Fragrance Glossary

Fragrance has a vocabulary of its own, and once you know it a product page stops reading like a riddle. This glossary gathers the terms you will meet most often across the collection and the rest of this Help Center, each defined in plain language. Keep it open as a reference while you browse.

The building blocks

A note is a single smell your nose can name, such as bergamot, rose, vanilla, or cedar. Perfumers list notes because they are easy to picture. An accord is a blend of several materials engineered to read as one new smell that none of them makes alone, such as an amber accord or a marine accord. Most of what a note list calls a note is really a small accord, so treat the list as the intended story of a scent, not a guarantee of exactly how it will smell on you.

Concentration is the share of aromatic oils dissolved in the alcohol-and-water base. Higher concentration generally means richer, longer, and closer to the skin. Fragrance Box carries two concentrations, and only these two.

• EDP (Eau de Parfum). Rich, balanced, and long lasting. The most versatile concentration and the standard tier here.
• Extrait (Extrait de Parfum). The richest, longest lasting concentration and the highest tier we offer. Parfum, Pure Parfum, and Extrait de Parfum all name this same top tier.

Concentration sets a general character and a ceiling, not a promise. A well-composed EDP can outlast a poorly made Extrait. For a fuller comparison, see EDP and Extrait, the Two Tiers We Carry.

How a scent unfolds

Perfume reveals in stages as its materials evaporate at different speeds. This is often drawn as a pyramid.

• Top notes are the opening, the first spray impression, light and quick to fade.
• Heart notes carry the main theme for the next few hours.
• Base notes are the heavy materials that anchor everything and linger longest.
• Drydown is the final stage, what remains once the top and much of the heart have burned off. It is the truest test of a fragrance, because it is what you live with for most of the day.

For the full walkthrough, read Top, Heart and Base Notes Explained.

How a scent behaves and travels

Three words get used interchangeably but mean different things.

• Projection is how far the scent pushes off your skin right now, the size of your immediate scent bubble.
• Sillage (say "see-yazh," French for wake) is the trail you leave behind as you move through a room.
• Longevity is simply how many hours you can still detect it on skin.

A scent can be intimate yet last all day, or loud for hours and then gone, so when someone calls a fragrance "strong," ask which of the three they mean. These are defined more fully in Sillage, Projection and Longevity Defined.

A few more terms you will see:

• Olfactive family. The dominant character of a scent, such as woody, floral, ambery, fresh, or gourmand. A useful starting vocabulary, covered in The Main Note Families.
• Niche and designer. Designer scents come from fashion and beauty houses and are made to please broadly. Niche houses are smaller and perfume-first, often taking more creative risk. Niche is not automatically better or longer lasting.
• Skin chemistry. The way your skin, its oils and pH, meets a composition and shifts how it smells and lasts. It is why testing on your own skin matters.
• Scent fatigue (nose blindness). Your nervous system tuning out a smell you have worn continuously. Others may still smell you clearly, so ask before adding sprays.
• Batch code. A short stamp brands use to track when a batch was made. It can suggest a rough production date, but it is never proof of authenticity, since fakes copy real codes. Sourcing and verification settle authenticity, not a decoder. Our services are at /verify and /authenticate.

Where to go next

Notes, families, and behavior all come together on the product page, where each fragrance lists its house, tier, launch year, and its top, heart, and base notes. Browse the full collection at our homepage, and reach us any time at [email protected] if a term still needs clarifying.