The Art of Parfum

Layering means wearing two fragrances at once so that the result is something neither of them is alone. It is worth knowing that most attempts fail, and that the failures are predictable. Why it usually goes wrong Every fragrance is already a finished composition. It has been balanced so that

Fragrance families are a filing system, not a law. They were invented to help people talk about perfume, and they are useful right up until the point you start treating them as rules. Still, if you are trying to work out what you like, they are the fastest way to

Quiet luxury became a phrase people use to sell things, which has more or less emptied it of meaning. Underneath the phrase there is still a real idea, and in perfume it is quite specific. What it actually means in fragrance A quiet fragrance is not a weak one. Weak

Rose is the most expensive flower in perfumery and the most overused word in its marketing. Almost everything described as a rose fragrance contains no rose at all. That is not necessarily a criticism. It is worth understanding why. The arithmetic It takes somewhere in the region of three to

Lavender has a problem. Most people meet it in soap, in cleaning products and in things designed to help them sleep, so by the time it turns up in a perfume it arrives carrying luggage. That is a shame, because as a perfumery material it is far stranger and more

Every perfume house has a shortlist it keeps coming back to. Not the bestsellers, and not the ones that win prizes, but the compositions that still work thirty years after they were made, when the trend that produced them has long since passed. What follows is not a ranking. It