Find your perfume
Introduction
Which perfume suits me? The search for the perfect perfume is like a personal trip that should take into account your personality – including your individual preferences and needs. But how do you find the one perfume that truly fits you? And what should you pay attention to if you don't feel at home in the perfume game yet? In this perfume guide, we will explore the basics of perfume selection with you and help you start this so-called 'scent journey' to make it a successful trip.
Basics of perfume selection
Before you dive into this niche perfume world, you should understand the basics. From the fragrance notes of the fragrance pyramid – top, heart, and base notes – to the various fragrance families, it is important to have an overview. You should also understand the difference between Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum to make the right choice (here you will find all the relevant information about the differences).
Fragrance pyramid: The division into top, heart, and base notes
These three components together form a fragrance pyramid that describes the development of the scent over time.
Top notes
The top notes are the first fragrance notes that you perceive, when you apply the perfume. They are usually light and fleeting and create the first impression of the scent. Top notes are often fresh and invigorating and can contain citrusy, fruity, or spicy notes. However, these notes disappear relatively quickly after applying the perfume, usually within 15-30 minutes.
Heart notes
Once the top notes have faded, the heart notes come to the forefront. Heart notes are generally a bit heavier than top notes and define the character of the fragrance. They are the "heart" of the perfume and last longer than the top notes, usually for several hours. Heart notes can be primarily floral, fruity, spicy, or woody, adding depth and complexity to the fragrance.
Base notes
The base or fundamental notes are the deepest and longest-lasting fragrance notes in the perfume. They only become apparent when the top and heart notes have faded and remain on the skin for hours or even the entire day. Base notes are often heavier and more sensual, providing the perfume with its stability and depth. They can include notes such as musk, amber, vanilla, patchouli, or woody notes, forming the foundation of the fragrance.
Recognizing one's own fragrance preferences
Does the perfume match my lifestyle?
Your personal style, your personal preferences, and your lifestyle play a crucial role when you want to find the right perfume.
It is important to recognize this and identify your fragrance preferences accordingly. Should they represent something playful or clear/angular? Should the scent be immediately noticeable, heavy, and have a strong sillage (scent trail), or do you want to reveal something as intimate as your own scent only when someone is close to you? Should it be a subtle signature, or more of a bold statement?
Recognizing personal fragrance preferences
To make it easier to engage with fragrance genres, a division into a few basic fragrance types helps. The deeper you dive in, the more granular you can become, distinguishing between combinations of different fragrance worlds that form their own genre. For the first classification, we believe the exclusion principle is the most reliable. In the second step, you can then determine which of the remaining fragrance genres appeals to you the most and then also subdivide into the mentioned combinations. We roughly distinguish between the following fragrance directions:
Floral fragrances
Fruity fragrances
Fresh fragrances
Spicy fragrances
Woody fragrances
Sweet, creamy fragrances
Aquatic fragrances
Molecule fragrances
Musk fragrances
Citrusy fragrances
Clean fragrances
Green fragrances
Gourmand fragrances (Perfumes with edible notes, like vanilla, that usually smell like dessert)
To dive deeper into specific directions, check out our Fragrance Boxes. We have curated sample sets with five thematically matching fragrances to make discovering scents easier.
Skin Chemistry & Perfume
Your skin chemistry can greatly influence the scent of a perfume. Before you choose a suitable perfume, test it to ensure that it harmonizes well with your skin.
How skin chemistry affects fragrance
The skin chemistry plays a crucial role in the scent of a perfume. It influences how the perfume develops and can steer the scent in a completely different direction.
Every person has a unique chemical composition on their skin, influenced by factors such as pH level, sebum production, sweat amount, and even diet. This individual skin chemistry interacts with the fragrance components of a perfume and can cause the scent to unfold in different ways.
Some fragrance notes may be more intense or last longer on one person's skin than on another's. To break it down simply: a perfume may last longer on someone with dry skin than on someone with oily skin, as the fragrance molecules can better adhere to dry skin. Moreover, certain fragrance ingredients may smell different on a person's skin due to the chemical reaction with that skin.
It's important to note that skin chemistry not only affects the initial scent of a perfume but also its development over time. A scent can change while being worn on a person's skin, as the various fragrance notes interact with the skin chemistry and evolve in a specific direction. What is perceived as fresh and citrusy at first can later transform into a warmer and woody scent.
Ultimately, individual skin chemistry makes most perfumes unique. Some more so than others. In particular, molecular perfumes have the strong ability to interact with skin chemistry and create something of their own. What smells great on one person may smell completely different on another. It is therefore advisable to test perfumes on your own skin before purchasing to ensure they harmonize with your skin and develop the desired scent character.
How to properly test and apply perfume?
Choosing the right perfume requires patience and a willingness to experiment. Test different scents to find out which ones suit you best, how they develop on your skin, and which ones highlight your personality the most.
Rest & Time
We always recommend taking your time and approaching testing with calmness. Testing perfumes in a rushed environment, surrounded by many other people, smells, and other influencing factors like noise and visual stimuli can be distracting. Testing perfume samples in a familiar environment, with enough time to assess the development and components of each fragrance's scent pyramid, makes all the difference.
A familiar place for testing
The best way to test perfume is in a familiar place. Here, you can take your time and specifically focus on, for example, your wrist, and smell the perfume sprayed there. Additionally, there are fewer other perfumes around here than, for example, in a perfume shop, which could distract you or skew your judgment.
This way, you can also take the necessary time and, for example, test a different perfume every day, evaluate its longevity, ask those around you, and incorporate aspects like the effect on colleagues into your fine assessment.
Decide with perfume samples instead of in the perfume shop.
For exactly the reasons mentioned above, namely peace and time as well as testing in a familiar place, we also offer samples with every perfume, so fragrance samples (here you will find everything you need to know about our refills). You can order these filled by hand to your home, so you can choose the exact right moment, the right mood, and the right time to test. If a scent doesn't immediately blow you away on-site, you can, for example, have fragrance samples filled at our store and test them at home in peace to find the perfume that suits you and accentuates your personality, so that ideally it becomes the scent you want to smell on yourself forever.
If you want to browse pre-assembled sample sets, take a look here now.
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