The perfume glossary

Reading this properly, once

You're three lines into a product description and you hit a word you don't actually know (sillage, maceration, drydown) but you keep reading anyway, guessing at it from context. Most people do. Nobody has to guess again after reading this list once.

A–G

• Accord: two or more notes blended until the nose hears one new smell instead of several.
• Agarwood: the resin-dense heartwood also called oud, and the raw material behind most oud-family perfumes.
• Amber: a warm, resinous accord built from labdanum, vanilla and resins; no single plant or animal produces it.
• Anosmia: the inability to smell a specific molecule, or smell at all; part of why the same perfume reads differently on two people.
• Attar: a traditional oil-based perfume, usually alcohol-free, made the old way.
• Base notes: the notes that appear last and stay longest, the foundation the rest of the perfume rests on.
• Batch code: the printed code on a bottle tying it to its exact production run and fill date.
• Chypre: citrus laid over mossy, woody depth; named for Cyprus.
• Decant: pouring a small amount of perfume out of its original bottle, usually for travel or sampling.
• Drydown: the last phase of wear, after the top and heart fade, dominated by the base.
• Eau de parfum (EDP): a concentration level, roughly 15–20% fragrance oil, built to last longer than an eau de toilette.
• Eau de toilette (EDT): a lighter concentration, roughly 5–15% fragrance oil, common for everyday wear.
• Extrait / parfum: the strongest common concentration, roughly 20–30% fragrance oil, worn in small amounts.
• Fixative: an ingredient, usually a base note, that slows the evaporation of lighter notes so a perfume lasts longer.
• Fougère: an accord family built on lavender, coumarin and oakmoss; the backbone of most classic masculine perfumery.
• Gourmand: an accord family built on edible-smelling notes: vanilla, coffee, caramel, cocoa.

H–T

• Heart notes: also called middle notes; the notes that emerge once the top notes fade, usually the perfume's main character.
• IFRA: the International Fragrance Association, whose safety standards cap how much of a given material any perfume may legally contain.
• Layering: wearing two perfumes together, in sequence, so their notes blend into a third impression.
• Longevity: how long a perfume stays perceptible on skin; changes by person, weather and dose, never a fixed number.
• Maceration: the resting period after a fragrance oil is blended with alcohol, letting the notes marry before bottling.
• Musk: a smooth, skin-warm base note; made synthetically today, not from the animal source that gave it its name.
• Note: a single named smell impression within a perfume, not a literal ingredient list.
• Nose: the trade term for a perfumer, named for the skill the job runs on.
• Olfactory fatigue: the nose's habit of tuning out a smell it has been exposed to for too long; why a perfume you love can seem to vanish on your own skin.
• Oud: a resinous, woody, faintly animalic material from agarwood; one of perfumery's most prized and most imitated raw materials.
• Projection: how far a perfume's scent carries from the skin into the surrounding air.
• Pyramid: the top/heart/base structure used to describe how a perfume's notes are timed to appear.
• Sillage: French for "wake"; the scent trail a perfume leaves behind as you move.
• Top notes: the first notes to appear, usually light and bright, gone within the first half hour or so.

The house's own words

• Act: one chapter of six perfumes released together, themed to a moment of the day. Act I: Dusk is the current release; three more are coming.
• Dyadic Olfaction: the mechanic used only in La Collezione Epos: a perfume composed to open as one scent identity and land as another, a deliberate turn rather than a fade.
• Epos: La Collezione Epos, the house's everyday-wear collection of six eau de parfums built with Dyadic Olfaction; sold in 60ml, 20ml and a 5ml Discovery size.
• Cristallo: La Collezione Cristallo, two refined original compositions in faceted crystal-cut glass, worn the classic way, no turn.
• First fill: the first pour into a bottle at the house, sealed and never reopened before it reaches you; the guarantee behind buying direct.

Every term here traces back to a longer article somewhere in this Library. Start with: What a perfume note actually is.