Every Fragrance Has a Family

Walk into any department store and ask for help, and within a minute someone will ask you what you usually like. Most people freeze. They know what they like when they smell it, but they have no words for it, so they say “something fresh” or “nothing too sweet” and hope for the best.

There is a better answer, and it fits in your pocket. Fragrances, like wines, come in families. Learn the families and you can walk up to any counter, name what you want in one word, and be understood.

Your next favorite is probably living right next door.

The wheel

The most widely used map comes from Michael Edwards, a fragrance expert who has spent decades classifying perfumes for shops and shoppers. His Fragrance Wheel, first drawn in 1992 and revised since, divides the world into four main families, each with a few neighbors:

• Fresh: citrus, green, aromatic herbs, watery and fruity notes. The smell of a clean shirt and a cold drink.
• Floral: the flower shop, from a single soft rose to a big bouquet.
• Amber: warm, resinous and often sweet, with vanilla and spice. Older guides call this family “oriental”; Edwards and much of the industry now say amber.
• Woody: cedar, sandalwood, vetiver, moss. Dry, calm and grown-up.

The trick of a wheel, as opposed to a list, is that neighbors blend. A woody amber sits between woods and amber. A fresh floral sits between fresh and floral. If you like one fragrance, you will probably like its neighbors on the wheel more than anything on the opposite side.

Four bottles to learn them by

You do not need a perfume library to learn the families. Four famous bottles will do it, and you have very likely smelled all of them, whether you meant to or not.

Fresh: Acqua di Giò. Giorgio Armani’s 1996 men’s fragrance, composed by Alberto Morillas, is the one that taught a generation what “aquatic” means: bergamot, neroli and rosemary over a cool, watery breeze. If it smells like the beach on a good day, it is in the fresh family.

Floral: Chanel No. 5. Ernest Beaux built it in 1921, and it is still the most famous floral in the world. It is technically an aldehydic floral: a bouquet lifted by a sparkling, slightly soapy brightness that made it famous.

Amber: Shalimar. Jacques Guerlain’s Shalimar, sold continuously since 1925, is the textbook warm fragrance: citrus at the top, then a deep, smoky vanilla that lingers on a scarf for days.

Woody: Terre d’Hermès. Jean-Claude Ellena made it for Hermès in 2006. Orange and grapefruit open it, then it dries down to cedar, vetiver and patchouli with a mineral, almost stony feel. It is the woody family in a well-pressed suit.

Three families everybody argues about

Before the wheel, perfumers used older names that you will still see on every fragrance website. Three are worth knowing.

Fougère is French for fern, which is funny, because ferns hardly smell of anything. The name comes from Houbigant’s Fougère Royale of 1882, built on lavender, oakmoss and coumarin, a sweet, hay-like material. That lavender-and-hay barbershop smell became the backbone of men’s fragrance for a century. On the wheel it lives with the aromatic fresh scents.

Chypre (say “sheep-ruh”) is named for Cyprus. François Coty’s Chypre of 1917 set the formula: bright bergamot on top, labdanum in the middle and oakmoss at the bottom. The result is elegant, a little bitter and very adult. On the wheel it sits among the mossy woods.

Gourmand means “fond of food.” The modern category starts with Thierry Mugler’s Angel in 1992: praline, red berries and vanilla over a heavy dose of patchouli. If a fragrance makes you hungry, it is a gourmand. On the wheel, most land on the sweet side of amber.

Using it at the counter

The next time someone asks what you like, name a family and a bottle: “Something woody, like Terre d’Hermès, but warmer.” That one sentence tells a good salesperson more than ten minutes of sniffing paper strips. And when you find a new favorite, look up its family. Your next favorite is probably living right next door.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Fragrance wheel (Michael Edwards, 1992; families and the renaming of oriental to amber)
• Wikipedia: Acqua di Giò
• Wikipedia: Chanel No. 5
• Wikipedia: Shalimar
• Wikipedia: Terre d’Hermès
• Wikipedia: Fougère and Chypre
• Wikipedia: Angel