Perfumers have structures just as buildings do, and many perfumers, like many architects, have imbibed modernism’s early 20th century precepts: eliminate ornament, simplify line, derive form from contemporary materials.

Just as steel, the new high-tech metal, allowed the rise of the skyscraper, Pfizer’s 1966 discovery of the methylbenzodioxepinone molecule (trade-named Calone) with its fresh marine/ozonic scent, allowed the creation of the oceanic scents of the 90s. The perfumer Jacques Cavallier’s 1992 l’Eau d’Issey for Issey Miyake is calone’s paradigmatic use. Simplified, linear, it fathered an entire sub-school of oceanic perfumes. Yet the oceanics, which once smelled exciting, are now dated. L’Eau d’Issey, a revolution in its time, and masterfully built, may be coming to the end of its aesthetic usefulness.