It's not just black and white...

...at least not in equal amounts.

It's probably not very difficult to guess who would win in a battle of black vs. white in fragrance names. If you go on basenotes and search for black (in English and French) you get 1054 hits in the product category, whereas white only brings up a meagre 296. 

I just have to look at my admittedly not very big perfume collection (getting there...) to confirm this. Apart from a sample of Lalique's White, I don't own any other scent with this colour in its name, and the only other one I ever tried was White Linen, by Estee Lauder. It smelled exactly like I imagined, of white, innocent bedsheets. Terribly uninteresting but reassuring. Blacks on the other hand I have quite a few as I'm sure so have most perfumistas and my findings (you can probably tell I was a bit bored this afternoon) are not at all unexpected.

But, what about the ever entertaining competition game between the Anglo Saxons and the French?

                       

Black 921 versus Noir 133. That did come as a surprise, at least to me. 

Sorry, the French. 

                                                 

Man in black beret image via flickr from Bob Jagendorf, some rights reserved