how to buy a fragrance
A beginner’s guide to the most ephemeral of accessories.
Perhaps no accessory is as personal as fragrance. Consider the intimacy of smelling someone’s perfume compared to noting their shoes or jewelry, or the fact that no scent will smell the same from person to person. And try as one might to showcase a perfume’s essence in photographic or video form (and countless brands do devote millions of dollars to the effort), the only way to fully experience a fragrance is up close and in person.
It only follows that selecting a fragrance is a deeply personal experience. But, with the unquantifiable number of options on the market, it can also be an overwhelming one. The good news is there’s no wrong way to select a fragrance.
“You like what you like. There’s no good and no bad or right and wrong,” says Steven Gontarski, manager of fragrance store Scent Bar. The shop specializes in niche fragrances and opened a store in New York City’s Nolita neighborhood this fall, in addition to its two Los Angeles outposts.
It’s a good time to open a perfume store as demand for fragrance is only growing, in particular for niche and luxury scents, which are increasingly marketed as unisex in favor of the traditional adherence to rigid masculine and feminine scents. In April of this year, Louis Vuitton launched its first unisex fragrance collection. Thom Browne recently announced the launch of his first perfume, with a collection of six fragrances centered on vetiver launching this month. But undoubtedly one of the more anticipated designer perfumes of 2019 is Hedi Slimane’s first fragrance collection for CELINE, with the 11-piece unisex collection arriving this fall.
Earlier this week also marked the opening of Dover Street Market’s first fragrance store, the aptly-named Dover Street Parfums Market in Paris, which naturally coincides with new perfume releases from COMME des GARÇONS. “I feel that in the fragrance world in general there’s been a shift towards niche brands and I guess it doesn’t surprise me that DSM would make something dedicated to fragrance,” Gontarski notes. “There’s a lot of excitement there and people are tapping into it.”
But that still leaves the question — how does one begin to choose a fragrance? We asked Gontarski for a bit of expert guidance.
a note on notes
First, a word on terminology. Many of us have been conditioned to think of “cologne” as for men and “perfume” as for women, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. “In America people say cologne meaning masculine fragrances, but in the perfume world, a cologne is really a specific thing,” Gontarski notes.
The term “eau de cologne” was originally the name a specific fragrance from Cologne, Germany, but nowadays refers mainly to a category of scents that have a low concentration of perfume oil to alcohol (about 2-5% concentration) and are based in top notes.
Fragrance concentrations range all the way from an eau fraiche (under 3% concentration of perfume oil) to extraits de parfum, with 15-45% concentration. But most contemporary fragrances you’ll come across will be either an eau de toilette, which features a 5-10% concentration, or an eau de parfum, with 10-15% concentration. The higher a fragrance’s concentration, the longer its scent will last on the skin (and usually, the higher the price).
A fragrance’s longevity also depends on its particular composition. Each fragrance typically has three components — top notes, middle or heart notes, and base notes. The first whiff you’ll get of any fragrance will be the top notes, think sharp scents like citrus and eucalyptus. “Those smells are very volatile,” Gontarski explains. “So they’re fresh and you get a blast at first, but volatile smells burn off so fast.”
The burn off gives way to middle notes, which typically encompass rounder scents like florals and botanicals. Also called heart notes, these will begin to emerge after around 20 minutes of wear time. This is why it’s so crucial to wear perfumes for a test drive, even one as short as 15 minutes, because the scent will only begin to show its true colors when the top notes have burned off. “It’s the dry down that you have to like, because that’s what lasts on your skin all day,” Gontarski says.
As the middle notes evaporate, the base notes will take over — these are the heady, powerful scents like musk and patchouli that can linger for up to 24 hours. Whereas top notes are made of smaller molecules which evaporate quickly, base notes consist of larger molecules that dissipate more slowly and thus their scent will remain on the skin long after application. But they’re also more difficult for the nose to initially detect.
If you want a scent that’s long-lasting, you’ll likely need to look for something based in deeper scents like tobacco or oud (which, for those unfamiliar with the term, is not merely synonymous with wood, but is a specific type of tree rot that gives off a scent of anything from mulch to horse manure). Fresher scents, like citrus, are inherently short-lived, meaning a long-lasting fresh scent is more or less an oxymoron. “There are ways around it by using fixatives, like musk is a common fixative. But it’ll change its profile a lot,” Gontarski explains.
“You like what you like. There’s no good and no bad or right and wrong.”
all in the family
The only way to determine what kinds of notes you like is, of course, to just start smelling them. If you don’t know where to begin, start by pulling fragrances from a variety of families.
Think of a fragrance’s “family” as its genre — a way to categorize fragrances by style, with classic and avant-garde creations in each sector. But there are competing schools of thought in the taxonomy of fragrance families. Some follow the fragrance wheel set forth by Michael Edwards, which divides scents into four major families: floral, oriental, woody and fresh. Others use the seven categories from the Société Française des Parfumeurs, which divides fragrances into the following: citrus, floral, fougère, chypre, woody, amber and leather.
Within any of those categories are numerous sub-groups such as floral aldehydic, which mix florals with synthetics (think the classic Chanel No. 5), or woody aromatic, which give a botanical twist to wood notes (think Cannabis by MALIN + GOETZ). One of the most recent fragrance families is the gourmands, which are based on “edible” scents like vanilla and chocolate. Thierry Mugler’s 1992 perfume Angel is widely credited as codifying the category, exemplifying the way new fragrance families develop overtime.
“A lot of these scent families are named after specific fragrances. It’s probably Fougère Royale from Houbigant that started that thing off,” Gontarski explains. “Because it was popular, people started making fragrances off of it, and they were known as fougeres. In the same way that chypre, that whole genre, is basically named after one perfume.”
Which families are “feminine” and which are “masculine” comes down largely to marketing and cultural norms. “Fougères are typically those fragrances that are based in herbal notes, like lavender or clary sage, oakmoss. A lot of the mainstream popular masculines are technically fougères,” Gontarski says, citing Polo by Ralph Lauren as a classic example. Scents marketed as masculine today run a huge gamut from fresh to heavy — you might try Cowboy Grass, a green mix with notes of vetiver and sagebrush, or Burning Barbershop, a smoky combination of spearmint, lavender and vanilla, both from D.S. & Durga.
When trying perfumes, Gontarski advises having an open mind. “A lot of people think they will like these notes and that notes, but actually the proof in the pudding is when we put something in front of their nose and we can tell their reaction, whether it’s something they like or not.”
If you don’t have the luxury of visiting a fragrance store in person, purchase a sample set instead. Online shoppers can purchase a Fragrance Fitting from Luckyscent, which includes five scents chosen by Scent Bar’s staff based on a short questionnaire. Many brands, including Le Labo, Maison Louis Marie and Etat Libre d'Orange, will also allow you to purchase a selection of samples online, letting you test a range of families to determine your preferred profile. Parisian perfume house Ex Nihilo takes things a step further and offers demi-bespoke appointments, where you can customize your own fragrance based on existing formulations.
“It’s the dry down that you have to like, because that’s what lasts on your skin all day.”
trend report
The world of fragrance is constantly evolving, and just like fashion is subject to trends. “Whereas a few years ago, oud was the number one thing to look out for, right now I would say sweet is the number one thing to look out for. Whether it’s coming through tobacco or like a cotton candy note,” Gontarski says. Many contemporary fragrances marketed as masculine are in fact sweet, he adds, despite the cultural association of sweet with feminine.
Gontarski notes that two particularly popular scents of the moment are Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540, which has that cotton candy aroma, and Love & Crime by Ex Idolo, which mixes vanilla and orange for a creamsicle effect. “No one can resist this scent,” he says of Love & Crime. “It’s so easy to wear, it just leaves this nice creamy, sweetness on your skin, but not too sweet. I’d compare it to a much more expensive fragrance by Creed called Sublime Vanille.”
The trend can be seen in two brand new releases — Byredo’s Slow Dance and KITH x Malin + Goetz’s Vapor, both of which launched in September and feature vanilla as a base note. Ex Nihilo’s Atlas Fever from 2018 similarly contains vanilla and tonka bean, which are contrasted with notes of pepper and gaiac.
The flip side of today’s trend for sweet smells are the so-called “minimals.” “It’s been a trend for a little while, the minimals. Fragrances that barely smell like anything, but they just kind of linger on you. It’s almost like this subliminal way of wearing fragrance.” At the head of the pack of the minimal category is Molecule 01.
Though it launched back in 2006, Gontarski says the unusual fragrance, made by Escentric Molecules, is today a top seller for Scent Bar. It features a single aroma chemical — the base note Iso E Super. “If a customer comes in and they say that they smelled something on somebody like at Whole Foods or whatever and asked them what it is, nine times out of 10 it’s Molecule 01,” he says. The brand also sells Escentric 01, which is composed of 65% Iso E Super along with notes such as hedione and musk.
Other minimal fragrances include D.S. & Durga’s I Don’t Know What, which mixes Iso E Super with bergamot and vetiver, and Juliette Has a Gun’s Not a Perfume, which is similarly comprised of a single aromatic note, cetalox in this case. The brand also recently launched a Not a Perfume Superdose, an intensified version of the minimal scent.
And then of course there are the fragrances that surpass mere trendiness. The ubiquitousness of certain blockbuster fragrances, think Le Labo’s Santal 33 or Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb, might be a deterrent for some, but Gontarski sees no reason to shy away from a perfume simply because of its overwhelming popularity.
“A lot of people think if you can recognize something because everyone wears it that it’s no longer good,” he says. “But they became such huge hits because they are capturing the imagination of the time.”
If you are looking for something truly “different,” however, there are options. For more challenging scents, Gontarski recommends the Canadian brand Zoologist. “Many of them are so edgy that you question whether it’s wearable. But that’s up to the wearer,” he says.
Other left-of-field options include Arso by Profumum, a smokier scent that evokes the smell of chopped wood, or Korrigan by Lubin, which smells “like a rubber tire meets hazelnut milk,” according to Gontarski. “It’s the weirdest combination, but for some reason it works.”
“It’s been a trend for a little while, the minimals... It’s almost like this subliminal way of wearing fragrance.”
storytelling
As anyone who has walked up to a perfume counter and been instantly drawn to a particular bottle can attest, there is undoubtedly a visual component to selecting a scent.
“A lot of people are actually embarrassed when they ask to see a bottle just because they like the look of it, or they like the name of it,” Gontarski says. “There’s nothing embarrassing about that at all. In fact, that’s such a huge part of fragrance.” The olfactory experience might be the deciding factor, but why not expect a bottle that’s just as pleasing to look at as it to smell?
And branding, in the form of everything from bottle design to marketing, is key to the history of fragrance and fashion. Chanel may not have been the first fashion house to launch a perfume, but with Chanel No. 5, it was the first to capitalize on the power of fragrance as communicating a brand.
As was the case with Chanel No. 5, the actual perfumes sold fashion brands are not typically created in-house, but are outsourced to a perfumer, or nose. But that doesn’t make them any less a part of a label’s DNA. “A Dior fragrance might be created by the same perfumer who also did something for Vivienne Westwood, who also did something for a niche brand, who also did something for Abercrombie,” Gontarski says. “But I guess a lot of it is the creative vision, that’s what the brand is doing. And then they’ll find the perfumer to actually execute that.”
Good branding by no means takes away from a scent’s power — if anything, the two are intertwined. “There’s no shame in being attracted to a fragrance because you like the story it’s telling. I think Byredo does that so well, and it’s the secret to their success,” Gontarski says. And certainly the brand’s iconic bottle design and fantastical names like Gypsy Water and Mojave Ghost evoke a feeling as much as the scents themselves. “It just captures your imagination,” he says. “Just the fact that it happens to smell really great is an extra bonus.”
Choosing a fragrance might require a bit of trial and error, but in the end it’s like picking any accessory of piece of clothing — you like what you like, there’s no real logic to it. “Wearing fragrance is fantasy,” Gontarski explains. “Fashion is fantasy. You’re projecting an image and a style.”
