works on our skin. Beyond that, most of the people around us cannot even begin to tell whether the scent we've put on was manufactured and labeled for men or for women. Besides, that label doesn't mean a thing anyway!

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