Describing a Perfume or Fragrance
Many of us have difficulty describing the scent of an aftershave or cologne or making sense of someone else's description of one. I frequently see statements such as, "I'm not good at describing a scent," but there is no real trick to description; it is just a matter of being careful and methodical. I would like to talk a bit here about how one can attempt to describe a fragrance. The discussion will
not include any description of skin care qualities or of bottles or packaging. Those are complete subjects on their own.
Before creating a scent description, it is to identify your reason for describing it. Are you simply describing it for yourself or do you want to communicate your impression of it to someone else? This differentiation will determine whether you want to capture the overall nature or quality of a fragrance, name a certain meaning or feeling that it evokes, break it down technically into individual notes (ingredients), or simply find a way to tell its story. It helps to guide you mentally in approaching your step-by-step assessment.
The first step is to smell and evaluate the item briefly and repeatedly. Spritz or apply a couple drops to an absorbent blotter paper strip, or onto the skin on your hand or wrist, and then hold it about 1-2cm from your nostrils. Close your eyes to help filter out any outside stimuli. As with sipping wine to ascertain its flavor during a tasting, sniff once and then remove the perfume source from your nose area and mentally evaluate the odor. Repeat with short sniffing procedures, taking breaks between them for longer periods of evaluation. This allows the olfactory receptors to recover between sniffs, minimizing olfactory overload and fatigue. It also increases one's ability to 'hold' the smell in memory for longer periods. Also, as the notes in a perfume sample appear and disappear at different rates, separation of the notes can be detected.
Next smell it through the mouth. Hold the scent source on the paper or skin about 2cm below the nose and about 1cm away from the mouth and gently breathe in through parted lips, enabling you to experience the odor in another manner. The vapor passes over the tongue, into the throat, and up the back of the nasal passage to the olfactory receptors. This longer route over wet mucous membranes alters the profile enough to give a somewhat different viewpoint and impression.
While doing the sniffing, make written notes of your nasal and oral perceptions, placing them in order by time to illustrate the flow of the scent's evolution and to help in avoiding becoming stuck on any individual perception. Add notes of any mental connections and feelings that you experience during smelling, recording any words, images, emotions, memories, or associations that come to mind, regardless of whether or not they seem to make sense.
Next, use the basic qualities of the various fragrance families to begin to generally classify the scent being evaluated (romantic floral; exotic, warm Oriental or amber; earthy woody; fresh and green; dry or smoky leather; complex, rich chypre; natural, woodsy fougere; or fantasy, not fitting into any of these groups). If it is floral, is it soliflore (single flower) or a bouquet of flower notes? Try to identify which ingredients dominate or are most prominent and at which stages during your repeated smelling process they appeared and disappeared. What accord gives the perfume its 'backbone' (the main building block for it). At this point, assess generally what ingredients comprise the three note groups (top, heart, base) for the perfume as its scent evolves. The top notes, usually fresher and lighter, strike you first but do not last long, sometimes just a few minutes. The heart (middle) notes contain the most prominent or defining factors and can last up to a few hours. The base notes appear last, often feel deeper and heavier, and can last hours to a day or more. These note groups frequently are not sharply differentiated and instead blend into a 'flow,' but it is useful to try to separate them.
Now refer to your mental and written notes and try to use adjectives to describe the overall quality or 'vibe' of the smell, such as airy, acrid, balmy, bubbly, clean, cool, delicate, exotic, fresh, green, gentle, heavy, light, mild, musty, natural, overpowering, powerful, pungent, refreshing, sweet, spicy, stale, strong, subtle, toxic, warm, wild, or zesty. Lists of such descriptive adjectives for reference can easily be found. In addition to adjectives (e.g. 'leathery') giving the scent effect, the words can take the form of an adverb (angrily, amusingly), gerund (driving, raging), or a noun ('the smell of leather') that defines or conjures a specific source. If you have images in your mind from smelling the fragrance, describe this mental picture, such as 'light and airy fresh in a blue sky after a light rain'). Be specific; for example, one can differentiate between cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke impressions and between those and the smell of burning rubber or oil. If something smells fruity or woody, try to identify the specific fruit(s) or wood(s). You can also use strong, active verbs in your description: does the smell permeate, confuse, distract, cool off, conjure, suggest, command, or calm? Or is it associated with activities such as baking, digging, sweating, lifting drifting, whispering? Notice and make note of any multi-dimensional or complex structure of the scent that implies a combination of these descriptive words. Try to identify also what it is
not, such as 'no floral notes,' 'not sweet,' or 'not fruity,' in addition to what it is.
In recording these descriptions, borrow words from other senses, such as sight (bright, dark, clear, purple, vivid, dull, multicolored), sound (harmonious, dissident, loud, quiet, fast, slow), touch (sharp, dull, smooth, rough, cool, hot, cottony, silky), and taste (sweet, sour, savory, salty, tart, bitter, refreshing, crisp). Use metaphors: "It was like a slow stroll down a shaded forest path in the early morning." For a pleasant scent, use alternate words such as aroma, aura, bouquet, or essence in the description. If the scent evokes negative responses, use antonyms such as odor, stench, stink, or reek.
Visualize what the smell does to you subjectively, using creative imagery. Does it creep stealthily into your nose? Does it wrap around you gently? Does it follow or surprise you? Does it make you feel like you're flying? Is it startling or jarring, soothing or comforting? Does it make you feel better? If it makes you feel good, how? Does it evoke specific feelings and emotions, such as happiness, sadness, or melancholy, or conjure associations with past events? Write these down too.
To finish the evaluation, it is sometimes useful to distinguish whether a scent is most suitable for a particular gender, although this has become quite fluid. The gender distinction probably arose when women who had worked at jobs during World War II were replaced by men returning from combat, and the women were 'reassigned' to their designated role in the nuclear family (bearing children to replace the men killed and caring for the house and family). To expand the perfume market to men who previously just wore aftershave, marketers began to call some perfumes colognes and to give them macho descriptions. In current perfume discussion, this gender differentiation is just a simple prop to better understand the fragrance. Although one might say that an accord in masculine in style, women also might wear it and like it, and vice versa. In addition, at this point you can try to relate the fragrance to other scents historically to identify whether the particular one being evaluated is a development of any kind, an 'evolution' or a 'revolution,' or has unusual 'twists' or fresh approaches.
Ideally, repeat your evaluation on other days, varying the time of day, whether or not you have eaten or drunk anything recently, your own mood, the lighting and temperature in the room, and the weather, since all of these have effects. However, it recommended that you always try to smell the fragrance in a generally peaceful and quiet environment so that your other senses do not distract your nose. And it is best that you do it alone, without being influenced at the time by the responses of others. However, after you have evaluated a scent, then you can listen to others' ideas, descriptions, and comments for comparison to your own and to make logical connections, but do not allow them to discourage your own sensory impressions.
To increase your own ability to describe scents, try to pay attention to the smells of things in your daily life - in the rooms of your house, your workplace, the gym, retail stores and businesses, and in public places such as hospitals and airports. Each location has hundreds of different scent qualities, from fresh, stale, or air conditioned air, light bulbs and electrical appliances, roads and other surfaces and their vehicles, weather conditions, plants, and people and animals. Identifying and naming or describing the various smells to yourself will sharpen your talent for describing perfumes.
Pay attention also to descriptions of smell when you hear them or see them in writing, such as in advertising, poems, or inspirational or motivational text. Compare these descriptions to your own, in order refine your own impressions of a particular product and to improve your own overall ability to describe fragrances. Note, however, that marketing descriptions often do not offer a specific accurate definition ('like orange and ginger'), but rather a broad, subjective impression ('a tropical sensation that a strong, natural man needs'). A good marketer can find many associations for a given ingredient. For example, Mugler Alien Flora Future has notes of citrus, Buddha wood, amber, and sandalwood, but it is presented in advertising as a product "whose color reminds you of the sky at dawn, hides a fragrance composed with a vision of light at the heart of a desert - strong and beautiful... It makes everything possible: loving, dreaming, being yourself." Such a description, of course, is more successful in encouraging the consumer to buy the product than a list of ingredients is, but it allows the customer to know the type of personality that it most likely suits (and which they might aspire to be), perhaps giving them the opportunity to use a fragrance which might help to make their self-image or image to others more positive and attractive.
Finally, in formulating a fragrance description, keep in mind who your audience is if other than just yourself. Remember that what you intend to convey may not be exactly what someone else hears or sees, especially when you use subjective words such as manly, clean, fresh, tasteful, mature, elegant, modern, sexy, cheap, etc. It is important to tailor your description to the specific person or people who will be receiving it.