Wednesday Waftings: Perfume 101 – A Beginner’s Guide

I’ve always had a love for scented items: scented lotions, scented candles, scented lip gloss… and of course, the queen bee of them all, perfume! In the past year, I’ve become even more fascinated with perfume as we’ve all been stuck at home. It’s become a fun little hobby and an easy way to treat myself to some luxurious self care. Maybe those folks who are into aromatherapy are on to something after all!

In that spirit, I’d like to introduce a new feature to the blog: Wednesday Waftings! Wednesdays will be devoted to all things scented: perfume reviews, scented lotion hauls, my favorite scented candles, and so on. For my first post in this series, I thought a little perfume 101 was in order.

Full disclosure up front: this post is not going to be for the experts out there. There are folks who are incredibly well-versed in the art of perfumery and can tell you every little nuance about how scent A combined with scent B can create the illusion of scent C. I wanted to simply create a brief, general guide for beginners (and honestly, I’m still a novice myself!) where perfume basics and terms are all easily found in one spot. Hopefully this will be an easy-to-understand and helpful resource for folks that are new to perfume and curious to learn more. If you do find this little guide helpful, please feel free to bookmark and refer back to it as desired.

Notes & Accords

First things first, what makes up a perfume? Perfumes are composed of different notes and combining these notes will give you each perfume’s unique scent. Notes can be sourced from both natural and synthetic ingredients. For example, a common natural note used in creating perfumes is neroli, which is extracted naturally from bitter orange tree blossoms. An example of a synthetic ingredient is Cetalox, which has been produced as a replacement for ambergris, a French word which translates as ‘grey amber.’ Why is it important to create a synthetic version of this particular material? Believe it or not, ambergris is a substance that is produced in the digestive tract of sperm whales. Yep, it’s basically whale poo! So it’s not exactly handy (or even ethical) to come by!

And yes, perfume notes can absolutely be as odd as a substance occurring in a sperm whale’s gut! There’s every note you can possibly imagine (and quite a few I know I would NEVER be able to imagine) used in perfume, everything from tobacco to leather to ‘animalic’ scents, which includes the aforementioned Cetalox. A very common animalic scent, musk, is used in an extremely large number of popular scents. It’s truly fascinating what can actually smell fabulous on our skin.

An accord is a scent made up of multiple notes that create a specific fragrance. A well-known example is the Oriental Accord, made up of (my favorite) vanilla and wood notes such as sandalwood, cedar, or patchouli and often complemented with tonka bean and/or benzoin (a balsamic resin).

Olfactory or Fragrance Pyramid

An Olfactory or Fragrance Pyramid describes in three layers how different notes within a fragrance can be sensed once applied to your skin:

Top (Head) notes: this is the initial scent you smell when you first apply the perfume to your skin. It is typically very strong but very short-lived, lasting anywhere from just a couple of minutes up to about 15 minutes.

Heart (Middle) Notes: these notes are the ‘rebound relationship’ notes of the perfume, haha! They take over as the top notes fade and bridge the gap between the top and base notes. they are often designed for covering the base notes, as those can sometimes be unpleasant as the scent matures. Middle notes become apparent about 15-20 minutes into the scent.

Base Notes: these form your foundational, lasting notes. Base notes can last anywhere from an hour to overnight, depending on how strong the perfume’s longevity is. This is when the ‘dry down’ phase occurs, where the perfume dries and mixes with your natural oils.

Fragrance Wheel

It’s difficult to package scents into a tidy little classification chart but the best attempt to do that is known as a fragrance wheel. The fragrance wheel was put together by perfume expert Michael Edwards to serve as a guide in helping people choose scents for themselves. The four main families on the wheel are Floral, Woody, Oriental, and Fresh with sub-groups under each of those.

There is a handy little guide to reading the fragrance wheel here, that also shows examples of each sub-group, if you are interested in further information on the subject.

Projection vs. Sillage/Scent Trail: What are They and What’s the Difference?

• Projection: how far a scent radiates off the skin, i.e. as you’re sitting typing or with your arms by your side, can you smell your perfume? Or do you have to put your wrist right up to your nose before you can even detect the scent? If you can’t smell it until it is in your face, your perfume may be a ‘skin-scent’ and may not have very good projection

• Sillage (pronounced ‘see-ahz’): sillage is similar to projection but pertains more to how long the scent hangs in the air as you walk by. For instance, if you walk past someone and they can smell your perfume, you have left a scent trail or the fragrance’s sillage behind. Think Pepé Le Pew’s tail, haha! And although I reference Pepé here, sillage is not at all a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s pretty safe to say that if we’re wearing perfume, we want people to be able to smell it! It’s kind of the whole point!

The Correct Way to Sample Perfume

I have a few strong recommendations when sampling perfumes:

• Whenever possible, test the fragrance on your skin vs. just spraying it onto a slip of paper. There are several reasons behind this school of thought but bottom line, scents can develop very differently on paper vs. skin. Your skin will warm the scent and thus change/enhance it. As everyone has unique chemistry, you’re not going to get a clear idea of a scent on paper, it’s just not going to smell the same as it will once it’s on your skin. And some scents develop really poorly on paper. It’s disappointing to fall in love with a paper sample, buy a large (and often expensive!) bottle of a perfume only to find you hate it on your own skin.
• Or the reverse could happen, you could be missing out on a scent that you didn’t like on paper or on someone else but it could be magic with your personal chemistry. You truly never know until you try it on yourself. I try every scent I sample a bare minimum of at least twice because even just the temperature can play a part in how a scent works on me, i.e. a hotter day can bring out differences in the scent if I’m sweating a little.
• Do NOT rub it in! A common mistake (but huge no-no) that many folks make when applying perfume is to spray or roll the scent on one wrist and then rub your wrists together. This essentially dulls the top notes and also mixes the perfume so vigorously with your skin’s naturals oils that it can change/ruin the scent entirely. It’s better to spray or roll it on and then give it a few seconds to dry.
• How many sprays and how far away is personal but a general rule of thumb is 1-2 sprays at 3-6 inches away from your skin. For those who prefer to wear their scents lighter, we can all appreciate the method made famous by Kyan Douglas of Queer Eye: “Spray, Delay, and Walk Away!” meaning to spray the scent in the air in front of you, let it hang for a sec and then walk through the remaining scent left in the air. Jonathan Van Ness carries on the legacy, as shown here.

Parfum vs. Eau de Perfume vs. Eau de Toilette vs. Cologne vs. Fraîche

So you have a scent in mind that you’d like to try but what’s the difference between parfum, eau de parfum, and eau de toilette? Short answer: water/alcohol percentage and cost. The difference comes in with how diluted the fragrance oil is with alcohol and water. The more diluted, the less expensive the fragrance, but also the less time the scent will last on your skin. Here’s a handy breakdown:

• Parfum (or Perfume): the most concentrated and therefore, most expensive, option. Parfum is composed of 20-30% pure perfume essence and a single application can last up to 24 hours
• Eau de Parfum (or Eau de Perfume): composed of 15-20% pure perfume essence and should last roughly 5-8 hours
• Eau de Toilette: 5-15% pure perfume essence dissolved in alcohol, lasts roughly 3 hours
• Eau de Cologne: composed of 2-4% perfume oils in alcohol and water, lasts roughly 2 hours
• Eau Fraîche (i.e. a body splash): the most diluted version of a fragrance with only 1-3% perfume oil in alcohol and water. Usually only lasts an hour max

Different concentrations can also smell slightly (or even wildly!) different from one another. Perfumers will sometimes change up notes along with the amount of perfume oil so it’s always a good idea to test both an EDT and an EDP to make sure you like the fragrance. Versace Crystal Noir is a famous example of a fragrance that has an EDT that smells completely different from the EDP.

What if I Have Allergies or if Perfumes Give Me a Headache?

I know some people are very sensitive to scents or perfume in general. For some, the reaction may be so severe that they just need to avoid it altogether. But for those who would like to wear a scent but need something lighter and free of chemicals, there are several really wonderful perfume houses that offer natural options. Here are a just few that are worth exploring:

• The 7 Virtues: natural and hypoallergenic. They source fair trade, natural and organic essential oils to support farmers rebuilding after war or strife. Their perfumes are made without phthalates, parabens, sulfates, formaldehyde, or UV inhibitors

• Skylar: no parabens, no SLS, no phthalates, no animal-derived ingredients, no synthetic dyes. Contributes a portion of their profits to support Step Up, an organization that provides mentorship for underprivileged high school girls across the country

• Hiram Green: 100% natural, vegan, and free of GMOs. Not tested on animals. Produced in small batches in the Netherlands

• Pacifica: 100% vegan, cruelty-free, no phthalates, no parabens, no propylene glycol, no polycyclic musks or nitromusks

Whew! That was a lot of info and it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface but I hope it will be a good starting point for those wanting to learn more about perfume and who may be interested in finding their own signature scent. I learned so much writing this article. It was like assigning myself an essay on a topic I love!

If you’d like a little more education, one last place I’d like to direct your attention to is this video by the lovely Justine Leconte. It’s a wonderful overview of perfume, its French origins, the differences between the above-mentioned parfum concentrations, and how to correctly apply it.

Closing Thought: Perfume is Not ‘One Size Fits All’ & That’s a Good Thing!

In my opinion, one of the coolest things about perfume is that the same scent can be a different experience for each person. We’re all individuals and depending on each person’s unique body chemistry, perfumes can smell completely unique from one person to another. Finding perfume that you’ll love wearing should be a fun experience!

I hope you’ll enjoy experimenting and finding some scents you’ll delight in wearing. Have you recently discovered a perfume that you can’t get enough of? Tell me all about your favorite scent(s) in the comments! 💐👃🍊

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