Fragrance Files

Fragrance Files

Celebrities Wear Vintage Sneakers world of perfume and cologne is vast, with the scent possibilities seemingly endless. To help navigate it, fragrance experts divide the world of scent into five main families – Floral, Oriental, Woody, Aromatic Fougere, and Fresh. Each family is further divided into sub-families. For example, Chanel No.5, a classic aldehydic floral, sits within the Floral family. The wood family is also home to chypre perfumes like Hermes Rouge, while the fresh group includes citrusy compositions like Guerlain L’Eau de Mimosa and Hermes Eau de Parfum.

Each family contains different olfactory characteristics, which can be explored by using the Fragrance Wheel. The theory behind this tool is that perfumes that share the same olfactory features are close in accord, while those far apart are less similar. Fragrance experts have used the wheel to aid in blending perfumes and creating new ones.

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A perfume’s base notes are its foundation, supporting the middle and top notes with depth and solidity. The base of a perfume is created through macerations (liquid extracts) and distillations from a wide range of raw materials. These include oils such as musk, amber and agarwood, as well as resins such as incense and myrrh. The olfactory characteristics of a perfume’s base are rounded out by the addition of fixatives, which bolster and stabilise the base notes. These are often derived from natural sources such as tobacco and hedione, but they may be synthesized as well.