What Is a Flanker in Perfumery? Why Your Favourite Perfume Has Six Versions

A flanker is a new perfume released under the name of an existing perfume. Not a reformulation of it, not a bigger bottle of it — a different fragrance, wearing a name that already means something to you.

If you have ever stood in front of a counter holding two bottles that say the same word on the front and wondered which one is "the real one", this article is for you. The short answer is that both are real, they smell different, and the words printed underneath the name are telling you much less than you think.

The vocabulary: pillars and flankers

The industry splits fragrance launches into two kinds.

A pillar is a fragrance launched on its own name, as a new idea. It gets the advertising campaign, the face, the bottle design, the years of development.

A flanker is everything that comes afterwards under that name. It keeps the pillar's name and usually its bottle shape, and changes the juice — sometimes slightly, sometimes almost completely.

The economics explain why they exist. According to Johanna Monange, founder of Maison 21G and a former creative director at the fragrance house International Flavors and Fragrances, flankers account for roughly 30–40% of a major brand's overall production, with big brands launching a genuinely new scent only every three to five years while flankers arrive annually. (That share is an industry estimate from one practitioner rather than an audited statistic — treat it as a sense of scale, not a measurement.)

Her explanation of the appeal is unusually blunt: "You don't need to redevelop the bottle. You just change the color, and you keep the brand awareness."

And the pull often comes from outside the brand. Carlos Huber, founder of the niche house Arquiste, told the same trade publication that "flankers are mostly launched and requested by big retailers... at Sephora, Ulta, larger department stores." A shelf wants new stock. A name that already sells is the cheapest way to provide it.

What actually changes in a flanker

Four things, in various combinations:

1. The concentration. The same idea, made denser or lighter — an Eau de Parfum version of an Eau de Toilette.
2. The direction. The same idea pushed somewhere: warmer, sweeter, smokier, fresher for summer.
3. The materials. A note swapped, added or removed, which can change the fragrance far more than the name suggests.
4. The carrier. Rarer, but it happens — including the alcohol the perfume is dissolved in, which is most of what is in the bottle.

The words on the bottle are brand names, not categories

This is the part that costs people money, so it is worth stating flatly.

Intense. Elixir. Extrait. Absolu. Absolue. L'Eau. Eau Fraîche. Le Parfum. Parfum. Eau Forte. Noir. Blanc. Sport.

None of these are defined categories. There is no rule that an "Intense" must be more concentrated than the fragrance it flanks, and no standard that makes an "Elixir" denser than a "Parfum". The concentration labels themselves — Eau de Toilette, Eau de Parfum, extrait — are not legal definitions and vary from house to house. The flanker words sit one level further out from that: they are chosen by a marketing department to signal a mood.

The practical consequence: "Intense" tells you the brand wants you to read this one as the serious one. It does not tell you it will last longer on your skin.

A worked example: one name, six perfumes

Take the largest example currently on a counter. On Dior's own website today, under the single name Sauvage, there are six different fragrances: an Eau de Toilette, an Eau de Parfum, a Parfum, an Elixir, an Extrait, and an Eau Forte. (The same name also runs across a skincare line, a shampoo, a shower gel and a deodorant, but those are not perfumes.)

The pillar is the Eau de Toilette from 2015, composed by Dior's then in-house perfumer François Demachy — an aromatic fougère built on bergamot, pepper and ambroxan. On Fragrantica it holds a community rating of 3.85 out of 5 from just under 34,000 votes, which is an enormous sample by any standard.

Now take the newest of the six. Sauvage Eau Forte, launched in 2024, was composed by Francis Kurkdjian and is genuinely unusual: it is an alcohol-free, water-based formula — the carrier itself was replaced. Its community rating on the same site is 2.44 out of 5 from about 2,900 votes.

That gap is the whole lesson of this article, and it is worth being careful about what it means. A crowd-sourced score is not a verdict on quality; plenty of significant perfumes are divisive, and an unfamiliar format will always unsettle people who bought the original expecting the original. What the gap does show, unambiguously, is this:

The shared name predicted nothing. Not the composition, not the format, not even whether the people who love one will tolerate the other. Two bottles, one word, two completely different experiences — and no way to know from the front of the box.

Flanker, reformulation, or new perfume?

These three get confused constantly. The difference is simple once you see it laid out.

| | Name | Formula | What happened | |---|---|---|---| | Flanker | New name attached to an existing one | New formula | The brand made an additional perfume | | Reformulation | Unchanged | Changed | The same perfume was rebuilt, often for regulatory or supply reasons | | New pillar | Entirely new | New formula | A new idea, standing on its own |

The one that catches people out is the middle column. A flanker sits next to the original on the shelf and you can choose. A reformulation replaces the original silently, in the same bottle, and you cannot.

How to shop a flanker without wasting money

• Treat it as a different perfume. Because it is one. The name is a family resemblance, not a guarantee.
• Ignore the suffix. Intense, Elixir, Extrait — read them as flavours of intent, not measurements. If you want to know whether it is stronger on you, the only test is your skin.
• Test them side by side, on skin, on separate days. Comparing two members of one family on paper is the least reliable way to tell them apart.
• Check the perfumer and the year if you can. A flanker made nine years after the pillar by a different perfumer is, realistically, a new fragrance with an inherited name.
• Be sceptical of the assumption that the newest is the best of the line. It is the newest. That is all the name is telling you.

If you are buying without smelling first, our guide to choosing a perfume online applies here with extra force — a flanker is precisely the case where the reviews you find may be describing a different bottle from the one you are about to buy.

How we approach it at SHŌ ITO

We do not make flankers, and it is worth explaining why rather than treating it as a virtue.

A flanker is a very good answer to a specific problem: you have a name that sells, a retail channel that needs new stock every season, and a portfolio to fill. None of those are our problems. We release rarely, we sell directly, and there is no shelf anywhere waiting to be refilled by us in the autumn.

So our rule is that if a fragrance is different enough to sell, it is different enough to name. Each release stands on its own name, with its own identity — the scent, the imagery and the name arrived at together, rather than a variation borrowing recognition from something we already made. That also means we cannot lean on an existing name to explain a new perfume. Every one has to earn its own understanding from scratch, which is slower and harder and, we think, the correct trade.

If we ever do release something that sits alongside an existing fragrance, we will say plainly what changed and why. That is the part the industry mostly leaves off the box.

The short version

• A flanker is a new fragrance released under an existing perfume's name. A pillar is the original.
• Flankers are estimated at 30–40% of a major brand's output; pillars arrive every three to five years, flankers every year — and retailers actively request them.
• Intense, Elixir, Extrait, Absolu, Le Parfum are marketing names, not defined categories. They do not guarantee higher concentration or longer wear.
• One name can cover very different perfumes: Dior currently lists six Sauvage fragrances, including a 2024 alcohol-free, water-based version by a different perfumer from the 2015 original — and the two are received completely differently by the same community.
• A flanker is a choice on the shelf. A reformulation is a replacement in the bottle. Know which one you are looking at.

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