The guide

Everything worth knowing before you choose

How perfume is layered, why concentration changes performance, what decant sizes actually mean, and how to find the bottle that suits the way you live.

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Five quick questions

Where will you wear it most?

Different occasions call for very different intensities.

The Basics

How a fragrance is built

Every perfume is arranged in layers that unfold over hours. Once you understand the three layers, describing a scent becomes much easier — and much more useful when you are choosing between two similar bottles.

Top notes

The first impression. Citrus, pepper and light florals live here and usually fade within 15–30 minutes.

Heart notes

The character of the fragrance. Rose, jasmine, spice and marine notes emerge once the opening settles.

Base notes

The foundation and the reason a scent lasts. Woods, amber, oud, vanilla and musks hold the composition together for hours.

Strength

Concentration, longevity and projection

Concentration describes how much aromatic oil is in the formula. It affects how long a scent lasts and how far it projects, but skin chemistry matters just as much as the label.

Eau de Toilette (EDT)

Around 5–15% oil. Light and fresh — perfect for daytime, office and hot weather. Reapply through the day.

Eau de Parfum (EDP)

Around 15–20% oil. The everyday sweet spot: more depth and longevity than an EDT without the weight of a parfum.

Parfum / Extrait

20–30% oil. Rich, dense and long-lasting. Best suited to cooler weather and smaller, confident applications.

Projection

How far a scent travels from you. Citrus and marine notes project far; heavy resins and oud tend to sit closer to the skin.

The Decant Method

Why decants change how you shop

Buying a full bottle of an untested fragrance is a gamble. Decants let you wear a fragrance across several situations — a hot afternoon, a long dinner, a cold commute — before committing to a size you actually want.

3 ml

The trial size. Roughly 30–40 sprays, enough to judge a scent on your own skin.

5 ml

The most popular size. A full working week of wear, and the sweet spot in our bundles.

10 ml

For scents you have already decided on. Noticeably better value per millilitre.

15 ml

The largest decant we offer — close to a half bottle for a fraction of the price.

Practice

How to wear fragrance properly

The same bottle behaves differently depending on where and when you spray it. A few small adjustments make a noticeable difference.

Pulse points, not your shirt

Spray onto skin — behind the ears, at the base of the throat, on the inner wrists. Fabric holds scent longer but misses your body heat.

Two sprays is usually enough

Start light. You become tolerant of your own scent long before anyone else notices it, and re-application is always possible.

Give it time

Judge a fragrance after 20 minutes and again after two hours. The opening you fall for may not be the note that stays.

One scent at a time

Layering two unrelated scents usually muddies both. If you like a combination, build it deliberately and lightly.

Glossary

The vocabulary of fragrance

Short, plain-English definitions of the words you will meet on every perfume page.

Accord: A blend of several materials that reads as one new scent — 'bergamot accord' behaves like bergamot but is composed from many ingredients.
Dry-down: How a fragrance settles on skin over the first few hours once the volatile top notes have evaporated.
Eau de Parfum (EDP): A concentration containing roughly 15–20% aromatic oil. The most widely worn everyday strength.
Extrait de Parfum: The richest commercial concentration, usually 20–30% oil. Heavier, longer-lasting and often worn sparingly.
Fougère: A classic aromatic structure built around lavender, coumarin and a citrus opening — the shape most modern designer scents follow.
Gourmand: A family built on edible notes: vanilla, caramel, chocolate, praline and the like.
Incense / resinous: Smoky, church-like notes from frankincense, myrrh and resin. They add depth and a slightly sacred quality.
Musk: A soft, skin-like base note that blurs the line between the fragrance and the wearer. The backbone of 'clean' scents.
Niche fragrance: A prestige scent produced in smaller volumes by an independent or smaller house, usually less widely distributed than designer labels.
Projection: The distance a fragrance travels from the skin. Sometimes called sillage when measured as a trail behind you.

Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you might want to know before your first order.

Ready to try something?

Start with a 3 ml trial size and work up once the scent earns its place.

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