My Personal Introduction
to Perfume

01Introduction

Perfumes have gained a lot of popularity recently, and whenever something does gain popularity, the main source that people get information from is TikTok or Instagram or some other short form content. I do not like that, so I will be introducing perfume in my own way. This article is intended to clarify everything a person might need to understand perfume.

02What is a perfume?

A perfume is an oil and alcohol. The oil is what gives the perfume its smell, and the alcohol is used to dilute it.¹

03Concentrations

When diluting a perfume oil, you get to decide what concentration your fragrance will be, and that is where words such as EDP and Parfum come in. These are terms that generally refer to a specific oil concentration, but they are unregulated, and therefore not fixed in any way. Here they are, generally speaking:

Notice the overlap in the concentrations? That is precisely what I mean when I say that these labels of EDT and extrait are pretty unreliable for anyone to gauge an objective meaning out of them.

A fun exception is an extrait that reached 56% concentration, Amouage – Epic 56 Woman, which is the highest I have seen.

There are other terms as well, such as Esprit, but those are literally just marketing words even looser than the ones mentioned above.

04From liquid to gas

For you to be able to smell something, it needs to be a gas. In a bottle, all perfumes are liquid, and when you spray them on your wrist or neck, they are still liquids. Only after they are sprayed do they start evaporating, which allows us to smell them.

05Notes

Notes are akin to characters or smells that you can find within a perfume. If something has notes of “citruses,” then somewhere in that perfume you will find the character of a citrus. These can be as specific or as broad as a perfumer might want; where for example a perfume might list “citruses” in its notes, which could realistically be anything from a lemon to a pomelo; and another perfume might list “Sicilian bergamot,” which is a specific type of citrus from a specific location.

It is important to note that notes do not equal ingredients. Often, notes are characters presented to us – the consumers – for the sake of simplifying complex chemicals and reducing them to what they are supposed to smell like. For example, vanillin, labdanum and benzoin might all be combined to make a note of “amber.”

06Accords

Accords are also characters but in a broader sense. When you use the term note, you often refer to a singular character that takes part in the fragrance. For example, clove and cumin are both notes. An accord is a character in a broader sense of the word. It does not encompass individual smells, but rather describes their combined character. In the previous example, you have clove and cumin. Adding those two up would give you an accord of “warm spicy” or simply “spicy.”

I will give you some examples here:

What this all means is that you can describe a perfume as being aromatic, without actually knowing what is in it, and then from there you are implying the character of SOMETHING within the notes that make up that accord. Trust me, it is easier than you think.

07The pyramid

Most fragrances come with a distinction of “top,” “mid,” and “base.” These are terms used to denote the chronology of a smell. The top is what you smell when you initially spray a perfume; the mid (also called heart) is what you smell 20–30 minutes into spraying the perfume; and the base (also called the dry down) is what you smell hours after you have sprayed it. These are often presented in the classical “note pyramid” diagram.

So let’s say we have a perfume like this:

This pyramid shows a perfume where the top notes are citruses, mid notes are woods and the base notes are musks. This means that when you first spray it, you will smell mostly citruses, which will then gradually turn into a woody smell, and then eventually a musky smell.

It is important to note that this is not absolute, rather gradual. The perfume does not SUDDENLY go from top to mid, but rather it bleeds into it.

08A perfume’s performance

Generally, there are three words that a person might use to describe a perfume’s performance. Those terms are: projection, longevity and sillage.

Projection is how far a smell reaches. You can think about it as a sphere around the wearer of a perfume, in which if anyone stands, they will catch a whiff of what he or she is wearing. If the projection of something is strong, then it will be smelled from some distance away, whereas if the projection is weak, it will only be smelled if someone gets very close to you.²

Longevity is how long the perfume will last on your skin. This is considered to be from the time it is sprayed on someone until the base part of a fragrance (or dry down) is no longer smellable.

Sillage (pronounced see-yahj) is a measure of how long the fragrance persists in your wake. Let’s say you are walking, then the scent trail left behind you is measured by the sillage. If something has a strong sillage, then the smell stays for some time even after you leave; whereas a weak sillage means that you can only be smelled when you are there.

It is important to note that despite short form content often pushing for maximizing all three aforementioned metrics, a person seldom needs that. In an office for example, a person (in my humble opinion) should not have a smell strong enough to choke out the entire floor. A fragrance should be considered the same way that clothing should: you would not wear a red onesie to a business meeting.

09Seasons

Frequently, you can hear people talking about “winter” fragrances or “summer” fragrances, but what does that actually mean? The short of it is that the character of a perfume is interpreted as being intended for a specific season. The rationale behind it is that sometimes a fragrance is heavy and dark and has a characteristic density to it, which would make a person think of the heaviness of winter, and so they would label that fragrance as a winter scent. Conversely, a fragrance might be bright and airy and full of notes that one might associate with the summer, and so it will be labelled a summer fragrance.

In truth I do think that there is some benefit to this distinction, as I found myself often repulsed (in an olfactory manner) by people who wear dense and heavy things in the summer, as in combination with the moist air and the burning sun, it can induce headaches.

However, this is a mere personal (or communal) interpretation, and a person is free to wear any fragrance in any season. I will ask for you to be mindful though.

10Time of day

What determines if something is an evening or a daytime fragrance? Well the explanation is almost identical to that explaining the seasons: sometimes the vibe a fragrance gives off is evening-y and other times it’s daytime-y. You might find the deeper and darker fragrances to be used during the evening and conversely the bright fragrances during the day.

11Smelling strip and skin

In a lot of fragrances, you will find that they smell quite differently on one’s skin when compared to the paper, which can be explained by several things:

1. Your skin pH: Basically, how acidic your skin is determines how fragrances will react. The more acidic your skin, the harsher the fragrance.
2. Your skin microbiome: The density and type of colonizing bacteria on one’s body can also interact with the perfume on your skin.
3. Your skin type: Oily skin holds and amplifies fragrance oils, making scents last longer and project stronger. Dry skin lacks natural oils (sebum), causing perfume to evaporate quickly.
4. Your body temperature: Warmer skin speeds up evaporation, making base notes like vanilla and amber bloom faster and project more intensely. Cool skin slows down scent development.
5. Your diet and lifestyle: Foods like garlic, spices, or cumin release volatile compounds through your sweat, which blend directly with your perfume.
6. Hormones: Fluctuations from stress, medication, or menstrual cycles temporarily alter your skin’s oil production, temperature, and pH.

This is VERY nuanced and interesting in my opinion, so if you would like to read more, please find that information in this research about skin.

12Some common myths

Women’s vs men’s fragrances

This is a distinction mainly made by the market more so than anything else. Whenever I see people refer to the fact that men can’t wear feminine fragrances (or the opposite), I remember the fact that Snoop Dogg’s daily scent is Delina by Parfums de Marly; which is to say, a very girly scent by the industry standards.

The idea here is simply that you can wear whatever you like whenever you like.

Natural vs synthetic

There is this general belief in some of the fragrance world that natural ingredients are always better than synthetic. That is wrong for the most part. This is an appeal to nature fallacy. You will find safe and dangerous chemicals in nature just as you can synthesize safe and dangerous chemicals in the lab.