When people find out about my interest in perfume, sometimes they lean in and say knowingly, “Perfume smells different on different people.” It seems to be the one fact about fragrance that they know.
Last night I went to a coffee “cupping.” A cupping is where you experience the full profile of a coffee bean by pouring hot water over the grounds, breaking its “crust,” smelling it, and eventually doing a lot of embarrassing slurping to mix air with the coffee and spread it over the tongue. When the host asked us what we tasted, answers came from all over the board: cherries, pecan pie filling, tobacco. All for the same coffee.
What’s going on? Why does a spritz of the same perfume smell different on my friend, Meredith, than it does on me or her husband? For that matter, why does the perfume smell different on me on different days?
I’m not a scientist, so I can’t give any hard answers. But over the years, I’ve done some speculating, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
Bad experiences. One unseasonably hot May in eighth grade I sat on a school bus next to a girl cloaked in a cloud of Calvin Klein Obsession. Honestly, it’s a miracle I lived to tell you about it. For the next ten years, I could smell vanilla and musk at 50 yards. Similarly, if you’ve had a bad encounter with patchouli, you might home right in on a perfume’s patch. I have a friend who detests cilantro, and she’ll isolate it in a curry in seconds, where to me the cilantro is part of the larger flavor experience.
Vocabulary. Sometimes I think two people might actually be smelling something similar, but they describe it differently. One person’s “aldehydic, heliotrope-tinged rose-violet floral” is another person’s “smells like old lady.” (Where is this mythical pack of highly perfumed senior gals, anyway? We hear about them often enough.) Here’s another example: If I say “musk,” what do you think of? It could be anything from fresh-from-the-dryer towels to the truffled-sweet smell of a dirty body.
Anosmia: Some people can’t smell certain notes. Their experience of a fragrance may miss a slot that you might pick up.
Suggestion. I’m a huge sucker for suggestion — a marketer’s dream. Tell me something smells like angels rollicking in a bathtub, and I’ll smell Epsom salts and hot water. In her review of L’Artisan Parfumeur Nuit de Tubéreuse, Robin noted a hint of Juicy Fruit gum. Now I can’t smell it without my mouth watering. If a review focuses on violet or incense or orange blossom, my brain will place that note front and center when I sample the perfume.
Environment. Perfume seems to expand with heat and contract with cold, and the same perfume might evolve differently on a crisp winter morning’s walk than it does on the dance floor of a crowded nightclub.
Just plain different skin. Sometimes it’s got to be skin chemistry. What it is about different skin that changes fragrance, I have no idea. But I’ve smelled it often enough to know it’s a fact, and that it can skew a fragrance significantly. It makes sense. After all, people do smell different. Think about the crook of a neck of a baby, lover, parent. No two smell exactly the same.
What about you? Why do you think perfume can smell so different on or to different people?
My secret shame – I was unable to identify Chanel No. 5 on a woman friend-of-a-friend. So I’ll say yes, a perfume can smell so different in different people.
Don’t be ashamed! I often get brain blockages. I can be confronted with a note I know inside and out–say, vetiver–and suddenly be unable to pin it down.
Non fume-heads have ideas of what a good perfume should smell like, or what kind of perfume a sophisticated perfume should be. Then, when they smell a perfume they like, they describe it as fitting that vocubulary. Once coming back from a Sniffapooloza, I ran into a group of women who had completed a funding raising walkathon. One told me she loved “clean scents.” When I offered a sample of a spicy saffron scent, she imeadiately proclaimed it was exactly the type of clean scent she liked. Saffron? Clean?
I think some where along the line, she had decided that good perfumes smell “clean” and so when sniffed a patcouli, spicy concoction she liked, she simply called it clean.
This is almost every guy I’ve ever know. Clean or fresh is used to describe anything that smells good to them. I do have to say that my bf surprised me recently when he smelled Guerlain Encens Mythique d’Orient on me and exclaimed, “That is sexy…there’s some kind of pheromones or something in it!”. Good man.
Good for him! (And you!)
That’s a great example of how vocabulary can misrepresent–at least to the listener–how something smells.
Interestingly, I’ve seen some antiperspirants lately in “non-clean” scents at the drugstore, like cocoa butter, vanilla, and berries. Maybe the clean thing is on its way out. (Or not.)
Yeah I think this is a real thing–and not just in perfume. Almost no matter what color lipstick I have on (pink, plum, brown), someone will invariably remark on my “red lipstick”. It’s like “red lipstick” is a unified category rather than a specific color!
That’s so true!
Oh how I hate “clean” scents! One of my coworkers this weekend was wearing a fragrance that literally smelled like she had taken a bar of soap and rubbed it all over her body! It was making me nauseous. She wore it before and I asked her what it was (so I could avoid it at all costs) and she said she didn’t know. Which is blasphemy to a perfumista. Maybe she did remember and didn’t want me to copy her.
We Americans seem to love our soapy orange blossom and clean musk. I wonder where all that came from?
(That’s so funny that she might have tried to hide her perfume’s name for fear you’d start wearing it!)
To me, ‘clean scents’ mean ones that smell like laundry soap, dryer sheets, etc. I think it’s the lavender, which invariably makes me sneeze in any form. You will never catch me in the laundry aisle at the grocery store. I do have one friend to whom ‘clean’ means scents with woodsy notes like cedar or balsam, but not things like sandalwood, plus anything sea salty. A result of having grown up on the Oregon coast I think.
That could be fodder for a whole new post: “What does clean mean to you?”. Thanks for the comment!
Angela, I’m so relieved to hear I’m not the only person susceptible to suggestion! Have you found any good ways to resist that? I mean, sometimes the influence of suggestion is a productive thing–in lots of cases, a review helps me appreciate dimensions of the perfume I wouldn’t have seen on my own. But regretfully, there’s also quite a number of fragrances I really can’t enjoy any longer, after someone pointed out a particular note! (…I’m afraid to say what they are, lest I ruin them for someone else! Ha. Though I guess that is a risk we take if we want to talk about perfume at all!)
I know the feeling, I am prejudiced against jasmine after having smelled too many noxious drug store synthetics but I have noticed I do like some perfumes that have jasmine in it. I think it’s a learned aversion, like some people who avoid lavender at all costs because they once had a violent sneezing reaction to a cheap wall plug in.
Right. I can’t stomach onion rings because of an incident when I had the flu when I was 6 years old. I like onions and like fried things, so you’d think they’d be a natural…
I don’t know how to avoid being tainted by description, so I guess all I can say is to enjoy the good descriptions! If some part of my mind has hooked onto the marketing and associates Amaranthine with a tropical paradise, so be it.
But it *is* rough when someone points out an assertive cedar note, say, and suddenly that’s all I can smell.
You’re right and since I’ve had a recent good experience with Jasmine, I remind myself when I read reviews to not dismiss a scent without smelling it, just because it has a top note of jasmine…but I admit…this is a hard aversion to overcome, it’s so ingrained.
Jasmine is so wonderful, too. And so common to perfume that it would be hard to avoid. I hope it starts to grow on you a little more.
Catherine, since I, too, can be influenced, I like to wait to read reviews of scents (or remind myself of their particulars, anyway) until after I’ve given the scent a proper sniffing. I do eventually look it up–helps to educate my nose about notes and such, but if I read too soon, I can’t NOT smell what I read, it seems!
I’ve had that problem, too. I really try to avoid reviews of something I’m reviewing until I’m finished writing. Otherwise, I’m too much of a sucker for someone else’s opinion!
I’ve found that my overall sensitivity changes as well as sensitivity to particular notes or accords, but it’s also true that people do not all eat the same food, and that items like garlic can lead to a person smelling quite unique, shall we say, for quite a while thereafter. Obviously, a fragrance will be affected by this, as well as more subtle odors of this kind. Then of course there is the application method and the amount used. Even if one person gets just a tiny amount on his/her clothing while another does not, all other things being equal, that could change the perception, especially after some time has passed. As to food or beverages, I have found myself thinking things like ginger snaps smell like Kouros or there are wood notes in various nuts; that is what I’d call a “light impression” of a note. I say just embrace the subjectivity, so long as it is enjoyable!
That’s probably the best approach–enjoy it and even expect it to some extent.
Emotion and experience play such big roles in how perfume smells, too. One person’s deliciously juicy Syrah is someone else’s obnoxiously alcoholic popsicle.
As for why perfumes smell different on different people, I’m convinced a good deal of it is body chemistry, especially the acidity of the skin, my skin has a high PH and I’ve noticed that many classic perfumes “turn” on me, though I love them on other people. I am crestfallen that I can’t wear Shalimar (BO), Jicky (stale talc), Joy (rotting flowers), just to name a few. I have noticed that the pure parfum works much better on me, lasts longer and stays truer than even an edp. The most dramatic of skin vs bottle that comes to mind is how Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle smells on paper, to me it smells youthful and pretty but when my sister wears it, Mademoiselle turns into a high powered corporate warrior who demands quality and she wants it Yesterday, yes she is young but she is Fierce! …which is the sort of image my sis wants to project in the boardroom and so she wears Mademoiselle to high stakes meetings…then I put it on and it turns into…bug spray *sob*
I love your description of the many faces of Mlle Coco!
How did you discover that your skin is acidic? It seems like such an interesting thing–useful, too, maybe–to know.
I googled skin PH and I guess there’s a whole health movement surrounding it, I know nothing about that but I found out my own PH as a part of a chemistry experiment in Junior HS, we were given PH test strips (buy them for about $3 on Amazon) and held them in our sweaty little palms until the color changed, then we held them up to the chart. Those who couldn’t generate enough moisture on their own had to put the strip on their arm and add a drop of water…and wait for the strip to change color just like a pregnancy test…and that’s it. I found out that my natural PH is Med-High while my sis’s is Med-Low, I am convinced that this is why the whole Chanel fragrance line smells wonderful on her…and Awful on me
I have since learned that high PH skin EATS cheap jewelry *sad face* so if your silver necklaces turn black on your skin after a few days, or less, if your brass bangles instantly turn your skin green when you sweat, if your fashion jewelry corrodes and drops right off your neck after a few wearings, chances are you have a high skin PH. High PH also rots silk so if your pearl necklace needs to be restrung every year or your silk blouse disintegrates under the armpits after only one season, that’s also a tell tale sign. After doing some research about PH and perfume, I have found that a high PH unbalances those delicate formulations in scent and which is why parfum works better for me than EDP or EDT, the higher the amount of oil, the more stable the scent is, the higher the alcohol, the more easily unbalanced it is. In other words, only gold jewelry and pure parfum for me, haha! So it’s not all bad. “Oh I’m sooooooo sorry Darling but for Christmas this year, you can only buy me gold baubles and parfum! Why, I would MUCH prefer a cheap stocking stuffer but my skin has a high PH, what can one do?” *sighs helplessly and melodramatically* On the bummer side, it means that I have to really love a scent before I buy it because chances are, I can only wear it in its most expensive form :/
Thank you, RoseRed! I loved learning about skin PH. Now I want to go get some test strips.
Me too!
This is fascinating! Thank you for explaining it all (and I hope Santa heaps on the 24k gold and extrait).
This is fascinating – I have a soil test kit around somewhere – I think it had a Ph component. I wear a lot of silver and it tarnishes very little when it’ s on me – wonder if that means I have low Ph skin…
I think a lot of us will be searching out Ph strips before long…
So interesting! Over the years I have owned cheap jewelery that I loved, including an aluminum bracelet cuff from the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, which would always produce copious amounts of green, brown or black smudges across my skin… hmmm…
Coco Mlle is just awful on me – screechy floral plus patchouli bomb, just awwwwwful. On my sister, it is really lovely – a woody floral with backbone, murmuring in a gentle voice.
There you go–a perfect example of how the same perfume can smell different.
RR, have you tried Coco? On my skin, it’s much better than Coco Mademoiselle – no bug spray!
I carefully selected which samples I needed to take to Hamburg with me and half of them smell different. I think my skin chemistry changes when I leave the US!! It’s possible that I’m crazy.
Hey, maybe your skin chemistry does change! Or maybe the water or atmospheric pressure or competing odors or something either influence your skin or how your nose functions.
Or maybe it’s that you’re using different soap?
Oh, good observation.
I’m not using a different soap.
This is such an interesting phenomenon. Traveling is stimulating – maybe your brain patterns are different. Could it be differences in diet or food additives? Differences in climate and air? It’s been several years since I was in Europe but there used to be a lot more cigarette smoke, for example. So many possibilities!
As an avid cook and lover of strongly-flavored foods, we must not neglect the lifestyle influences to our personal scent! I fear that any scent I wear must be able to work with an undercurrent of garlic, as it seems to seep from my pores most days!
I wonder if it affects the way you smell, too, the way that eating hot pepper can influence the taste of the food you eat after? Lots to ponder (from another strong flavor lover, by the way).
No problems with vampires then, huh?
I do believe that diet influences scent on so many levels. The foods we prefer influence our attraction/aversion to particular odors, and the foods we are used to eating are revealed in the natural scent we emanate via our skin. One perfume might smell a dozen different ways when worn by a dozen different people, all with varied diets.
Then, when you combine diet with the natural differences in people by age, skin, DNA, all sorts of different skin chemistry could result.
Mine too, but no one has complained yet. Of course, my faves are all Orientals, some spicy, some woody, some floral, but none that would be described as light, lol. I’ve always said I would dab garlic behind my ears if it was socially acceptable. Garlic sauteing in butter is definitely on my top 10 smells of life.
It does smell wonderful. Like everyone else, I suppose, I also love the smells of coffee and bacon.
Great list, Angela! I think you need to add ‘Perception’. You skirted it with a couple of categories, but I mean the actual olfactory process that takes place in a person’s brain when they smell a certain scent. Not from a remembered experience (good or bad), but just that certain smells register as pleasant or objectionable to the brain. I think this varies widely between people.
Also, I discovered when the vitamin C cartridge in my shower filter needed to be changed, my perfume smelled *very* different due to the chlorine on my skin, which I could smell strongly with the cartridge running out. Ugh!
“Perception” makes sense to me!
And *ack* about the chlorine, but very interesting, too, how it affects your perfume.
All the reasons you mentioned makes sense, Angela. With that being the case, it is important to respect others’ opinion of what something smells like. I’m not suggesting agreement on everything…just do not belittle or dismiss that difference. Great list!
Good point! Most of the time when someone gets something distinctly different than I do from a perfume, it’s marvel I feel. (O.K., sometimes jealousy, too.) Hopefully you haven’t felt put down for smelling the things you do.
Nope, I have never felt put down for smelling the things the way I do…maybe I get pitying looks for disliking something that some love but hey, if it is not for me, it is not for me…puppy dog eyes will not change my mind
I’m glad to hear about it, and I admire your attitude!
I just read an article on one of the perfume blogs about how the Middle Eastern population are the biggest consumers of perfume and oils, and how they use incense to perfume themselves. What does that say about their diet and their climate? Their fragrances are so much heavier than ours. You would think the heat would make them queasy. I can’t stand wearing something heavy in the NYC sweltering heat, yet I love heavy and earthy in the winter.
Now that’s interesting. Maybe it’s simply a cultural comfort with assertive perfume. As much as I love the scent of incense, I’d have a hard time wearing it in hot weather, too. (And now I’m going to hunt through my perfume cabinet for something incense-y to wear….)
This is one of the most widely discussed topics in all perfumery, I suppose. I used to broadly agree with Turin/Sanchez (can’t remember which) that most perfumes, given time, broadly smell the same on everyone. Bvlgari Black smells the same on me as on my son. I’ve also read somewhere that it was Chanel which started the whole discussion about perfume smelling different on different people, as a marketing ploy to make every customer feel special.
If perfumes always smell radically different on everyone, we would never have the experience of recognising a perfume on a stranger.
But I’ve read too much discussion over the years from people who speak so compellingly about different experiences of the same perfume on different people that I have begun to believe it myself. I found the above discussion about skin acidity really interesting. It does suggest that there is a measurable difference in the way people react to perfume, which I find much more convincing than blithe references to skin ‘chemistry’.
I’ve smelled the difference on skin too many times to pass it off, and often it’s consistent. For instance, on Meredith, who I mention above, Noontide Flowers smells almost like a different fragrance than it does on me, especially in the dry down when you’d think it would matter least.
There probably is a measurable difference in the way people react to perfume and that would be a great paper to write *grins* I learned a lot about why perfume smells the way it does from “The Secret of Scent” by Luca Turin who writes about perfume from a chemist’s point of view. It’s a fascinating read if a bit dry and technical, but then, it is focused on chemistry
I would recommend it as a resource for anyone who likes science and perfume and wants to delve into the subject past blithe references to skin ‘chemistry.’
Thanks, I really should give it a try.
Mercy! Pity those of us that can’t abide cilantro, it’s genetic (yes) and we can’t help that it tastes like dish soap so avoid it like the plague. I feel deprived because I see so many dishes when we go out that sound divine…until I get to cilantro on the ingredient list. As an American, it’s easy to avoid, but I can’t imagine the horror of being born into a culture that uses it a lot and being stuck with that spoilsport gene. At least studies say it is less prevalent amongst non-Caucasians than other races.
My friend who detests cilantro likes to point out that Julia Child had the same affliction!
Each person is unique, so must have her/his own unique, personal body odor (not meaning that in a bad way), and that has to influence how a perfume smells. An individual’s diet must also affect the perception of any fragrance they wear.
Exactly–smell could be divided into two parts: what something smells like, and how someone *perceives* that smell.
I always wonder about diet. Carnivores vs vegetarians… do smell different. And what about that guy in the gym who regretfully for you must have eaten a whole clove of garlic before hitting the free weights? What would Egoiste smell like on him? What does an evening of generously poured G & T’s do to your usual favorite fragrance the next day, even post a long, hot shower? And smokers? There must be loads of smokers who love perfume… how does half a pack a day impact your body chemistry and fragrance?
Diet must affect how a person smells and ultimately how that person’s perfume smells. I swear I can sniff out vegans. Wouldn’t a vegan wearing Shalimar smell different than a carnivore wearing it? (This would be a fun experiment.)
They must. Whether you think perfume “combines” with someone’s chemistry, or it covers/masks someone’s chemistry, I don’t see how it would smell the same. Any more than if you sprayed a pine cone with Shalimar and a fresh cut slice of apple… They would smell a little different.. Maybe not enough different to impact the industry, but different enough to influence preferences among those wearing the fragrances and those smelling fragrances on others. I wonder to what extent, if any, the natural chemistry of a person requesting a bespoke fragrance is considered in its creation? Or perhaps it is a distinction without a difference as taste and preference are so unpredictable any way… So you are a brilliant fragrance maker… But your client likes what he likes… And that in the end makes all the difference, or no difference at all…
That’s a very interesting point about perfumers considering an individual’s skin and body when composing bespoke perfume.
And now I kind of want to smell a pine cone sprayed with Shalimar!
I would add hyperosmia to anosmia. I’m definitely hyperosmic to some musks and woody aroma chemicals. For example, in Guerlain Vetiver pour Elle, the white musk practically drowns out the vetiver and floral notes to my nose.
I also find that my perception of perfumes changes over time. Weather obviously plays a role, but that doesn’t explain all the changes.
For those of us who wear and sample so many different perfumes, I imagine perception is changed by what was worn recently and maybe new aroma chemicals experienced.
These all sound like good reasons to me for things smelling different!
I especially agree that perception of a perfume changes over time. Just two nights ago I wore Shalimar. Sometimes it all folds together for me as “Shalimar,” the old familiar, and I barely appreciate it. But two nights ago it was delicious–sweet, fusty, and so itself. Part of that comes from my deeper experience with scent, and part from paying attention better, probably.
YES! Me too!! And I thought my skin amped musk, but Laurie at SSS said no, the musk just outlasted the other ingredients so it only became relatively more pronounced.
And I would bet the “woody aroma chemical” you’re hyperosmic to is iso e super. I can smell that stuff at 500 paces!
Yes, I think iso e super is one of them. Also that sharp horseradishy note in AG Matin d’Orage and so many other recent perfumes.
I can only enjoy Vetiver pour Elle for a couple of minutes before the musk takes over, which is too bad, because I like the beginning very much. Wish I could get it with one-tenth of the musk.
BTW, the photo at the top is of limited edition Warhol-like sample cards. Advised my a perfume expert friend of mine at their time of issue that they would be collectible, I made sure I got them all!
A customer once remarked that Ange ou Demon smelled like root beer and the scent was forever coloured for me by that comment.
My skin is oily and acidic. I can always be assured that a citrus fragrance will work nicely on me.