2) I hate perfume. I met an avant garde perfumist called Christopher Brosius (label: "I hate perfume") and waited 20 years to buy his samples. They are AMAZING. So approachable. Everyone who has let me dab with his fragrances has been blown away. "In the library" smells like old books. "Wild hunt" has rotten leaves as an ingredient. "Walking on air" smells like fresh cut grass. I hate perfume but I am obsessed with his smells: https://www.cbihateperfume.com/
I know we are used to people online having the wildest disagreement because of contrarianism or something, but in this case, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation:
You know we have three different types (sometimes four) of color sensors in our eyes? And that people who miss one or several of them are "colorblind" and fail tests like the Ishihara Test?
Well, human noses have hundreds of possible olfactory receptors, and everyone of us only has a subset of these, which means we are all "smellblind" one way or another.
Each one of us smells perfumes differently. The only think that we can agree on is a shared association or experience like the smell of a standard object (e.g. a road, asphalt) or of a common plant (flower or food).
Also smell is very tightly connected to memories and this adds more complexity. For example I like perfumes that use the notes of gasoline and some solvents because I liked to play around my grandfathers garage where he stored such stuff. Other people might have negative memories associated with these aromas and will perceive them accordingly.
A great example of this is a scent I really like--Santal 33.
The way everything mixes together, there's a dill pickle overtone that some people are really receptive to. I can smell it if I actively think about dill, but it's not the first thing I notice. Others seem to respond to it like a jar of pickle juice.
I'm definitely one of those people. The first time I smelled it on someone I thought they were sick, it was sour just like pickle vinegar. Not overly dissimilar to a sour sweat smell.
I couldn't believe it when I found out it was a high end fragrance people would wear...willingly.
There are a few that I absolutely enjoy the smell of, but I have super bad allergies and migraines so I'm usually anti perfumes. It doesn't help that a lot of people wear far too much in public when a lil dab will do ya.
Apparently I'm a super smeller (always the first to detect gas leaks, food that's off, know the brand of shampoo a person uses if I'm 200ft down wind, know if you use scented dish soap to clean the bowl you used to make cookies in when I eat the cookie). And I just think the idea that adding smells to the world is absolutely insane. Can I beam my favourite colours directly into your eyes with a laser from across the room? What if I know you like that colour too?
I'm a perfume fan and fragrance commentary manages to be one of the most spectacular thing on the internet. You might find comments being like "smells like cat piss" next to another comment of someone who maybe dips his feet in perfumery and goes like "oh yeah it's clear they used some new musc, the transparent ones, and not the old ones that would have been more cozy"
I feel like most people know this, along with the follow-up that the company Chanel was co-founded with a Jewish businessman who was able to transfer ownership to a Christian friend and transfer it back after the war with Chanel removed.
Your descriptions of perfume sound like someone who appreciates perfume. I don't think you hate perfume.
Perfume in general is very approachable, and most perfume one can find easily is popular and accessible. You just walk into a drug store and try some for free. The process is entirely self-directed and manual. Often, not even the security guard will look.
The abandoned chapel of a Cistercian abbey.
Cold stonewalls, covered in Moss.
The scent of waxen wood, of the tabernacle and ornate pews.
The linseed oil of the unfinished painting.
Myrrh and Frankincense still linger in the air,
When a peppery whiff catches you, unawares:
That of white lilies, still fresh and yet so spicy.
The subtle scent of golden pollen mingles with that of solemn green leaves.
A beam of light breaks through the stained glass windows illuminating this olfactory tumult of feelings, shifting from humility to jubilation.
A divine call.
When I visited the site in Paris, which was a lovely experience, we did sample this perfume among others and were quite impressed. Something weird happened in America, maybe the Axe Body Spray takeover, where at least those with a working class upbringing thumbed our noses at such frivolous things but now I have come to appreciate fragrance a bit more.
Funny enough, we actually randomly had dinner with the founder of a perfume shop who was visiting Paris with his wife and it was fascinating to learn a bit about the industry.
Sounds like a product description out of the J. Peterman catalog.
Lorca wrote here, Picasso sketched here, Buñuel and Dali schemed to shock the world here. Even today, you'll still find ideas hanging in the air at Madrid's Cafe Gijon-along with the pungent smoke of Ducados.
Stir sugar into your cortado and watch the room unfold in the nearest mirror. There are so many, reflecting into each other, you can see everything from one spot.
Are those young ladies debating García Márquez? It's perfectly acceptable to stroll over and get involved. All it takes is confidence-and this jacket. Spanish Café Linen Blazer.
Huh. Sounds like a pleasant smell, but not something I'd want as a perfume.
The way I see it, perfumes should replace your scent. They should complement it. They should go together like wine and food.
Axe Body Spray covers your natural scent -- the entire marketing is "You smell bad so you should smell like something else". That's how we've marketed fragrance in the US since forever. Somebody finally figured out that we could sell it to boys as well as to adult women.
Absolutely. What the scent smells like in the bottle, or on a wafting stick, or on the forearm of the sales assistant letting you sniff like you're Clark Griswald does not tell you how it will smell on yourself or the person you are buying it for. I've spent quite a bit of time around "scents", and there have been several that I was unsure about until after trying them on for a bit.
Another complicating factor: perfumes change over time. There are at least three layers of notes in any decent perfume. You might not like the way it smells for the first few minutes, and then when the top notes fade, you like what's left.
(Honestly, I sometimes think those top notes are there just to get you to buy them in the store.)
Oh, perfumes are a great hobby. If you're in SF or LA, definitely hit up one of the boutique perfume shops (Scent Bar and Ministry of Scent).
There are also bunch of sellers who package samples (aka "decants" - buy a 100mL, split it into smaller bottles). I found that 1-2mL is plenty to get an idea. I've had great experience with LuckyScent (mentioned in the article), Surrender to Chance, as well as random reddit swaps and highly rated Ebay sellers.
The perfume scene is super wide and diverse, and I found that although there are general trends, it's hard to even know all the popular brands, and everyone's nose is unique. Skip stuff like Aventus and Sauvage and buy some discovery sets (surrender to chance puts together some good ones).
There is definitely a spectrum between "wearable crowd-pleaser" and "avant-garde storytelling" - Afrika-Olifan comes to mind - love it for the creativity and execution, but it would be rude to go outside wearing it. There's also some storytelling - Black March, for example, starts off with grassy fresh earth after a rain, then turns into flowers.
The counties are administrative and there are bureaucrats who lead the county, but they are not titled, noble Counts and Countesses.
In Sweden, we also have administrative regions translated as counties, which are lead by someone I'd directly translate as "county chief" (as in "chief over this tribe") but they're anonymous bureaucrats a normal person wouldn't know about. (The common translation is the less exciting "governor".)
Not even true for the UK, which does have geographic peerages but they're not really linked to the county boundaries any more.
For some reason, the UK doesn't issue the title of "count", only "viscount". "Marquis" is linked etymologically to "marches", an old type of land allocation boundaries, but again not in practice.
Not that rare in California. Off the top of my head: Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Diego, San Bernardino, and Alameda counties all have cities of the same name. Seems rare in most other states though.
It is rare in most states, I believe. It is very common in South Carolina (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_South_Caro...), which has counties named things like "Greenville" and "Spartanburg" after their largest cities - it feels to me like those should be "Green" and "Spartan". And then there are states like Georgia where there are counties, and cities with the same name that are in different counties, because the county-namers and the city-namers were pulling their names from the same pool of well-known people but weren't talking to each other.
Also, in California: San Luis Obispo, Riverside, Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Barbara.
SF city and county are actually the same legal entity, not just the same land. It's officially called the City and County of San Francisco, and it's just as unusual as it sounds. The mayor also has the powers of a county executive with both a sheriff's department (county police to run the jails) and police department (city law enforcement) reporting to him; the city government runs elections like other counties; the Board of Supervisors - which is the typical county legislative structure - also serves as city council. (Denver, Colorado works the same way, I think.)
When people outside of LA say "Los Angeles", they're almost always referring to the county. The city of LA is actually quite small.
For "San Diego", it's precisely the opposite - a giant portion of San Diego County is comprised of the city of San Diego, and they're almost always just referring to the city.
And for "San Francisco," the city and the county are basically the same entity and thus have the same borders.
My partner complains that the economics of scent mean your signature smell can be deleted on a whim. She fell in love with a very unlikely scent, got 10 years, it's gone. It's actually happened twice to her, and these are not marginal brands either, Cacharel and Beckham, who (probably because they are ruthless with otherwise underperforming product) prune their range.
If the containers were uniform, it could be a robot production line and small runs wouldn't be an issue given the inputs are somewhat universal.
It's paint blending for the nose.
"War paint" (2003) by Liny Woodhead about Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden is a fascinating read. It was a book before a stage production.
It's not only economics but also the ever-tightening IFRA rules that command the maximum content or even outright banning of various fragrance ingredients to reduce allergies or other health issues.
armani lui has been my "signature scent" since i've turned 18 in 1999 (give or take) and those bastards just randomly changed the formula at some point. i still use it, it's still my fav scent by a mile but it's not what i used to smell like and it makes me sad that it was just gone and i can never get it back
It has been said of all the senses, scent, a sense of smell is amongst the last to go, possibly because it's amongst the first to make bindings in the brain, with a remarkably direct path. Old people with aphasia and dementia can be brought into quite alert states with smells from their past like horse manure, or old perfumes.
Perfumiers change recipes because CITES don't allow use of some animal derived products, and because of price, and changing health concerns with chemicals.
Primo Levi writes of post war searches for snake shit, which contains a urea concentrate which makes lipstick bind to the skin. Circus snake handlers laugh at him because it's sold on contract to the big perfume houses, not to random chemists.
There’s Chinese analytical labs which identify the fragrance molecules in a perfume. You just have to send them a sample. The caveat is if the perfume used natural oils or captive materials; then the lab won’t be able to identify everything. There are also leaks of formulas that are circulated in perfumery circles; many famous perfumes are already known. Anyway you can then purchase the individual materials and recreate the perfume.
Seriously, sometimes I read stuff on here and it resonates a bit too much. Like this one, I've been playing 'just the tip' with buying some avant garde perfumes for ages (yes I would love to smell like a specific graveyard in Idaho did in the 1970s).
Perfumery is much maligned and misunderstood. It is, ultimately, an art form, a kind of human expression like music or painting, that is rarely appreciated as such. Many would happily see it banned, knowing nothing about it other than that some people wear too much. That'd be like banning music because your neighbor's TV is too loud.
Lucky Scent (mentioned in this article) has a boutique in LA. If you're nearby, you can go in and sample to your heart's content. Perfume boutiques are unfortunately rare but most large cities will have something and they're accessible and inviting in my experience. There really is a _lot_ more out there than what a Sephora or Macy's will ever show you.
Nice article. He correctly notes that vocabulary for describing odors is limited for most so reviews and descriptions trend quite "purple" and abstract. There is a vocabulary, though, but it'd take some time spent with some books and a perfume organ to make progress on that front.
I belong to the ban perfume group. I am allergic to most of them, it feels like someone is hitting me from inside my sinuses. And it is not because someone wears to much or smell to intensely either. Sometimes I barely smell it but it feels equally violently bad.
I wish I knew what is so irritating in so many perfume so I could militate to have that substance banned instead of being in the no perfume militia!
For me at least, most of the other debilitating chemicals appear in predictable and semi-avoidable contexts.
Traffic chemicals appear strongest on busy motorways with stagnant air, where people outside of cars don't spend much time.
Flower chemicals can cause problems but usually dissipate within 10 feet or so.
Fresh rain primarily eliminates free-floating chemical attacks and does not cause one itself.
Cooking is self-regulating because the person actively triggering the chemical emission is exposed much more strongly than people elsewhere even in the same room.
Grass can only be crudely avoided or mitigated during the seasons where it's problematic. (Thank God for COVID bringing awareness that masks make it physically easier to breathe.)
But perfume? You never know when you'll run across a person who chooses to be a targeted, walking violation of the Hague Convention. There's no way to mitigate this other than avoiding people entirely (which some people do choose to do, but which has negative side effects).
That said, in recent years I find the perfume from cleaning supplies or laundry supplies to be more problematic than the perfume from people.
It's never about the smell. There are many unpleasant scents out there that do not count as a chemical attack. And when specific flowers count as a chemical attack, their scent is still pleasant (and proportional).
I'm aware of petrichor existing. I'm not aware of it ever effecting a chemical attack the way perfumes do.
My point is: the chemical-attack portion of perfumes can far exceed the scent component. So even a modest application that most people can't even smell still counts as a targeted assault against some of us.
If I have my inhaler at hand, that feels like pulling knives out of my lungs - better than before, but the wound remains. But we don't expect people to get much work done if they've been stabbed today.
Sounds pretty messed up, from memory there are some new meds for allergic/immune things, I remember looking at one for my eczema but its not that severe so the sid-eeffects weren't worth
I’ve had allergic reactions to perfume twice in my life, years apart. Both times it became very difficult to breathe, like an asthma attack. Both times it was very clear exactly which person’s perfume was triggering it. Both times it resolved within a few minutes of leaving the room to get some fresh air. The first time I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, so I went back in and experienced the exact same thing twice more before giving up. The second time I was wiser.
It would be extremely annoying if that was a regular occurrence. Luckily I only seem to be sensitive to something rarely used.
As a perfume fan, I mostly wear perfumes if I'm staying outside or at home, less so if I'm inside with other people because it can be annoying. Not only this, but lately influences have "popularized" perfumes and we see much heavier perfumes being advertised. It can truly be annoying or nauseating to have someone with a "perfume aura" so strong that irradites around him/her
"Reverse the problem" is severely overstated. Admittedly it can be useful for people with potentially-fatal allergies, but otherwise it's often the equivalent of building scar tissue.
Living in a tropical country, I found myself with increasingly bad allergy symptoms. I went to a doc and had an allergy panel done that clearly showed I was allergic to a weed that flowers all year around (boo). They gave me a nasal spray steroid that, to my utter astonishment, quickly and permanently cured the allergy, with zero side effects.
I know I was lucky, but the point is that yes, it is sometimes possible to "reverse the problem".
My wife and at least one of my children are sensitive to perfume. They get headaches, at a minimum.
A bit east of Elkhart Indiana, there's a place that claims to sell "natural perfume". Does anyone who is perfume-sensitive have any experience with that? Is it possible that the chemicals used in "non natural perfume" are at the root of the sensitivity? (I haven't dared to test it on my wife, so I'd be interested in any reports.)
It's unlikely "natural" has anything to do with it. Compounds that occur naturally are often synthesized, but it's the same molecule as found in nature. (example: vanillin) There are some scent molecules that are totally new and not found in nature outside of our production, but "naturally occurring" is a broad category that can include all sort of things individuals are likely to be sensitive to even after removing all the "natural" chemicals that are actual poison.
Plenty of essential oils (what tends to be used in these) are aggressively irritating unless diluted to people without allergies. Even when diluted, I am allergic to some, and my wife is allergic to others, though we get different symptoms than "unnatural" perfumes.
Instead of migraines, it's closer to hay fever type allergies.
Most of them but not all of them. Dove and even Irish spring us ok (not that it smell great) however my wife had to throw away many fancier soaps she received from a cosmetics sampler subscription.
Essential Oils like fir needles, black spruce, orange, rosemary... don't affect me, I even like them (but I find lavender repulsive but it's not hurtful).
And I don't feel like going to an allergy specialist for something as superficial as this is a good use of my time since my coworker, friends and family are not into perfume.
Just here to commisserate and help the others who don't realize we exist that we do. Every time in my life I've had to lodge a complaint to an HR department, teacher, or whoever controls some indoor space to tell the other occupants that their scents can be quite irritating to others, I've felt terrible about it, like I'm deficient as a human and missing out on something others take great joy in.
But oh well. It does happen. I don't know what it is. It's not all scents, and sometimes it is things that don't have much of a scent at all. But I will never use any perfume, any product with scent added, and aerosolized anything at all is always a minefield. Even letting my wife clean can be hazardous, because whereas I am always careful to hold the spray bottle close to the surface, she'll shoot it into broad air, where it gets into my sinuses and gives me a massive headache for the next two hours.
I can't identify what it is that does it, but I can at least enumerate:
* Any and every perfume I have ever encountered, regardless of the specific scent.
* Any and every essential oil I have ever encountered.
* Any aerosol.
* Pump-sprayed solvents, including pure isopropyl alcohol diluted in water.
What doesn't irritate me:
* Food of any kind.
* Shit and untreated sewage.
* Rotting flesh.
Each of these may still smell quite terrible, even to the point that I have to flee like any other person with working scent receptors, but it doesn't feel like someone poured acid into my brain.
Iffy:
* Plants. I guess these just depend on whether I'm allergic to their specific pollen or not, but the scents themselves are not irritating in the same way.
If anyone else can find a pattern here, well, I'd be thankful.
I think we should engineer the perfume equivalent of a headphone: something plugged directly into the nostrils so that the smell doesn't offend too many people.
> Many would happily see it banned, knowing nothing about it other than that some people wear too much. That'd be like banning music because your neighbor's TV is too loud.
Eh, we get pretty angry about people going around with music in public spaces (and tend to require licensing for it) and I think we're right to.
While (human) vision is 3 colors, reviews of visual arts obviously can't just describe the colors of the thing. It also has shape, depth, style, etc.
Food reviewers don't note the levels of salt, sour, etc. They describe flavors and textures and parings.
But also, I don't buy that taste is just the composition of 5 components. This sounds like a reference to that diagram of the tongue we've all seen. It's as complex as scent is. There's no way you can define the taste of cinnamon by specifying some sort of 5-tuple.
I believe he is correct. The misunderstanding is from the old chart that showed certain tastes were only detected by certain parts of the tongue.
It’s still true that we can only taste salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. All other flavor complexities come from scent simultaneously giving us information. It’s why everything tastes so boring when you have a head cold.
Think about this, suppose you're on a Zoom call and you want a person on the other side of the call to match a color that you're seeing. You can say "make it more blue", "make it brighter", "shinier", etc.
You can get pretty close to what you're seeing this way.
With this discussion about perfumes, seems like an appropriate place to offer a PSA about phthalates. Perfumes often contain phthalates, which are endocrine disruptors. Exposure can be very harmful to a developing fetus and young children. It can create problems for adults too.
Phthalates are pervasive too in soaps and shampoos, where it's hidden within the ambiguous "fragrance" item.
There are phthalate-free options for soap and shampoo, and a quick google search indicates the perfume industry is starting to offer more products without phthalates. Phthalates aren't the only nasty chemical used for scents. Parabens are another, and maybe more I'm unaware of.
1. There are brands offering 100% natural perfumes.
2. I don't think it's reasonable to just say "phthalates, which are endocrine disruptors". Which ones exactly, how much? IFRA says diethylphthalate is safe to use in fragrances[0], where is the research showing otherwise?
Fragrantica is one of those few websites I'd say is 110% correct. Not only does it confirm my experiences, it actually enlightens.
I was perplexed at why this coconut perfume doesn't smell very much like coconut - turns out it was being overwhelmed by vanilla scent. I have this oud perfume, which has the oud smell, but also something... rosy? But not rose. Searched Fragrantica and turns out it's a different kind of rose smell (and the complaints about it overwhelming the oud and being too feminine clicked too). It somehow gets the length of time and range of the perfume almost perfectly too.
Considering how expensive a few drops of perfume are, I just love the site.
I'll have to disagree with Gwern on the use of Fragrantica here - you don't read the comments. The comments are there to feed the AI summarizer. Then people democratically vote on which comments were most accurate. Fragrantica has one of the best usage of AI+rating algorithms I've ever seen; it just combines all kinds of weird stuff and spits out something incredibly accurate. Smell is so difficult to describe in words.
> offers $5 samplers of any perfume. A sampler bottle is actually 10-20 doses.
That site sells decants or maybe samples for 4 for a 0.7ml (saw one example). Now I know one doesn’t need a bucket in one go but only way that 0.7ml is going to last 10-20 doses is if one opens the cap (or presses the atomiser) and then closes it before anything actually comes out and the person just assumes they “took it all in” :)
I am saying this someone who regularly buys 1.5-2ml samples and 4-5ml decants.
@gwern, did you mess up your inflation calculation here?
> I couldn’t get all the ones Nguyen highlighted from LuckyScent and some sampler packs were sold out, but I settled for 39 samples total on 8 February 2021. (Which cost $153 [2021; $190 in 2025], so amortizing to $3.90 [2011; $6.03 in 2025] each.) At that point I felt I had gone a bit overboard, so I didn’t do an additional order from CB I Hate Perfume, which Nguyen praises for doing the most interesting ‘abstract’ perfumes, to pick up ones that LuckyScent didn’t have in stock.
I spend a lot of time in Seoul and there's an entire street in the Sinsa neighborhood dedicated to perfumes and scents. A lot of experimental work going on, it's kind of fun. Worth a try if you come by.
For anyone looking to save money, don't get the brand name perfumes.
Instead, get something from a good clone house. They have special equipment to analyse the ingredients of the branded perfumes and end up making exactly the same thing.
Stay away from lower quality copies that aren't made by clone houses (i.e random "inspired by" stuff from Amazon).
They are not making exactly the same thing. That might be their marketing claim, but it is false. Unles they somehow discovered a way to do cheap low-volume synthesis of arbitrary organic molecules, which alone would probably get them a Nobel or two, and the analysis claim is also only loosely based on reality.
The only reason perfume manufacturers are willing to pay more than gold price (in weight) for some ingredients is exactly that they can't be economically synthesized.
There are tons of Youtube channels and Reddit threads dedicated to clones.
My protocol is, if the originals sell at outrageous prices, I go for clones. They are good enough for me.
I think Sasha Chapin's perfume reviews were my gateway into this wonderful world! I got Ganymede from his recommendation (think it was a tweet saying his last two taxi drivers asked him what he was wearing), and I'm not sure I've received more compliments for anything in my life. He's got good taste!
When I buy perfumes I fell I'm throwing money at a tiny bottle of alcohol, and when I'm wearing a perfume most of the times I feel I'm wearing simultaneously tuxedo, baseball hat, and high heel shoes.
This must have been like 15 years ago, but I vaguely remember someone making a perfume that smelled like the scent you get when you open up the box of a new iPhone or MacBook.
It’s a distinct smell and I’m not really sure if it’s purely from the electronics or if it comes from the papers inside the box too.
I used to try and buy a lot of perfumes some years ago. Unfortunately I concluded that it isn't really worth it since beyond some classics (Fahrenheit , terre d Hermes, declaration, narcisso for him, dior home, ysl m7, armani code, zv this is him, ck eternity, chanel egoiste platinum and of course aventus) there aren't many truly unique scents. Most perfumes try to copy another existing, mass appealing one.
Also male perfume nowadays is either too weak or too sweet (or too expensive if you go the niche route). So either I'll wear a perfume that will smell for 30 minutes and nobody will notice or I'll bite the bullet and wear a club perfume that will suffocate people (and not even smell good).
Have tried a bunch of Montale and mancera. Yes they have some unique perfumes, and some are potent. Unfortunately didn't find anything that it clicked to me.
Yeah the sweetness is a real issue but there are a lot of niche fragrances that don't follow these trends. And it's still possible to find powerfull stuff too, doesn't have to be that expensive.
There is lots of interesting brands that don't go for mass appeal, for example Pineward.
Yes what i had written is mainly true for designer perfumes not niche. However I'm not very much into the niche fragrances because of sampling difficulty and prices.
I like instances of any fragrance really, as long as it doesn't "project". Basically, if someone comes close they catch it but otherwise it doesn't throw the smell very far. Examples: khus,sandalwood,some lemongrass perfumes, and iris.
I've got a question since I know nothing about perfume, but overtime do you just acclimatise to the scent? So that in the end it's like it's not really there?
At least I've noticed this with listening to music, personally speaking.
Sometimes you get nose-blind to the scent but IMO that's not a good thing, because it means it contains something too strong.
But more interesting to me is the effect that your perception of the scent will change, like it's different to hear a piece of music the first time and later. You can find new nuances, new depth, start to like it more, or less.
If you only smell it after you've sprayed it on yourself, but later on your nose doesn't send you pings that it's present, then that's a perfect perfume, since your nose can get used to it.
If you are always reminded by your nose that the smell is present, then... it's subpar. But YMMV. I hate perfumes that are so strong that you literally leave a trail behind you and you can smell it all the time on yourself... and others will carry it on themselves if they spend 15 minutes with you in a room :D.
When you spray these on yourself you become a pollen bearer. It's like your perfume has a social life of its own - it sticks with everyone who gets too close to you.
That's why perfume reviews are total nonsense. You go, get 15 samples and try them on yourself one by one (right after a shower, just sprinkle it on your chest).
The high end ones are purer in ingredients, but the mainstream are just the cheapest combination of chemicals you are putting on your skin/breathing in.
This is the weirdest thing to see here. However, if you want to fix nose-blindness, just smell into coffee beans. Most perfumeries have a glass of coffee beans.
Site looks good, I don’t think using ai images for the notes is a good idea though. It lowers the quality of a good site, and the girlies (a gender neutral concept for people who tend to use these sites) do not tend to like AI.
I know you’re not affiliated but maybe someone who is will read it. Thanks for the rec!
Sadly it got too popular and now the ratings and reviews are often brigaded and every one of the list of most popular perfumes is pretty bad. Still useful as a reference, of course, but the ratings must be taken with a spoonful of salt.
The problem with sampling when you're out-and-about is that you get nose-blindness, even if you use the coffee shakers they give you to clear your head.
I don't know if it's still a good route, but I used to be able to buy sacks of random perfume sampler bottles from eBay sellers for peanuts and then I could try a couple every day and note down which ones I liked or not.
The book on which it is based is well worth reading too… the story “one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages…”
I can't stand perfume, it makes my skin crawl. Literally when someone is dowsed in the stuff, you can feel the wave of exploding microparticles in mini chemical reactions as they walk passed you. In my "unpopular opinion" perfumes should be banned.
Scent sensitivity is a real, and ADA protected, disability. Why do I have to have an asthma attack or a migraine because someone has to express themselves through chemical warfare? Perfumes are as bad for people's health as second hand smoke, and one in twenty or so people everywhere feel just like I do.
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1) Internet commentary is generally pretty low quality, but perfume nerds seem categorically to all be the most interesting person you would ever invite to a party: https://basenotes.com/fragrances/no-5-by-chanel.10210628
every single comment on that website is amazing.
2) I hate perfume. I met an avant garde perfumist called Christopher Brosius (label: "I hate perfume") and waited 20 years to buy his samples. They are AMAZING. So approachable. Everyone who has let me dab with his fragrances has been blown away. "In the library" smells like old books. "Wild hunt" has rotten leaves as an ingredient. "Walking on air" smells like fresh cut grass. I hate perfume but I am obsessed with his smells: https://www.cbihateperfume.com/
I know we are used to people online having the wildest disagreement because of contrarianism or something, but in this case, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation:
You know we have three different types (sometimes four) of color sensors in our eyes? And that people who miss one or several of them are "colorblind" and fail tests like the Ishihara Test?
Well, human noses have hundreds of possible olfactory receptors, and everyone of us only has a subset of these, which means we are all "smellblind" one way or another.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10824/
Each one of us smells perfumes differently. The only think that we can agree on is a shared association or experience like the smell of a standard object (e.g. a road, asphalt) or of a common plant (flower or food).
Also smell is very tightly connected to memories and this adds more complexity. For example I like perfumes that use the notes of gasoline and some solvents because I liked to play around my grandfathers garage where he stored such stuff. Other people might have negative memories associated with these aromas and will perceive them accordingly.
Diesel and Camel cigarettes, ditto: I'm instantly an 8yo beside my grandpa in overalls.
Most people would disdain that ... perfume.
A great example of this is a scent I really like--Santal 33.
The way everything mixes together, there's a dill pickle overtone that some people are really receptive to. I can smell it if I actively think about dill, but it's not the first thing I notice. Others seem to respond to it like a jar of pickle juice.
https://basenotes.com/fragrances/santal-33-by-le-labo.261328...
I'm definitely one of those people. The first time I smelled it on someone I thought they were sick, it was sour just like pickle vinegar. Not overly dissimilar to a sour sweat smell.
I couldn't believe it when I found out it was a high end fragrance people would wear...willingly.
I am just trying to figure out if they are the bigger nerds or if we as commenters on the quality of their nerdy commentary is the nerdier group.
As we are doing computers, by default we must be the nerdier group.
Computer geeks : nerds :: mathematicians : scientists ?
Meta-commentary always leans nerdier.
There are a few that I absolutely enjoy the smell of, but I have super bad allergies and migraines so I'm usually anti perfumes. It doesn't help that a lot of people wear far too much in public when a lil dab will do ya.
Apparently I'm a super smeller (always the first to detect gas leaks, food that's off, know the brand of shampoo a person uses if I'm 200ft down wind, know if you use scented dish soap to clean the bowl you used to make cookies in when I eat the cookie). And I just think the idea that adding smells to the world is absolutely insane. Can I beam my favourite colours directly into your eyes with a laser from across the room? What if I know you like that colour too?
I'm a perfume fan and fragrance commentary manages to be one of the most spectacular thing on the internet. You might find comments being like "smells like cat piss" next to another comment of someone who maybe dips his feet in perfumery and goes like "oh yeah it's clear they used some new musc, the transparent ones, and not the old ones that would have been more cozy"
The first perfume on https://www.cbihateperfume.com/ is "At the Beach 1966".
This was a plot line for Seinfeld (Kramer invents it then Calvin Klein steals his idea).
Those reviews of No 5 reminded me of a fantastic video about the (simplified) history of Coco Chanel [1] that I loved but haven't watched in years.
The simplicity of design and the pace make it timeless, despite the fact that it was produced 11 years ago.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G88zqPxJ00
Fun fact: Coco Chanel was a Nazi spy
I feel like most people know this, along with the follow-up that the company Chanel was co-founded with a Jewish businessman who was able to transfer ownership to a Christian friend and transfer it back after the war with Chanel removed.
Joke's on you: I just learned something!
This is fascinating, I binge read a lot of that website, and might try to buy some! Any recommendations? I guess the ones you already listed?
Your descriptions of perfume sound like someone who appreciates perfume. I don't think you hate perfume.
Perfume in general is very approachable, and most perfume one can find easily is popular and accessible. You just walk into a drug store and try some for free. The process is entirely self-directed and manual. Often, not even the security guard will look.
Thx; ordered a few samples from them.
One of the coolest perfumes I’ve come across is Relique d’Amour by Oriza Legrand https://www.orizaparfums.com/en/eaux-de-parfums/20-relique-d...
Here’s the description:
When I visited the site in Paris, which was a lovely experience, we did sample this perfume among others and were quite impressed. Something weird happened in America, maybe the Axe Body Spray takeover, where at least those with a working class upbringing thumbed our noses at such frivolous things but now I have come to appreciate fragrance a bit more.Funny enough, we actually randomly had dinner with the founder of a perfume shop who was visiting Paris with his wife and it was fascinating to learn a bit about the industry.
Sounds like a product description out of the J. Peterman catalog.
Interesting! Good to see they have a sampler pack one can buy for a reasonable [1] price.
https://www.orizaparfums.com/en/ultimateproduct/170/coffret-...
[1] reasonable within the context of their prices... YMMV.
Thx; ordered 6 somewhat arbitrarily; not omitting the OP's one. Came out to 60 Eur with shipping to USA.
Same[0] except only EUR25 because free shipping to the UK.
[0] Villa Lympia, L'Eau de Corse, La Fleur d'Oranger, Relique d'Amour (obviously), Jardins d'Armide and Vétiver Royal Bourbon.
I’d be curious to read your thoughts. I quite enjoyed the fragrances and it’s fun to see if others do too, especially for such an obscure shop.
If you purchase I’ll be curious about your thoughts. I have no affiliation with the shop.
Something funny I realized after getting into perfume samples is that Axe scents are crude facsimiles of famous perfumes.
This is interesting - do you have something that provides an approximate matchup?
Huh. Sounds like a pleasant smell, but not something I'd want as a perfume.
The way I see it, perfumes should replace your scent. They should complement it. They should go together like wine and food.
Axe Body Spray covers your natural scent -- the entire marketing is "You smell bad so you should smell like something else". That's how we've marketed fragrance in the US since forever. Somebody finally figured out that we could sell it to boys as well as to adult women.
(you probably meant should not replace your scent)
Whoops. Thank you.
Absolutely. What the scent smells like in the bottle, or on a wafting stick, or on the forearm of the sales assistant letting you sniff like you're Clark Griswald does not tell you how it will smell on yourself or the person you are buying it for. I've spent quite a bit of time around "scents", and there have been several that I was unsure about until after trying them on for a bit.
Another complicating factor: perfumes change over time. There are at least three layers of notes in any decent perfume. You might not like the way it smells for the first few minutes, and then when the top notes fade, you like what's left.
(Honestly, I sometimes think those top notes are there just to get you to buy them in the store.)
Yes for this specific perfume, that was my impression as well. Not something I’d want to wear, but fascinating and accurate nonetheless.
Oh, perfumes are a great hobby. If you're in SF or LA, definitely hit up one of the boutique perfume shops (Scent Bar and Ministry of Scent).
There are also bunch of sellers who package samples (aka "decants" - buy a 100mL, split it into smaller bottles). I found that 1-2mL is plenty to get an idea. I've had great experience with LuckyScent (mentioned in the article), Surrender to Chance, as well as random reddit swaps and highly rated Ebay sellers.
The perfume scene is super wide and diverse, and I found that although there are general trends, it's hard to even know all the popular brands, and everyone's nose is unique. Skip stuff like Aventus and Sauvage and buy some discovery sets (surrender to chance puts together some good ones).
There is definitely a spectrum between "wearable crowd-pleaser" and "avant-garde storytelling" - Afrika-Olifan comes to mind - love it for the creativity and execution, but it would be rude to go outside wearing it. There's also some storytelling - Black March, for example, starts off with grassy fresh earth after a rain, then turns into flowers.
I just had to google this!
For those not in America, SF and LA are counties in the united states of america.
Almost. Cities, not counties. San Francisco and Los Angeles specifically. Counties encompass multiple cities.
They're actually both. Pretty rare but LA and SF exist as both city and county level entities.
I’m curious, being a county does that also imply that a Count of LA exists? And the same for each county in the USA?
The counties are administrative and there are bureaucrats who lead the county, but they are not titled, noble Counts and Countesses.
In Sweden, we also have administrative regions translated as counties, which are lead by someone I'd directly translate as "county chief" (as in "chief over this tribe") but they're anonymous bureaucrats a normal person wouldn't know about. (The common translation is the less exciting "governor".)
Not even true for the UK, which does have geographic peerages but they're not really linked to the county boundaries any more.
For some reason, the UK doesn't issue the title of "count", only "viscount". "Marquis" is linked etymologically to "marches", an old type of land allocation boundaries, but again not in practice.
The UK version of "count" is "earl".
No. To quote Hank Hill, we fought an entire war with England over that.
Not that rare in California. Off the top of my head: Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Diego, San Bernardino, and Alameda counties all have cities of the same name. Seems rare in most other states though.
It is rare in most states, I believe. It is very common in South Carolina (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_South_Caro...), which has counties named things like "Greenville" and "Spartanburg" after their largest cities - it feels to me like those should be "Green" and "Spartan". And then there are states like Georgia where there are counties, and cities with the same name that are in different counties, because the county-namers and the city-namers were pulling their names from the same pool of well-known people but weren't talking to each other.
Also, in California: San Luis Obispo, Riverside, Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Barbara.
Don’t forget Orange!
SF’s city and county are actually both the same land. In the other cases, the counties are usually larger (at least in California).
SF city and county are actually the same legal entity, not just the same land. It's officially called the City and County of San Francisco, and it's just as unusual as it sounds. The mayor also has the powers of a county executive with both a sheriff's department (county police to run the jails) and police department (city law enforcement) reporting to him; the city government runs elections like other counties; the Board of Supervisors - which is the typical county legislative structure - also serves as city council. (Denver, Colorado works the same way, I think.)
Philadelphia is another example.
Except NYC which encompasses multiple counties.
Right, each county is coextensive with one borough: Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Bronx, New York (Manhattan), and Richmond (Staten Island).
Eh there's more nuance.
When people outside of LA say "Los Angeles", they're almost always referring to the county. The city of LA is actually quite small.
For "San Diego", it's precisely the opposite - a giant portion of San Diego County is comprised of the city of San Diego, and they're almost always just referring to the city.
And for "San Francisco," the city and the county are basically the same entity and thus have the same borders.
"but it would be rude to go outside wearing it"
Why?
Looking at the notes, there is a strong animalic component - to many people it will smell like pee or worse.
My partner complains that the economics of scent mean your signature smell can be deleted on a whim. She fell in love with a very unlikely scent, got 10 years, it's gone. It's actually happened twice to her, and these are not marginal brands either, Cacharel and Beckham, who (probably because they are ruthless with otherwise underperforming product) prune their range.
If the containers were uniform, it could be a robot production line and small runs wouldn't be an issue given the inputs are somewhat universal.
It's paint blending for the nose.
"War paint" (2003) by Liny Woodhead about Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden is a fascinating read. It was a book before a stage production.
It's not only economics but also the ever-tightening IFRA rules that command the maximum content or even outright banning of various fragrance ingredients to reduce allergies or other health issues.
indeed
armani lui has been my "signature scent" since i've turned 18 in 1999 (give or take) and those bastards just randomly changed the formula at some point. i still use it, it's still my fav scent by a mile but it's not what i used to smell like and it makes me sad that it was just gone and i can never get it back
Scents, like people and memories, are impermanent.
It's a specific mix of certain chemicals, why is that impermanent?
It's a specific mix of components, each bearing important and usually volatile combinations of chemicals.
There's a scientific formula for artificial banana flavor, but none for bananas, by analogy.
And like bananas, the product is volatile. An unsealed 50yo bottle of Chanel No. 5 does not smell like it did when bottled.
Probably your sense of smell changes over time. Same with people entering/leaving your life and your memories being malleable.
It has been said of all the senses, scent, a sense of smell is amongst the last to go, possibly because it's amongst the first to make bindings in the brain, with a remarkably direct path. Old people with aphasia and dementia can be brought into quite alert states with smells from their past like horse manure, or old perfumes.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9243450/
Perfumiers change recipes because CITES don't allow use of some animal derived products, and because of price, and changing health concerns with chemicals.
https://ifrafragrance.org/initiatives-positions/innovation-s...
Primo Levi writes of post war searches for snake shit, which contains a urea concentrate which makes lipstick bind to the skin. Circus snake handlers laugh at him because it's sold on contract to the big perfume houses, not to random chemists.
The Periodic Table https://share.google/rOmXYeiScZwBPCE40
There’s Chinese analytical labs which identify the fragrance molecules in a perfume. You just have to send them a sample. The caveat is if the perfume used natural oils or captive materials; then the lab won’t be able to identify everything. There are also leaks of formulas that are circulated in perfumery circles; many famous perfumes are already known. Anyway you can then purchase the individual materials and recreate the perfume.
Recipes for perfumes are a closely held trade secret, and not even chromatography is enough to get it right without an expert perfumer on board.
That’s unfortunately true for a lot of products.
Sometimes this website feels like Adderall is somehow being directly rendered into Source Serif type, displayed through the browser.
Modafinil, not Adderall.
Ah, modafinil. Best sleep I’ve ever had in my entire life.
Seriously, sometimes I read stuff on here and it resonates a bit too much. Like this one, I've been playing 'just the tip' with buying some avant garde perfumes for ages (yes I would love to smell like a specific graveyard in Idaho did in the 1970s).
I don't know if everyone else has ADHD or what.
I was specifically recognizing the writings of Gwern, not HN in general. But yes.
I hate HN but i can't let it go. I can't be the only one.
Perfumery is much maligned and misunderstood. It is, ultimately, an art form, a kind of human expression like music or painting, that is rarely appreciated as such. Many would happily see it banned, knowing nothing about it other than that some people wear too much. That'd be like banning music because your neighbor's TV is too loud.
Lucky Scent (mentioned in this article) has a boutique in LA. If you're nearby, you can go in and sample to your heart's content. Perfume boutiques are unfortunately rare but most large cities will have something and they're accessible and inviting in my experience. There really is a _lot_ more out there than what a Sephora or Macy's will ever show you.
Nice article. He correctly notes that vocabulary for describing odors is limited for most so reviews and descriptions trend quite "purple" and abstract. There is a vocabulary, though, but it'd take some time spent with some books and a perfume organ to make progress on that front.
I belong to the ban perfume group. I am allergic to most of them, it feels like someone is hitting me from inside my sinuses. And it is not because someone wears to much or smell to intensely either. Sometimes I barely smell it but it feels equally violently bad.
I wish I knew what is so irritating in so many perfume so I could militate to have that substance banned instead of being in the no perfume militia!
> And it is not because someone wears to much or smell to intensely either. Sometimes I barely smell it but it feels equally violently bad.
I don't understand how this is distinguishable from random smells going about life, like traffic, fresh rain, flowers, cooking, grass, etc.
For me at least, most of the other debilitating chemicals appear in predictable and semi-avoidable contexts.
Traffic chemicals appear strongest on busy motorways with stagnant air, where people outside of cars don't spend much time.
Flower chemicals can cause problems but usually dissipate within 10 feet or so.
Fresh rain primarily eliminates free-floating chemical attacks and does not cause one itself.
Cooking is self-regulating because the person actively triggering the chemical emission is exposed much more strongly than people elsewhere even in the same room.
Grass can only be crudely avoided or mitigated during the seasons where it's problematic. (Thank God for COVID bringing awareness that masks make it physically easier to breathe.)
But perfume? You never know when you'll run across a person who chooses to be a targeted, walking violation of the Hague Convention. There's no way to mitigate this other than avoiding people entirely (which some people do choose to do, but which has negative side effects).
That said, in recent years I find the perfume from cleaning supplies or laundry supplies to be more problematic than the perfume from people.
this all contradicts this part
> not because someone wears to much or smell to intensely
a normal perfume/cologne wearer is not going to smell 10 feet away
also
> Fresh rain primarily eliminates free-floating chemical attacks and does not cause one itself.
yes, petrichor
It's never about the smell. There are many unpleasant scents out there that do not count as a chemical attack. And when specific flowers count as a chemical attack, their scent is still pleasant (and proportional).
I'm aware of petrichor existing. I'm not aware of it ever effecting a chemical attack the way perfumes do.
> (and proportional)
again, no one is arguing that people who wear too much perfume are not obnoxious
> a chemical attack
what chemical?
My point is: the chemical-attack portion of perfumes can far exceed the scent component. So even a modest application that most people can't even smell still counts as a targeted assault against some of us.
If I have my inhaler at hand, that feels like pulling knives out of my lungs - better than before, but the wound remains. But we don't expect people to get much work done if they've been stabbed today.
Sounds pretty messed up, from memory there are some new meds for allergic/immune things, I remember looking at one for my eczema but its not that severe so the sid-eeffects weren't worth
I completely agree with everything you said with emphasis on your last three paragraphs.
I’ve had allergic reactions to perfume twice in my life, years apart. Both times it became very difficult to breathe, like an asthma attack. Both times it was very clear exactly which person’s perfume was triggering it. Both times it resolved within a few minutes of leaving the room to get some fresh air. The first time I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, so I went back in and experienced the exact same thing twice more before giving up. The second time I was wiser.
It would be extremely annoying if that was a regular occurrence. Luckily I only seem to be sensitive to something rarely used.
As a perfume fan, I mostly wear perfumes if I'm staying outside or at home, less so if I'm inside with other people because it can be annoying. Not only this, but lately influences have "popularized" perfumes and we see much heavier perfumes being advertised. It can truly be annoying or nauseating to have someone with a "perfume aura" so strong that irradites around him/her
VOC's?
It isn’t, but it seems less necessary, so it’s easier to single it out
You can go to an allergy specialist to not only identify what exactly affects you, but likely also try to reverse the problem.
"Reverse the problem" is severely overstated. Admittedly it can be useful for people with potentially-fatal allergies, but otherwise it's often the equivalent of building scar tissue.
Living in a tropical country, I found myself with increasingly bad allergy symptoms. I went to a doc and had an allergy panel done that clearly showed I was allergic to a weed that flowers all year around (boo). They gave me a nasal spray steroid that, to my utter astonishment, quickly and permanently cured the allergy, with zero side effects.
I know I was lucky, but the point is that yes, it is sometimes possible to "reverse the problem".
My wife and at least one of my children are sensitive to perfume. They get headaches, at a minimum.
A bit east of Elkhart Indiana, there's a place that claims to sell "natural perfume". Does anyone who is perfume-sensitive have any experience with that? Is it possible that the chemicals used in "non natural perfume" are at the root of the sensitivity? (I haven't dared to test it on my wife, so I'd be interested in any reports.)
It's unlikely "natural" has anything to do with it. Compounds that occur naturally are often synthesized, but it's the same molecule as found in nature. (example: vanillin) There are some scent molecules that are totally new and not found in nature outside of our production, but "naturally occurring" is a broad category that can include all sort of things individuals are likely to be sensitive to even after removing all the "natural" chemicals that are actual poison.
Cyanide is probably a better example.
Mmmm, almonds...
Plenty of essential oils (what tends to be used in these) are aggressively irritating unless diluted to people without allergies. Even when diluted, I am allergic to some, and my wife is allergic to others, though we get different symptoms than "unnatural" perfumes.
Instead of migraines, it's closer to hay fever type allergies.
There are several manufacturers of 100% natural perfumes -from the top of my mind, Raer (Berlin), Hiram Green, James Heeley I think too.
That said I think it's unlikely this will be the reason. Another interesting thing to try would be one-note or other simple perfumes (like Pantomime).
Do you get this feeling from scented soaps as well? If not, I wonder if you having a reaction to the alcohol in perfume.
Most of them but not all of them. Dove and even Irish spring us ok (not that it smell great) however my wife had to throw away many fancier soaps she received from a cosmetics sampler subscription.
Essential Oils like fir needles, black spruce, orange, rosemary... don't affect me, I even like them (but I find lavender repulsive but it's not hurtful).
And I don't feel like going to an allergy specialist for something as superficial as this is a good use of my time since my coworker, friends and family are not into perfume.
Just here to commisserate and help the others who don't realize we exist that we do. Every time in my life I've had to lodge a complaint to an HR department, teacher, or whoever controls some indoor space to tell the other occupants that their scents can be quite irritating to others, I've felt terrible about it, like I'm deficient as a human and missing out on something others take great joy in.
But oh well. It does happen. I don't know what it is. It's not all scents, and sometimes it is things that don't have much of a scent at all. But I will never use any perfume, any product with scent added, and aerosolized anything at all is always a minefield. Even letting my wife clean can be hazardous, because whereas I am always careful to hold the spray bottle close to the surface, she'll shoot it into broad air, where it gets into my sinuses and gives me a massive headache for the next two hours.
I can't identify what it is that does it, but I can at least enumerate:
* Any and every perfume I have ever encountered, regardless of the specific scent.
* Any and every essential oil I have ever encountered.
* Any aerosol.
* Pump-sprayed solvents, including pure isopropyl alcohol diluted in water.
What doesn't irritate me:
* Food of any kind.
* Shit and untreated sewage.
* Rotting flesh.
Each of these may still smell quite terrible, even to the point that I have to flee like any other person with working scent receptors, but it doesn't feel like someone poured acid into my brain.
Iffy:
* Plants. I guess these just depend on whether I'm allergic to their specific pollen or not, but the scents themselves are not irritating in the same way.
If anyone else can find a pattern here, well, I'd be thankful.
I think we should engineer the perfume equivalent of a headphone: something plugged directly into the nostrils so that the smell doesn't offend too many people.
> Many would happily see it banned, knowing nothing about it other than that some people wear too much. That'd be like banning music because your neighbor's TV is too loud.
Eh, we get pretty angry about people going around with music in public spaces (and tend to require licensing for it) and I think we're right to.
Scent is a unique sense, it is not decomposable.
Taste is just a combination of 5 basic tastes, vision is a combination of 3 primary colors, etc.
While (human) vision is 3 colors, reviews of visual arts obviously can't just describe the colors of the thing. It also has shape, depth, style, etc.
Food reviewers don't note the levels of salt, sour, etc. They describe flavors and textures and parings.
But also, I don't buy that taste is just the composition of 5 components. This sounds like a reference to that diagram of the tongue we've all seen. It's as complex as scent is. There's no way you can define the taste of cinnamon by specifying some sort of 5-tuple.
I believe he is correct. The misunderstanding is from the old chart that showed certain tastes were only detected by certain parts of the tongue.
It’s still true that we can only taste salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. All other flavor complexities come from scent simultaneously giving us information. It’s why everything tastes so boring when you have a head cold.
Think about this, suppose you're on a Zoom call and you want a person on the other side of the call to match a color that you're seeing. You can say "make it more blue", "make it brighter", "shinier", etc.
You can get pretty close to what you're seeing this way.
With scent? Not even close.
I have no idea why, but I interpreted your original comment completely differently
Yeah, the only way I can describe scent to another person is to compare it to other scents that I hope we both have a common experience with.
Thanks.
Scent is part of the taste experience, despite being produced in the nose.
Food also has a universe of possible consistencies.
Scent is decomposable. There are many different scent receptors, but finite.
Hearing is quite similar in that there are numerous different length hairs in the ear drum that can sense different frequencies of sound.
There are anywhere between 200 and 400 scent receptors in humans.
Sure, this is a finite number, but for practical purposes it's not really decomposable.
There is a huge number of olfactory sensory cell types, but it's all still decomposable. Smell is not unique here.
3 pedantic "well ackshually" comments saying scent is decomposable, yet 0 just decomposing it for us? I wonder why that is?
Do you expect someone to dump a list of up to a thousand of molecules here, or what exactly...?
No, I expected you to prove my point by this very comment.
With this discussion about perfumes, seems like an appropriate place to offer a PSA about phthalates. Perfumes often contain phthalates, which are endocrine disruptors. Exposure can be very harmful to a developing fetus and young children. It can create problems for adults too.
Phthalates are pervasive too in soaps and shampoos, where it's hidden within the ambiguous "fragrance" item.
There are phthalate-free options for soap and shampoo, and a quick google search indicates the perfume industry is starting to offer more products without phthalates. Phthalates aren't the only nasty chemical used for scents. Parabens are another, and maybe more I'm unaware of.
Fragrantica is one of those few websites I'd say is 110% correct. Not only does it confirm my experiences, it actually enlightens.
I was perplexed at why this coconut perfume doesn't smell very much like coconut - turns out it was being overwhelmed by vanilla scent. I have this oud perfume, which has the oud smell, but also something... rosy? But not rose. Searched Fragrantica and turns out it's a different kind of rose smell (and the complaints about it overwhelming the oud and being too feminine clicked too). It somehow gets the length of time and range of the perfume almost perfectly too.
Considering how expensive a few drops of perfume are, I just love the site.
I'll have to disagree with Gwern on the use of Fragrantica here - you don't read the comments. The comments are there to feed the AI summarizer. Then people democratically vote on which comments were most accurate. Fragrantica has one of the best usage of AI+rating algorithms I've ever seen; it just combines all kinds of weird stuff and spits out something incredibly accurate. Smell is so difficult to describe in words.
> offers $5 samplers of any perfume. A sampler bottle is actually 10-20 doses.
That site sells decants or maybe samples for 4 for a 0.7ml (saw one example). Now I know one doesn’t need a bucket in one go but only way that 0.7ml is going to last 10-20 doses is if one opens the cap (or presses the atomiser) and then closes it before anything actually comes out and the person just assumes they “took it all in” :)
I am saying this someone who regularly buys 1.5-2ml samples and 4-5ml decants.
@gwern, did you mess up your inflation calculation here?
> I couldn’t get all the ones Nguyen highlighted from LuckyScent and some sampler packs were sold out, but I settled for 39 samples total on 8 February 2021. (Which cost $153 [2021; $190 in 2025], so amortizing to $3.90 [2011; $6.03 in 2025] each.) At that point I felt I had gone a bit overboard, so I didn’t do an additional order from CB I Hate Perfume, which Nguyen praises for doing the most interesting ‘abstract’ perfumes, to pick up ones that LuckyScent didn’t have in stock.
Yes, I think that "2011" should be a "2021", and then everything else will work.
I spend a lot of time in Seoul and there's an entire street in the Sinsa neighborhood dedicated to perfumes and scents. A lot of experimental work going on, it's kind of fun. Worth a try if you come by.
For anyone looking to save money, don't get the brand name perfumes.
Instead, get something from a good clone house. They have special equipment to analyse the ingredients of the branded perfumes and end up making exactly the same thing.
Stay away from lower quality copies that aren't made by clone houses (i.e random "inspired by" stuff from Amazon).
They are not making exactly the same thing. That might be their marketing claim, but it is false. Unles they somehow discovered a way to do cheap low-volume synthesis of arbitrary organic molecules, which alone would probably get them a Nobel or two, and the analysis claim is also only loosely based on reality.
The only reason perfume manufacturers are willing to pay more than gold price (in weight) for some ingredients is exactly that they can't be economically synthesized.
Where can such clone houses be found? Market research with a search engine is impossible these days.
There are tons of Youtube channels and Reddit threads dedicated to clones. My protocol is, if the originals sell at outrageous prices, I go for clones. They are good enough for me.
I was able to find some local ones here in Melbourne, Australia with a simple Google search.
I think Sasha Chapin's perfume reviews were my gateway into this wonderful world! I got Ganymede from his recommendation (think it was a tweet saying his last two taxi drivers asked him what he was wearing), and I'm not sure I've received more compliments for anything in my life. He's got good taste!
https://airtable.com/appwvvqqF1fxLQKSy/shrmlkXEHooxFCB8i/tbl...
When I buy perfumes I fell I'm throwing money at a tiny bottle of alcohol, and when I'm wearing a perfume most of the times I feel I'm wearing simultaneously tuxedo, baseball hat, and high heel shoes.
Most will be aware, but Basenotes is a leading community for this https://basenotes.com/community/
Anyone truly interested in perfume who finds themselves in the SF Bay Area should visit the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley.
https://www.aftelier.com/Articles.asp?ID=256
This must have been like 15 years ago, but I vaguely remember someone making a perfume that smelled like the scent you get when you open up the box of a new iPhone or MacBook.
It’s a distinct smell and I’m not really sure if it’s purely from the electronics or if it comes from the papers inside the box too.
I used to try and buy a lot of perfumes some years ago. Unfortunately I concluded that it isn't really worth it since beyond some classics (Fahrenheit , terre d Hermes, declaration, narcisso for him, dior home, ysl m7, armani code, zv this is him, ck eternity, chanel egoiste platinum and of course aventus) there aren't many truly unique scents. Most perfumes try to copy another existing, mass appealing one.
Also male perfume nowadays is either too weak or too sweet (or too expensive if you go the niche route). So either I'll wear a perfume that will smell for 30 minutes and nobody will notice or I'll bite the bullet and wear a club perfume that will suffocate people (and not even smell good).
Maybe try a Montale? Pretty sure that doesn't smell even remotely close to anything you mentioned there and definitely also not sweet at all.
Montale Dark Aoud singlehandedly provided me with a marriage opportunity some time ago:-)
Have tried a bunch of Montale and mancera. Yes they have some unique perfumes, and some are potent. Unfortunately didn't find anything that it clicked to me.
Yeah the sweetness is a real issue but there are a lot of niche fragrances that don't follow these trends. And it's still possible to find powerfull stuff too, doesn't have to be that expensive.
There is lots of interesting brands that don't go for mass appeal, for example Pineward.
Yes what i had written is mainly true for designer perfumes not niche. However I'm not very much into the niche fragrances because of sampling difficulty and prices.
+1 for Terre de Hermes and Dior Homme parfum
I like instances of any fragrance really, as long as it doesn't "project". Basically, if someone comes close they catch it but otherwise it doesn't throw the smell very far. Examples: khus,sandalwood,some lemongrass perfumes, and iris.
A reward for intimacy rather than a punishment for proximity
Is this more of a thing with higher quality perfumes, or is "projection" a symptom of specific scents/ingredients?
I've got a question since I know nothing about perfume, but overtime do you just acclimatise to the scent? So that in the end it's like it's not really there?
At least I've noticed this with listening to music, personally speaking.
Sometimes you get nose-blind to the scent but IMO that's not a good thing, because it means it contains something too strong.
But more interesting to me is the effect that your perception of the scent will change, like it's different to hear a piece of music the first time and later. You can find new nuances, new depth, start to like it more, or less.
I think the typical perfume user does not wear it every day, or at least the same scent every day. I certainly don't.
If you only smell it after you've sprayed it on yourself, but later on your nose doesn't send you pings that it's present, then that's a perfect perfume, since your nose can get used to it.
If you are always reminded by your nose that the smell is present, then... it's subpar. But YMMV. I hate perfumes that are so strong that you literally leave a trail behind you and you can smell it all the time on yourself... and others will carry it on themselves if they spend 15 minutes with you in a room :D.
When you spray these on yourself you become a pollen bearer. It's like your perfume has a social life of its own - it sticks with everyone who gets too close to you.
That's why perfume reviews are total nonsense. You go, get 15 samples and try them on yourself one by one (right after a shower, just sprinkle it on your chest).
I personally try to avoid perfume.
The high end ones are purer in ingredients, but the mainstream are just the cheapest combination of chemicals you are putting on your skin/breathing in.
I also try to avoid perfume and people who wear it.
Perfume gets up my nose.
You know that time when you walk past someone (or vice versa) and they have so much perfume on them that you can't even breathe
This is the weirdest thing to see here. However, if you want to fix nose-blindness, just smell into coffee beans. Most perfumeries have a glass of coffee beans.
That's a myth.
https://www.smellstories.be/en/blogs/blog/the-coffee-bean-my...
A great book that has perfume as a major plot point is "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins.
Perhaps the most heterosexually male who ever wrote... and not the least bit homophobic, because that's not part of heterosexuality.
That. Man. Loves. Women.
Perfume is an amazing avenue to express oneself, and has the perfect website with a perfect design to do so in Fragrantica. Superb website
If you liked fragrantica, please give fragplace.com a shot. No affiliation just a fan.
Example: https://fragplace.com/fragrances/18774/neandertal/neandertal...
Site looks good, I don’t think using ai images for the notes is a good idea though. It lowers the quality of a good site, and the girlies (a gender neutral concept for people who tend to use these sites) do not tend to like AI.
I know you’re not affiliated but maybe someone who is will read it. Thanks for the rec!
Sadly it got too popular and now the ratings and reviews are often brigaded and every one of the list of most popular perfumes is pretty bad. Still useful as a reference, of course, but the ratings must be taken with a spoonful of salt.
Check out PERFUME AREA[1] while you're at it. It's a collab perfume review project between artists Sydney Shen and Laurel Schwulst.
[1]: https://perfume-area.com/
I have written a crawler of Fragrantica and Basenotes and I applied Wilson's Score on the ratings.
This was back when I was collecting fragrances as a hobby and I tried to somehow mix IT into it.
If anyone's looking for suggestions, I'm a fan of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab:
https://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/
Nice. I found my signature scents over a period of a few years.
Costco has some nice deals on high end perfumes, like Roja or Tom Ford.
There are also local perfumeries which can be interesting.
The problem with sampling when you're out-and-about is that you get nose-blindness, even if you use the coffee shakers they give you to clear your head.
I don't know if it's still a good route, but I used to be able to buy sacks of random perfume sampler bottles from eBay sellers for peanuts and then I could try a couple every day and note down which ones I liked or not.
I like oud and deeper scents. To me they’re more intimate.
Plus I’ve found it’s a power move when I smell good in a room of people who have no aura.
Humans are animals/automatons after all, and it’s a neat hack.
Also a neat hack is opening a window after the guy has left.
Initio - Oud for Greatness (which happens to be listed on gwern's page) is my favourite oud fragrance.
Thanks for the rec!
Any others you can recommend for me? I personally like deep, earthy, and intimate scents.
Cheers
I might really like this, but the price is quite steep compared to what I usually buy... $23 for a 3ml sample (in the EU) is a bit much for me.
Does anyone recommend a good sandalwood cologne? I use an aftershave that is sandalwood and I love the scent but it is fleeting.
Go down the rabbit hole! https://www.fragrantica.com/notes/note-33.html
For what it's worth, I love Tam Dao by Diptyque.
I also have a favourite sandalwood aftershave (Proraso red) but cannot find this scent in a perfume :(
For some reason this thread reminded me of the movie "The Perfume: story of a murderer"
The book on which it is based is well worth reading too… the story “one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages…”
I can't stand perfume, it makes my skin crawl. Literally when someone is dowsed in the stuff, you can feel the wave of exploding microparticles in mini chemical reactions as they walk passed you. In my "unpopular opinion" perfumes should be banned.
Same with flowers, I guess. And don't get me started on other humans!
Scent sensitivity is a real, and ADA protected, disability. Why do I have to have an asthma attack or a migraine because someone has to express themselves through chemical warfare? Perfumes are as bad for people's health as second hand smoke, and one in twenty or so people everywhere feel just like I do.
Man, I thought my huskies were dramatic!
> Perfumes are as bad for people's health as second hand smoke [...].
Source?
"I am sensitive hence anybody using parfume is Hitler"
what's the point of having "price in XX year" if it isn't consistent?
why compare to 2021 and 2011?
The price shown is dynamically updated to today’s dollars, and the subscript is the original value at the publishing date of the source text.
> inflation adjustment: Inflation.hs provides a Pandoc Markdown plugin which allows automatic inflation adjusting of dollar amounts, presenting the nominal amount & a current real amount, with a syntax like [$5]($1980).
except text was published in 2025
It's quoting text published before 2025.
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oh well, someone discovered niche perfume lol