32 thoughts on “Glossary & Basic Guide to Perfume Terms

    • Hahaha, it does look like a giant lump of… something, doesn’t it? In my case, though, I suspect Santa would punish me with Acqua di Gio — mens/womens, I’ve been known to go on a bit of a rant about it once or twice. On second thought, he might give me a Montale. *shudder*

      I’m really glad you enjoyed the glossary and found it informational. 🙂 Thank you so much for letting me know. I found myself needing a refresher after the Alahine review; it’s so well-blended and used such high quality ingredients, I couldn’t always tell what was responsible for what smell!! But, in general, I sometimes find I need to remind myself how some things smells. For example, it’s not easy to remember all the differences between diff. resins or diff. indolic white flowers. Yes, the differences may be very small, but they can still count! I also find I need particular help with some of the new synthetic compounds like calone for example or Ambroxan (which was a totally new term to me, along with Opoponax). Ultimately though, I’d like to make my blog accessible to everyone, not just those who are experts or well-versed in the niche perfumes. I have a secret agenda, you see: lure them in with stuff that doesn’t seem too intimidating, and then get them to throw away their Acqua di Gio or Angel once and for all…… *grin*

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  2. Abergris looks a lot less pretty than it smells, which is alarming given that it’s basically vomit! LOL. It’s funny to envision the discovery of amergris:

    SCENE – A beached whale on a shore, in a pile of its own vomit (possibly due to a night of drunken escapades)

    Passerby: What’s this wonderful, heavenly smell?

    [Passerby promptly rolls around in said whale barf]

    END SCENE

    • Not if the passer-by was a perfume addict. In that case, they would run in and sweep up the vomit by the bucket, sell it for gazillions and retire rich to a room filled with ALLL the hundreds of perfumes they were now able to afford! *grin*

      Seriously, the real stuff…. worth its weight in gold. Quite literally, I believe.

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  11. kafka …. am lost dear …. i dont know what to say after reading this 😀 i loveeeeee your blog and am so addicted you know 😀 i dont know a single thing but will learn slowly

    • I’m so glad you like it, Rashmi. And, no worries about all of this being totally new to you. We *all* started somewhere! All of us! But learning some of the terms can really be useful to you in getting to know about perfumes because it will tell you what smells like what and why. You can find out what sorts of perfumes you may like or definitely won’t like based upon knowing what the key ingredients are. And, nowadays, few perfumes are just made with “rose, vanilla and musk” or obvious terms like that. The notes are full of foreign-sounding terms. But once you get a rough sense of what those things mean, you’re all set! I promise, it’s not as hard as it looks. 😀 xoxox

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  26. Love it all! Funny but the immortelle that I purchased from Eden Botanicals smelled like bacon to me (this was not a bad thing 🙂 ) but when i added a bit of bourbon vanilla to it that bacon smell dissipated and what was left was this gorgeous caramel note.

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