The Vocabulary of Perfume: Small Glossary to Talk About Scents

The Different Facets of Freshness

Fresh: Often used by clients to talk about their perfume when they like it. But objective freshness exists! It comes in several families:

• Hesperidic: citrus fruits or zesty notes.
• Fresh green notes: smell of crushed leaves, cut grass, green, raw.
• Fresh floral notes: lily of the valley, lilac, honeysuckle, mock orange, rose petals, freesia.
• Fresh spices: cardamom, pink pepper, ginger.
• Fresh aromatic notes: lavender, rosemary, mint, thyme, aniseed like basil.
• Fresh marine or iodine, salty smell.
• Fresh clean smell (laundry or soap) given by aldehydes.

Emotional and Sensory Vocabulary

Vibrant: When the perfume has nervousness. For example, a note that traverses the perfume like a wood, for instance vetiver.

Smiling: Which has welcoming, friendly top notes that make you want to continue smelling it again and again.

Juicy: Which possesses fruity notes like pear and apple or other acidic fruit, associated with citrus fruits, the whole making the mouth water.

Signed: What should always be the characteristic of a perfume: recognizable, identifiable, leaving a trace.

Hook: Very catchy top note, also called “chapeau” (hat), and therefore very volatile.

Sharp (Pointu): When the top note is very, or even too pungent, or aggressive.

Cocooning: Comfortable and enveloping notes like white musks and vanilla, “pashmina”, “cashmere” scent, regressive, “comfort blanket”.

Addictive: Often through red fruits or vanilla, caramel, chocolate, tonka bean, therefore gourmand, but one should be able to say this of a non-gourmand perfume too. Just a perfume one can no longer do without, a soft drug!

Solar: Due to exotic notes like frangipani, ylang-ylang, jasmine, magnolia, coconut, salicylate notes that smell of warm sand, or sun-warmed skin. Smells of beach and holidays like solar products, or immortelle.

Powdery: Which smells of iris, violet, heliotrope, mimosa. Dry scents that tickle the nose and are not sweet. Which can feel “retro” and remind of talc and rice powder.

Milky (Lacté): Very comfortable notes that give creaminess to the perfume, like sandalwood, milky notes (smell of hot milk, coconut milk) and also like certain yellow fruits, vegetal notes like rice.

Disheveled (Ebouriffé): Telling a perfumer that they could give more originality to their creation, “ruffle” it, give it more of a “surprising side”.

Luminous: Effect of brilliance, cheerfulness, optimism, given by citrus fruits, aqueous fruits, which sparkle, having nervousness (in English sparkling).

Sexy: Very subjective term, which can be attributed to oriental or amber notes, vanilla notes, more mystical notes like incense, opoponax, benzoin. Or to haunting, extroverted, and narcotic white flower notes such as jasmine, tuberose, lily, orange blossom absolute, which mostly possess in their composition a natural component called Indole (animal note).

Round: Opposite of dry, hard, and vertical.

Butyric: Not glamorous, which smells of rancid butter.

Technical Terms of Critique

One can also hear terms such as:

• It has beautiful orchestration!
• It is very faceted: opposite of a simple and boring note.
• It is linear: opposite of evolving and changing, namely: same on all supports (olfactory strips, fabric, skin).
• It is textured: full, which has “flesh”, pulpy, very tactile, very filled with “natural ingredients”, rich, it has lovely curves.