How a fragrance behaves
Projection
How strongly a fragrance radiates away from the skin. High projection means people nearby will notice it, low projection stays close to the skin and is only detected up close.
Sillage
The trail a fragrance leaves behind as you move through a room. Closely related to projection, but where projection is about distance, sillage is about the lingering cloud you leave in your wake.
Longevity
How long a fragrance lasts on the skin. Affected by concentration (EDP generally outlasts EDT), skin type, and how moisturised the skin is at application.
Nose blindness (Olfactory fatigue)
When your nose becomes temporarily desensitised to a scent after repeated or prolonged exposure. It doesn't mean the fragrance has faded, it means your brain has started filtering it out as background information. Particularly common with molecules like ambroxan, which your nose adapts to quickly. Everyone around you can still smell it perfectly well.
How a fragrance is built
Top notes
What you smell immediately after applying. Usually the brightest and freshest part of the fragrance, but also the shortest-lived, typically fading within 15–30 minutes.
Heart notes / Middle notes
The core of the fragrance, what you smell for most of the day once the top notes have settled.
Base notes
The foundation of the fragrance, emerging fully in the dry-down and often lasting the longest on skin.
Balance
How well the different notes are weighted against each other. A well-balanced fragrance doesn't let any single note dominate at the wrong time.
Dry-down
How the fragrance develops and smells once the top notes have faded, usually after 30–60 minutes. This is where a fragrance's true character reveals itself.
Accord
A blend of two or more notes that create a completely new, distinct smell. Just as individual notes on a piano combine into a chord, an accord, like a "leather accord" or "amber accord", is a building block of complex perfumery. When a fragrance lists "leather" or "amber" as a note, it's almost always referring to an accord rather than a single ingredient.
Linear vs non-linear
A linear fragrance smells largely the same from the first spray to the final fade. A non-linear fragrance evolves, changing character noticeably as it moves through its top, heart, and base notes. Neither is inherently better, some of the most beloved fragrances are completely linear, but non-linear compositions tend to reward longer wear and repeated sampling.
Fragrance families
Fougère
Pronounced "foo-ZHAIR," French for "fern." Fougère is one of the classic fragrance families, built around a combination of lavender, oakmoss, and coumarin. Interestingly, ferns don't actually have a scent — the name is a romanticised idea of what a forest floor should smell like rather than a literal reference. It's the backbone of a huge number of traditional men's fragrances and is behind that classic barbershop character you'll recognise from older colognes. Modern "neo-fougères" have updated the DNA considerably, swapping oakmoss for cleaner synthetics and dialling back the soapiness, making them feel much sleeker than their predecessors.
Gourmand
Fragrances that smell edible. Think vanilla, caramel, chocolate, tonka bean, coffee, and similar sweet or dessert-like notes. The category was pioneered by Angel by Mugler in 1992 and has grown enormously since. A gourmand fragrance doesn't literally smell like food, but it evokes warmth and sweetness in a way that's unmistakably dessert-adjacent. Worth keeping in mind that the sweetness and weight of most gourmands can feel overwhelming in warm weather — they tend to work best in autumn and winter.
Chypre
Pronounced "SHEEP-ruh," named after the French word for Cyprus. Chypre is one of the oldest and most revered fragrance families, built on a foundation of bergamot, labdanum, and oakmoss. The result is a rich, earthy, slightly mossy character that feels both sophisticated and timeless. Many classic women's fragrances fall into this category, though modern chypres have evolved significantly since oakmoss restrictions tightened in the EU.
Oriental / Amber
Warm, rich, and sensual fragrances built around resins, spices, and balsams — think amber, vanilla, benzoin, incense, and musk. The term "oriental" is increasingly being replaced with "amber" in the industry for cultural reasons, but you'll still see both used interchangeably. These fragrances tend to be heavy, long-lasting, and better suited to cooler weather and evenings.
Aquatic
Fragrances that evoke water, ocean, or clean air. Built around synthetic molecules that don't exist in nature, aquatics emerged in the early 1990s with releases like Issey Miyake's L'Eau d'Issey. They tend to be fresh, airy, and easy to wear, which has made them enormously popular in mainstream perfumery.
Aromatic
Fragrances centred around herbal and aromatic notes like lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme, and basil. Often combined with woody or citrus elements. Aromatics are typically clean and easy to wear, and overlap significantly with the fougère family.
Floral
The largest fragrance family, built primarily around flower notes — rose, jasmine, peony, tuberose, iris, and so on. Florals range from light and airy to rich and heady. A "soliflore" is a fragrance focused on a single flower, while a "floral bouquet" blends several together.
Woody
Fragrances anchored by woods like sandalwood, cedarwood, vetiver, and oud. Woody fragrances can range from dry and austere to warm and creamy depending on which woods are used and how they're combined. One of the most versatile families and a common base in fragrances across every other category.
Colour terms
Unlike the families above, colour terms aren't formal perfumery categories. They're informal shorthand, partly community-coined, partly adopted by marketing departments, for a recognisable cluster of characteristics. You'll see them used constantly on fragrance forums and in reviews.
Blue fragrances
Fresh, clean, and often aquatic or citrus-forward, with an ambroxan-heavy base that gives them a smooth, slightly synthetic warmth. Dior Sauvage, Bleu de Chanel, and Versace Dylan Blue are the defining examples. Blue has become so dominant in mainstream men's perfumery that it's practically its own genre at this point.
Green fragrances
Fragrances with a fresh, herbal, or vegetal quality — cut grass, leaves, green tea, or mossy forest. Lighter and more natural-feeling than florals or woods, often used to describe fragrances that feel outdoorsy or understated.
White fragrances
Clean, soft, and skin-close. White fragrances typically centre on musks, sheer florals, or light powdery notes. They're often described as smelling like clean skin or freshly laundered fabric. Think Byredo Blanche or similar understated, intimate compositions.
Red fragrances
Used loosely to describe warm, spicy, or bold compositions — think oud, leather, pepper, or dark resins. Less consistent than blue or white as a descriptor, but generally signals intensity and warmth.
Black fragrances
Similarly informal, black tends to signal dark, smoky, or mysterious compositions — incense, leather, dark woods, tobacco. Often used in product names to communicate a darker or more intense version of an existing fragrance, like Black Opium or Oud Wood.
Industry terms
Flacon
The perfume bottle itself.
Concentration
The ratio of fragrance oil to alcohol. Common concentrations from lightest to strongest: Cologne, EDT, EDP, Parfum/Extrait de Parfum, Elixir.
Parfum and Extrait de Parfum are different names for the same concentration tier, typically 20–30% fragrance oil, and different houses use one term or the other. Elixir sits above these as a house-specific term for the most concentrated version. Higher concentration generally means more intensity and longevity, though it also affects how a fragrance develops on skin.
Flanker
A variation of an existing fragrance. Sauvage Elixir, for example, is a flanker of the original Sauvage.
Batch code
A code printed or embossed on the bottle or box that identifies which production run a fragrance comes from. You can decode most batch codes at checkfresh.com to find the exact manufacturing date. Worth noting that the database isn't always up to date on very recent releases, so a brand new bottle occasionally won't return a result. Useful for verifying age and understanding what to expect from a specific bottle.
Batch variation
Differences in scent and performance between different production runs of the same fragrance. Most notable in houses like Creed, where individual batches are discussed extensively in the enthusiast community.
Maceration
The process by which a fragrance matures after the bottle is opened. Some fragrances change noticeably over the first few days or weeks.
Niche vs designer
Designer houses are large commercial brands like Dior and Chanel. Niche houses are smaller operations that prioritise creative expression over broad appeal, such as Nishane or Amouage.
Reformulation
When a brand changes the formula of an existing fragrance. This usually happens due to new EU regulations restricting certain ingredients, or straightforward cost-cutting. It's why a vintage bottle of a classic fragrance from ten or fifteen years ago can smell noticeably richer or perform better than a current production bottle of the same name.
Blind buy
Buying a full bottle without smelling it first. Common when a fragrance isn't available locally or when someone is confident enough in reviews and recommendations to commit without testing. High risk, which is exactly why decants exist.
DNA
The core scent structure or character shared across related fragrances. Many different fragrances from different houses share "Aventus DNA" or "BR540 DNA" despite being distinct products.
Key ingredients
Ambroxan
A synthetic molecule used in a huge number of modern fragrances. Gives a warm, woody, skin-like quality and is known for amplifying other notes around it. You'll find it in everything from Sauvage to L'Immensité.
Oud
One of the most prized and expensive ingredients in perfumery. Oud, also known as agarwood, comes from Aquilaria trees that have been infected with a specific mould, triggering the tree to produce a dense, resinous heartwood. The smell is dark, woody, and complex — sometimes medicinal, sometimes almost animalic. It's a cornerstone of Middle Eastern perfumery and has become enormously popular in Western niche houses over the past two decades. Most affordable "oud" fragrances use synthetic substitutes rather than real oud, which can cost more per gram than gold.
Good to know
Decant
A portion of fragrance transferred from an original bottle into a smaller atomizer, typically for sampling purposes. That's exactly what we sell.
Atomizer
The spray mechanism on a fragrance bottle or decant. On a full bottle it's the pump and nozzle assembly. On a decant it's the entire small spray bottle. When someone asks for a photo of the atomizer in an authentication request, they want to see the spray head and surrounding hardware up close.
Atomizer stem
The thin tube that runs from the pump down into the fragrance liquid inside the bottle. Authentic bottles from major houses have stems with specific characteristics — length, colour, material — that counterfeit bottles often get wrong. A common request in authentication communities alongside a photo of the batch code.
Full presentation / Full pres
A term used when selling a fragrance to indicate it comes with everything it originally shipped with — the outer box, any inner packaging, booklets, and so on. A bottle without its original box is sometimes called "tester" or "no box," and typically sells for less.
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