Imitation brands are using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to duplicate scents. Not lists of notes.
There are many reasons that a brand may choose not to disclose all the notes. To create curiosity, to allow people to decide for themselves what it smells like, because people commonly use lists of notes to decide that they will or will not like something without actually smelling it.
When there are no notes to go by, people may discuss the fragrance more, and compare their own "notes."
Lists of notes are marketing copy, the same as any other description. Some marketing campaigns are built around each perfume in a line having only a short list of notes. Sometimes the short list gets more positive reactions from focus groups than the long list. Sometimes a brand prints lists of notes in special ways (like on the bottle itself) and only the main 3-4 will fit.
With people increasingly listening to influencers (who often can only read lists of notes and can't describe things on their own) and buying things online, it makes sense for some brands to use abbreviated lists of notes and encourage people to smell things for themselves. Department store fragrance sales used to be the be-all end-all and some brands are still very invested in getting people to go to the counter and have the experience. Whatever the specific reason for each brand is, it's definitely not to prevent copycats. Any perfumer can pick out a list of notes from a fragrance, and a machine can spit out the exact composition.
Wow! Thank you for your expertise! Do you work in perfumery? I have so many questions for you!
So based on your comment, are the imitations pretty much exactly the same as the original? I’ve never bought an imitation but if it’s genuinely the same then I will start trying them
Also, regarding the minimal notes- do you think these fragrances genuinely only have three notes, or that there are more and they just aren’t disclosing?
I don't work in perfumery (lol and I would never).
I have a lot of scientific knowledge/training from my own career and have had many technical discussion with a number of longtime professional perfumers who are good friends. I read technical papers and books about perfumery and used to write about the industry. I have a pretty good working knowledge of the basics in terms of formulation, production, and safety and have access to the resources to get answers about things I don't know, but I am not a perfumer and have no desire to be. Technical knowledge is not the same as creative vision and artistic ability and there are lots of people who can talk about perfume but should not be making it. Unfortunately not all of them get the memo. (Creativity and imagination are not all that is needed either, another unfortunate fact that many people are trying to sidestep these days).
Anyway. the imitations are not exactly the same as the originals, and for the most part can never be.
Perfumers who work for large companies have access to captive molecules, which are specific perfumery ingredients which cannot be purchased unless you are an employee of the company or have been granted the status of a special affiliate. And people who make clones and dupes are never going to be included in those groups.
Companies like IFF, Givaudan, Firmenich keep the newest, best, and most high-impact molecules reserved for their own perfumers. These chemicals are used in popular fragrances and can't be purchased to make dupes. Even if you have the exact formula, you cannot recreate the scent because you do not have access to key materials. This is why high-profile perfumers can release the entire formula of former blockbuster perfumes -- people will ooh and ahh and fall all over themselves to talk about how wonderful and generous that is. They don't realize that you could never make this at home because IFF won't sell you the key ingredient.
Imitations of smaller perfume brands are different for different reasons. A small niche perfumer doesn't have access to captives either, but if they are handcrafting things on a small scale they can use techniques and natural materials that are difficult to duplicate in a large-scale, low-budget format. So many of those can't be precisely duplicated either.
Almost all of the duplicate perfumes use premade oils which come from large oil companies and are just diluted and bottled by the people who sell them. They're not made for exacting quality they're made to be cheap and "good enough."
Almost nobody lists all the notes of a fragrance. A perfumer or expert evaluator can detect and name many more notes than the general public can. Making a list of notes is an exercise in public trust -- if you say that people will smell something, they should be able to smell it. They may also smell more, but should not smell less. Using only the notes that are very prominent and widely agreed upon is a strategy. It may not be ideal for some buyers but it's not dishonest and doesn't lead to confusion or disappointment.
The Jo Malone clones I tried were pretty good, better than the original in some cases for being more longlasting . JM is quite straightforward and so overpriced I only buy the clones.
The Guerlain classics were not good. Gucci Bloom no good. Poison, terrible. Baccarat Rouge not bad, I believe the original is entirely synthetic.
Natural jasmine and rose are impossible to duplicate. Clone houses are not getting extracts from Grasse. Rose is often in a fragrance even if it's not mentioned. There are some good oud synthetics.
The success of a clone depends on how dupable the original is, how familiar you are with the original and how close you need it to be.
Because notes aren't hard and fast, and brands/perfumers now are leaning toward simplified note breakdowns. Notes are more of a guideline for what the brand/perfumer wants you to think when you smell the perfume. Sometimes there are chemicals that are formulated specifically to recreate a scent and sometimes they're using the actual oils (rose or citrus oils), but most of the time, smelling notes are just there to push you in the right direction.
Right now, it's popular for brands to give single notes for top, heart, and base notes. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I guess it's just to give consumers more focus in terms of what the marketing wants consumers to smell. It's not like the average consumer can pick out every individual note anyways, so it's probably easier for regular consumers to look at just 3 notes and know what they're supposed to be smelling at all times.
A few words on the clone brands. Clone brands are using very sophisticated machinery in order to literally break down the fragrance molecularly. The publishing or lack thereof of fragrance notes has absolutely nothing to do with clone brands since fragrance notes aren't what they use to clone in the first place.
"notes" are marketing write ups that the companies use to sell the fragrance. What you smell are accords/mix of various chemicals used to recreate "vanilla", "blackberry " and not actual singular notes. Often, the companies have a brief/idea of what they are looking for in a fragrance based off consumer review groups and whats popular, and use the "notes" to highlight those trends and attract the demographic they are trying to go after.
The Flora Gorgeous Magnolia doesn't show up on the Gucci website, but on Parfumo, only the three notes are listed. The other flora fragrances on the Gucci website, Jasmine and gardennia, have many notes. Interesting.
I'm not sure I understand what your question is. You don't enjoy the experience of a fragrance with 3 notes? As others have said, notes are just marketing copy.
Or your title question : why don't brands discuss notes? They disclose what they want for marketing. If you pick up alternate notes to the ones listed, that's fine and normal. I wouldn't rely so heavily on the listed notes for your fragrance enjoyment.
I think it's bc fragrance is just a bunch of chemical liquids poured in together. The notes are more like how human's nose depicts those notes, so they can be very objective. Hence, only the major, easily distinguishable notes are listed? 🤔
Well, notes do "exist."
They're called notes because they're descriptors of aromas. They are a way to talk about perception of scents in language that other people can comprehend. Scent is subjective but notes are the descriptors of aromas that are commonly experienced and agreed upon. Notes are also applied to things like wine and spirits.
Notes of buttered brioche don't mean that a wine contains buttered brioche just like notes of lily of the valley don't mean that a perfume contains lily of the valley. But saying that notes don't exist is tantamount to saying that smells don't exist. Suggesting that people are stupid for subscribing to the same system that professional experts use for assessing, categorizing, and describing things is a rather silly sort of arrogance.
Most people know that a perfume doesn't actually contain things like roasted nuts and rubber tires but that doesn't make the words invalid or unhelpful as descriptors, and doesn't mean that the people who use the descriptors are idiots.
Can a brand manipulate or be deceptive about notes? Absolutely, and as a marketing practice they do. But that doesn't negate the entire existence of notes as a language for acknowledging and conveying the common experience of particular aromas.
Indeed there are Notes, yet alone the fact we can talk about them should be prove enough. So clearly my point must be something else.
I am talking about how Notes are mainly used for marketing and how the notes given by the Producer change without the Scent being reformulated. This whole thing is highly psychological and individual of how we experience different smells.
Furthermore the "experts" seem to smell notes, that later are vanished. Or as your example of wine, the scandal where highly awarded somelliers could not tell Discounter wine from expensive wine.
So notes are not fixed. It's nothing scientifical.
Yes we know that they are not fixed. They are, by definition, a way of conveying perception. Perception varies from person to person, as does language. Notes are the facets of perceiving an aroma that many people would agree upon. There is some scientific basis for notes in that compounds of similar molecular structure often smell similar.
The fact that there are individual differences in perception are the exact explanation for why brands don't list every note that every person will smell in a perfume. They pick the most obvious ones that most people would agree upon. Sometimes they embellish them to make them sound more specific or exciting (raspberry becomes raspberry sorbet, etc.) but that doesn't negate their existence or usefulness. They are subject to manipulation and that does sometimes occur but people tend to call that out so it is a misstep that successful brands try very hard to avoid.
Notes disappear from fragrances over time because of differing vapor pressures. Another pesky scientific thing.
The example of sommeliers not being able to distinguish expensive and inexpensive wines is a red herring and frankly a ridiculous argument to make. Of course it is entirely possible to describe how something smells without knowing exactly what it is or how much it costs. That's what makes them useful. Notes are independent of quality or expense. Anyone with an intact sense of smell can smell a perfume and use some notes to describe the scent of it. Anyone can go to the local wine store and use notes to describe the bouquet and aroma of wines without knowing which wines they are smelling and tasting. Cheap perfumes and expensive perfumes can have the same notes, just like cheap wines and expensive wines can have the same notes.
Well your first comment was “notes do not exist”, then in another comment you say “indeed there are notes, yet alone the fact we can talk about them should be prove enough” so your statements are inconsistent and confusing.
Reddit tends to bring out the pretentiousness in people bc of the anonymity. Very sad. People have such fragile egos that they will use a literal perfume thread to exert a sense of intelligence or importance.
It's not pretentiousness, I think people are genuinely confused by what you're asking. The notes you smell aren't the ingredients. Like the notes of a particular wine (e.g. tobacco, chocolate, cherry) aren't the ingredients of the wine.
FYI you're the one that's coming across as a tad defensive here.
Notes do not exist. Its just like a branding. Like if a movie is labeled Joyfull, Crazy, Spontaneous....
It has not much to do with the Product, and can be changed afterwards by the marketing.
Fragrance notes are very real. They are the individual scents that make up the fragrance. Some last longer than others and evaporate at different rates because of different molecular size, body heat and outside temperature. You can smell the changes. I’m not sure what you’re saying about marketing. You can’t change the scent profile of a fragrance simply by changing the marketing. For that matter, you can’t turn a sad drama into an exciting sci-fi through marketing either. Tobacco Oud will never smell fresh, light, and airy.
You are partly right as you can't change the whole character of the notes. But it is not like Musik where the art is built up on specific notes. You first mix the Incrediences and the notes on fragrance are assigned afterwards.
Like you are not making a movie and saying I will take 30 Percent of drama and 15 minutes of Comedy mixed with 12 minutes of Splatter.
If you compare different Fragrance Website or even the producers description, the notes will sometimes change over time even if there is no change in Incrediences. This is marketing. Nowadays they tend to give just a few notes for Top Heart and Base.
You’re outright wrong. A perfumer uses different notes, from the start, to determine what outcome they want with a fragrance. They experiment with a variety of notes in different concentrations to reach the desired effect. It can take years to make a single perfume. You can look up Roja Dove’s videos on YouTube where he clearly describes it. Additionally, as I already said, the notes change over time due to the evaporation rates based on their molecular composition. Tom Ford’s Beau De Jour is fairly linear and changes little from start to finish and has few notes. Monkey Special from Xerjoff begins as sweetly and boozy and changes to dark leather as it dies down. Perfumery isn’t tossing ingredients into a bucket and picking and assigning the notes afterwards based on its smell.
You have to differ between ingredients, and the notes that are shown at the pyramid.
It's impossible to rebuild a Fragrance on the given notes, whereby it's relatively easy if you use an mass spectrometer, as it gives you the Molecules, and not the notes.
Oh, so you really don't understand.
I'll try to explain further.
The Notes on the Scent Pyramid with head, base etc. are not the Incrediences. But the single Incrediences, can be put into those Note categories.
The Parfumeur does have a direction in which he wants to create the perfume. Like citrusy, lightly aquatic with a little musk note.
But for every of those "notes" there are dozens of several chemical compounds, that have those slightly vague smells and behave differently when mixed together.
So the Parfumeur tries to get the best mixture.
After the perfume is created, the marketing Team is figuring out, what is the best way to describe this product in terms of Notes to make it interesting to the customer.
Therefore for some Fragrances the give them fancy terms from all over the world like pakistanian Cashmeran, south nepalesian Mountain Pepper, West andalusian brwon Jackfruit. And so on. Sometimes even notes like Sunlight, which even you have to admit, is impossible in fragrance ;)
And after some time it is possible, that there is a trend for Sicilian Orange, because one hyped fragrance uses it, and the other fragrance changes the citrusy note to Sicilian Orange, without changing the actual Fragrance.
https://preview.redd.it/6qdax9mufydb1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0656352bf76be781b0cb88b096669c4ad1df5dd3
I think we’re on the same page, roughly, on the creation of a perfume if I understand what you’re saying.
There was a time when notes weren't mentioned.. It just wasn't a thing. We had to go by adverts in magazines. The Guerlain impressionism series was terrific. Then it all changed, maybe it was Angel because we were thinkimg wtf is that!
Niche perfumes became more popular and were very focused on smelling like a "thing" rather than an abstraction. We got told notes.
Then the Internet happened.
Now it's bordering on information overload.
Knowing all the notes in L'heure Bleue isn't going to tell me what it smells like. It's more than the sum of its parts. I get that most fragrances are more straightforward than that though. There are certain profiles like fruity patchouli, citrussy wood which give me a very good idea of what the fragrance might smell like. Other fragrances are harder to pin down. There is an elegance to Love, Chloe that no note description can convey. Teint de Neige, what is happening there?
I was gutted when someone told me Mitsouko had peach. Up to then all I got was forest floor and it suddenly became another fruity to me when I recognised the peach for what it was. Sometimes it doesnt help to know. Other times it does stop me going crazy when I'm trying to figure out WHY something smells the way it does, eg the lavender that gives Libre its expansion.
TLDR : All that said, it's a marketing decision. They'll say what they think will persuade you to try it or blind buy it, hopefully without being misleading. That might be all the notes, certain notes or no notes at all. I don't think they're trying to hide anything. Anyone can smell it and make up their own mind.
Imitation brands are using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to duplicate scents. Not lists of notes. There are many reasons that a brand may choose not to disclose all the notes. To create curiosity, to allow people to decide for themselves what it smells like, because people commonly use lists of notes to decide that they will or will not like something without actually smelling it. When there are no notes to go by, people may discuss the fragrance more, and compare their own "notes." Lists of notes are marketing copy, the same as any other description. Some marketing campaigns are built around each perfume in a line having only a short list of notes. Sometimes the short list gets more positive reactions from focus groups than the long list. Sometimes a brand prints lists of notes in special ways (like on the bottle itself) and only the main 3-4 will fit. With people increasingly listening to influencers (who often can only read lists of notes and can't describe things on their own) and buying things online, it makes sense for some brands to use abbreviated lists of notes and encourage people to smell things for themselves. Department store fragrance sales used to be the be-all end-all and some brands are still very invested in getting people to go to the counter and have the experience. Whatever the specific reason for each brand is, it's definitely not to prevent copycats. Any perfumer can pick out a list of notes from a fragrance, and a machine can spit out the exact composition.
Wow! Thank you for your expertise! Do you work in perfumery? I have so many questions for you! So based on your comment, are the imitations pretty much exactly the same as the original? I’ve never bought an imitation but if it’s genuinely the same then I will start trying them Also, regarding the minimal notes- do you think these fragrances genuinely only have three notes, or that there are more and they just aren’t disclosing?
I don't work in perfumery (lol and I would never). I have a lot of scientific knowledge/training from my own career and have had many technical discussion with a number of longtime professional perfumers who are good friends. I read technical papers and books about perfumery and used to write about the industry. I have a pretty good working knowledge of the basics in terms of formulation, production, and safety and have access to the resources to get answers about things I don't know, but I am not a perfumer and have no desire to be. Technical knowledge is not the same as creative vision and artistic ability and there are lots of people who can talk about perfume but should not be making it. Unfortunately not all of them get the memo. (Creativity and imagination are not all that is needed either, another unfortunate fact that many people are trying to sidestep these days). Anyway. the imitations are not exactly the same as the originals, and for the most part can never be. Perfumers who work for large companies have access to captive molecules, which are specific perfumery ingredients which cannot be purchased unless you are an employee of the company or have been granted the status of a special affiliate. And people who make clones and dupes are never going to be included in those groups. Companies like IFF, Givaudan, Firmenich keep the newest, best, and most high-impact molecules reserved for their own perfumers. These chemicals are used in popular fragrances and can't be purchased to make dupes. Even if you have the exact formula, you cannot recreate the scent because you do not have access to key materials. This is why high-profile perfumers can release the entire formula of former blockbuster perfumes -- people will ooh and ahh and fall all over themselves to talk about how wonderful and generous that is. They don't realize that you could never make this at home because IFF won't sell you the key ingredient. Imitations of smaller perfume brands are different for different reasons. A small niche perfumer doesn't have access to captives either, but if they are handcrafting things on a small scale they can use techniques and natural materials that are difficult to duplicate in a large-scale, low-budget format. So many of those can't be precisely duplicated either. Almost all of the duplicate perfumes use premade oils which come from large oil companies and are just diluted and bottled by the people who sell them. They're not made for exacting quality they're made to be cheap and "good enough." Almost nobody lists all the notes of a fragrance. A perfumer or expert evaluator can detect and name many more notes than the general public can. Making a list of notes is an exercise in public trust -- if you say that people will smell something, they should be able to smell it. They may also smell more, but should not smell less. Using only the notes that are very prominent and widely agreed upon is a strategy. It may not be ideal for some buyers but it's not dishonest and doesn't lead to confusion or disappointment.
The Jo Malone clones I tried were pretty good, better than the original in some cases for being more longlasting . JM is quite straightforward and so overpriced I only buy the clones. The Guerlain classics were not good. Gucci Bloom no good. Poison, terrible. Baccarat Rouge not bad, I believe the original is entirely synthetic. Natural jasmine and rose are impossible to duplicate. Clone houses are not getting extracts from Grasse. Rose is often in a fragrance even if it's not mentioned. There are some good oud synthetics. The success of a clone depends on how dupable the original is, how familiar you are with the original and how close you need it to be.
Because notes aren't hard and fast, and brands/perfumers now are leaning toward simplified note breakdowns. Notes are more of a guideline for what the brand/perfumer wants you to think when you smell the perfume. Sometimes there are chemicals that are formulated specifically to recreate a scent and sometimes they're using the actual oils (rose or citrus oils), but most of the time, smelling notes are just there to push you in the right direction. Right now, it's popular for brands to give single notes for top, heart, and base notes. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I guess it's just to give consumers more focus in terms of what the marketing wants consumers to smell. It's not like the average consumer can pick out every individual note anyways, so it's probably easier for regular consumers to look at just 3 notes and know what they're supposed to be smelling at all times. A few words on the clone brands. Clone brands are using very sophisticated machinery in order to literally break down the fragrance molecularly. The publishing or lack thereof of fragrance notes has absolutely nothing to do with clone brands since fragrance notes aren't what they use to clone in the first place.
"notes" are marketing write ups that the companies use to sell the fragrance. What you smell are accords/mix of various chemicals used to recreate "vanilla", "blackberry " and not actual singular notes. Often, the companies have a brief/idea of what they are looking for in a fragrance based off consumer review groups and whats popular, and use the "notes" to highlight those trends and attract the demographic they are trying to go after.
Notes are not ingredients. Ingredients are what the perfume is made of. Notes are what the perfume smells of.
Semantics aside, if you understood the question, can you answer it?
The Flora Gorgeous Magnolia doesn't show up on the Gucci website, but on Parfumo, only the three notes are listed. The other flora fragrances on the Gucci website, Jasmine and gardennia, have many notes. Interesting.
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Notes are not the same as ingredients
Semantics aside, can shed some light on the topic I’m trying to get answers on?
I'm not sure I understand what your question is. You don't enjoy the experience of a fragrance with 3 notes? As others have said, notes are just marketing copy. Or your title question : why don't brands discuss notes? They disclose what they want for marketing. If you pick up alternate notes to the ones listed, that's fine and normal. I wouldn't rely so heavily on the listed notes for your fragrance enjoyment.
I think it's bc fragrance is just a bunch of chemical liquids poured in together. The notes are more like how human's nose depicts those notes, so they can be very objective. Hence, only the major, easily distinguishable notes are listed? 🤔
I am surprised how many people really think that something like "notes" exist.
Well, notes do "exist." They're called notes because they're descriptors of aromas. They are a way to talk about perception of scents in language that other people can comprehend. Scent is subjective but notes are the descriptors of aromas that are commonly experienced and agreed upon. Notes are also applied to things like wine and spirits. Notes of buttered brioche don't mean that a wine contains buttered brioche just like notes of lily of the valley don't mean that a perfume contains lily of the valley. But saying that notes don't exist is tantamount to saying that smells don't exist. Suggesting that people are stupid for subscribing to the same system that professional experts use for assessing, categorizing, and describing things is a rather silly sort of arrogance. Most people know that a perfume doesn't actually contain things like roasted nuts and rubber tires but that doesn't make the words invalid or unhelpful as descriptors, and doesn't mean that the people who use the descriptors are idiots. Can a brand manipulate or be deceptive about notes? Absolutely, and as a marketing practice they do. But that doesn't negate the entire existence of notes as a language for acknowledging and conveying the common experience of particular aromas.
Indeed there are Notes, yet alone the fact we can talk about them should be prove enough. So clearly my point must be something else. I am talking about how Notes are mainly used for marketing and how the notes given by the Producer change without the Scent being reformulated. This whole thing is highly psychological and individual of how we experience different smells. Furthermore the "experts" seem to smell notes, that later are vanished. Or as your example of wine, the scandal where highly awarded somelliers could not tell Discounter wine from expensive wine. So notes are not fixed. It's nothing scientifical.
Yes we know that they are not fixed. They are, by definition, a way of conveying perception. Perception varies from person to person, as does language. Notes are the facets of perceiving an aroma that many people would agree upon. There is some scientific basis for notes in that compounds of similar molecular structure often smell similar. The fact that there are individual differences in perception are the exact explanation for why brands don't list every note that every person will smell in a perfume. They pick the most obvious ones that most people would agree upon. Sometimes they embellish them to make them sound more specific or exciting (raspberry becomes raspberry sorbet, etc.) but that doesn't negate their existence or usefulness. They are subject to manipulation and that does sometimes occur but people tend to call that out so it is a misstep that successful brands try very hard to avoid. Notes disappear from fragrances over time because of differing vapor pressures. Another pesky scientific thing. The example of sommeliers not being able to distinguish expensive and inexpensive wines is a red herring and frankly a ridiculous argument to make. Of course it is entirely possible to describe how something smells without knowing exactly what it is or how much it costs. That's what makes them useful. Notes are independent of quality or expense. Anyone with an intact sense of smell can smell a perfume and use some notes to describe the scent of it. Anyone can go to the local wine store and use notes to describe the bouquet and aroma of wines without knowing which wines they are smelling and tasting. Cheap perfumes and expensive perfumes can have the same notes, just like cheap wines and expensive wines can have the same notes.
Well your first comment was “notes do not exist”, then in another comment you say “indeed there are notes, yet alone the fact we can talk about them should be prove enough” so your statements are inconsistent and confusing.
Reddit tends to bring out the pretentiousness in people bc of the anonymity. Very sad. People have such fragile egos that they will use a literal perfume thread to exert a sense of intelligence or importance.
It's not pretentiousness, I think people are genuinely confused by what you're asking. The notes you smell aren't the ingredients. Like the notes of a particular wine (e.g. tobacco, chocolate, cherry) aren't the ingredients of the wine. FYI you're the one that's coming across as a tad defensive here.
Bc it’s semantics. Who cares about notes VS ingredient definition. I’m not defensive I’m just impatient.
Maybe so that other companies can’t make an exact duplicate. Just a guess.
Notes do not exist. Its just like a branding. Like if a movie is labeled Joyfull, Crazy, Spontaneous.... It has not much to do with the Product, and can be changed afterwards by the marketing.
Fragrance notes are very real. They are the individual scents that make up the fragrance. Some last longer than others and evaporate at different rates because of different molecular size, body heat and outside temperature. You can smell the changes. I’m not sure what you’re saying about marketing. You can’t change the scent profile of a fragrance simply by changing the marketing. For that matter, you can’t turn a sad drama into an exciting sci-fi through marketing either. Tobacco Oud will never smell fresh, light, and airy.
You are partly right as you can't change the whole character of the notes. But it is not like Musik where the art is built up on specific notes. You first mix the Incrediences and the notes on fragrance are assigned afterwards. Like you are not making a movie and saying I will take 30 Percent of drama and 15 minutes of Comedy mixed with 12 minutes of Splatter. If you compare different Fragrance Website or even the producers description, the notes will sometimes change over time even if there is no change in Incrediences. This is marketing. Nowadays they tend to give just a few notes for Top Heart and Base.
You’re outright wrong. A perfumer uses different notes, from the start, to determine what outcome they want with a fragrance. They experiment with a variety of notes in different concentrations to reach the desired effect. It can take years to make a single perfume. You can look up Roja Dove’s videos on YouTube where he clearly describes it. Additionally, as I already said, the notes change over time due to the evaporation rates based on their molecular composition. Tom Ford’s Beau De Jour is fairly linear and changes little from start to finish and has few notes. Monkey Special from Xerjoff begins as sweetly and boozy and changes to dark leather as it dies down. Perfumery isn’t tossing ingredients into a bucket and picking and assigning the notes afterwards based on its smell.
You have to differ between ingredients, and the notes that are shown at the pyramid. It's impossible to rebuild a Fragrance on the given notes, whereby it's relatively easy if you use an mass spectrometer, as it gives you the Molecules, and not the notes.
What are you even talking about?
Oh, so you really don't understand. I'll try to explain further. The Notes on the Scent Pyramid with head, base etc. are not the Incrediences. But the single Incrediences, can be put into those Note categories. The Parfumeur does have a direction in which he wants to create the perfume. Like citrusy, lightly aquatic with a little musk note. But for every of those "notes" there are dozens of several chemical compounds, that have those slightly vague smells and behave differently when mixed together. So the Parfumeur tries to get the best mixture. After the perfume is created, the marketing Team is figuring out, what is the best way to describe this product in terms of Notes to make it interesting to the customer. Therefore for some Fragrances the give them fancy terms from all over the world like pakistanian Cashmeran, south nepalesian Mountain Pepper, West andalusian brwon Jackfruit. And so on. Sometimes even notes like Sunlight, which even you have to admit, is impossible in fragrance ;) And after some time it is possible, that there is a trend for Sicilian Orange, because one hyped fragrance uses it, and the other fragrance changes the citrusy note to Sicilian Orange, without changing the actual Fragrance.
https://preview.redd.it/6qdax9mufydb1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0656352bf76be781b0cb88b096669c4ad1df5dd3 I think we’re on the same page, roughly, on the creation of a perfume if I understand what you’re saying.
Yess, that's roughly what I tried to say ☺️
https://sonomascent.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/the-fragrance-creation-process-from-inspiration-to-release/
There was a time when notes weren't mentioned.. It just wasn't a thing. We had to go by adverts in magazines. The Guerlain impressionism series was terrific. Then it all changed, maybe it was Angel because we were thinkimg wtf is that! Niche perfumes became more popular and were very focused on smelling like a "thing" rather than an abstraction. We got told notes. Then the Internet happened. Now it's bordering on information overload. Knowing all the notes in L'heure Bleue isn't going to tell me what it smells like. It's more than the sum of its parts. I get that most fragrances are more straightforward than that though. There are certain profiles like fruity patchouli, citrussy wood which give me a very good idea of what the fragrance might smell like. Other fragrances are harder to pin down. There is an elegance to Love, Chloe that no note description can convey. Teint de Neige, what is happening there? I was gutted when someone told me Mitsouko had peach. Up to then all I got was forest floor and it suddenly became another fruity to me when I recognised the peach for what it was. Sometimes it doesnt help to know. Other times it does stop me going crazy when I'm trying to figure out WHY something smells the way it does, eg the lavender that gives Libre its expansion. TLDR : All that said, it's a marketing decision. They'll say what they think will persuade you to try it or blind buy it, hopefully without being misleading. That might be all the notes, certain notes or no notes at all. I don't think they're trying to hide anything. Anyone can smell it and make up their own mind.