My second most recent (new) purchase is City Orange, by Japanese cosmetics brand Ignis – a dense, but paradoxically light, woody aromatic citrus chypre – reasonably priced; I just walked past the shop one lunchtime, sprayed some on, saw the price – ¥3000 – and bought it.)
I am debuting this today as a workscent.
With definite reminiscences of O De Lancôme in the top (a beautiful mandarin, orange, bergamot and grapefruit), over a warm, almost leathery and slightly suggestively mossy base – with refined notes of vetiver and patchouli – there is a neoclassical, but also quite simple, suaveness to this blend that nicely matches a suit and the office ; I will top up the citrus notes, which fade quite quickly, with my grapefruit/ yuzu this week made hand balm.
Recently I have noticed more of my Japanese colleagues, both male and female, wearing deeper, dryer, woodier fragrances with airily dotted spice ( one member of the administrative staff swears blind he is not wearing perfume whenever I ask him ; in that case he must be sleeping in an incense temple ); sometimes I forget how nice finely layered, flinted aromatics can be, how they can tug at the senses with a certain, dried bark subtlety..
The Black Narcissus 
Do you mean recently as in the autumn or in recent years that people are wearing deeper, drier, and woodier fragrances?
Sorry for the late reply.
Definitely a general tendency – though I am not sure if all this is perfume, laundry liquids, soaps, body cremes etc – but while most people here are still ‘unscented’ or smell of overly strong fabric softeners, there are quite a lot of people who just smell lovely – up close or in a space : quite sandalwood /rosewood/ onsen – hot spring – hinoki soap : warm and inviting and really lovely