Popular Women's Fragrances
The following comes from a wonderful piece in Time Magazine Online.
What to consider when buying perfume for women
Whether you’re buying perfume for yourself or someone else, consider the way a perfume is created and how the notes build the scent. Looking at the notes on a bottle can help you decide whether you want to try it, but smelling it yourself is usually the best way to decide.
Top note: This is the first smell that hits you when you open a bottle of perfume and take a whiff. These notes last the least amount of time.
Middle note: This is the main body of the perfume, and you can usually smell it after your senses take in the initial scent.
Base note: Base notes are the smells that stick around for hours. Musk, sandalwood, or other heavier scents will often live in a perfume’s base notes.
How to pick a perfume
When picking a perfume, what you smell when you open the bottle may smell different to your friend. Your sense of smell is processed by the brain’s areas also used to process memories and emotions. This means when you open a bottle of perfume and inhale the honeysuckle that reminds you of your childhood garden, you may gravitate toward it over one that smells of violets. And to make matters more complicated, according to research from Duke University, it’s common for people to experience smells, like perfume, spices, or foods, differently.
When you shop for perfume, make sure to smell it in a few different ways, in the bottle, on a test strip, and via a sample, ideally outside the store, to determine if you like the scent. This is important because shops that carry perfume often have many smells floating around in the air, making it difficult to pinpoint what your particular scent actually smells like.
Now that we have told you perfumes may smell slightly differently to (and on) everyone, we have created a list of popular scents with very different notes to help you find your new favorite fragrance.
