How to choose a perfume without smelling it

1. Read the notes, then read them again

Every perfume page lists its notes: top, heart and base. Top notes are the first minutes. Heart notes carry the next few hours. Base notes are what is left at the end of the day, and they tell you the most.

Look for notes you already know you like, in food, in flowers, in a candle. Vanilla, bergamot, rose, sandalwood and oud mean roughly the same thing wherever you read them.

2. Know your scent family

Most perfumes sit in a few broad families. Knowing yours narrows the choice fast.

• Fresh and citrus: bergamot, lemon, sea notes. Easy in the heat, at work, after the gym.
• Floral: rose, jasmine, tuberose, iris. From soft and clean to rich and heady.
• Woody: cedar, sandalwood, vetiver. Calm, dry and grown-up.
• Amber and gourmand: vanilla, tonka, amber, caramel. Warm and sweet, at its best in cold weather.

3. Start from the moment, not the bottle

Ask where you will wear it. A scent for the office has a different job from one for date night. Our collections work the same way: everyday, cold weather, summer days and more.

4. Check the concentration

Eau de toilette is usually lighter. Eau de parfum and extrait carry more perfume oil and tend to last longer on skin. Those are tendencies, not rules: the formula matters more than the label.

5. Borrow other noses, carefully

Reviews and videos help you shorten the list. They cannot tell you how a scent sits on your skin, which is why the last step matters most.

6. Wear a small size before the bottle

Pick two or three candidates and order them as 3ml decants. Wear one a day, on skin, not on a strip. Check it in the morning, at lunch and in the evening. The one you still like at night is the one.

When a scent wins, move up to a 10ml or 30ml, or buy the bottle. If none of them work, that is useful too: you now know what you do not like.

Questions people ask