It’s fitting that perfumers are so often said to “compose” fragrances. Not only do musical composers and perfumers both use notes, their creations grapple with themes, transitions, and relationships — the musical composer with instruments and the nose with scent materials. Plus, they both play with volume. In perfume, that volume is called sillage.
In brief, sillage (pronounced see-′yawj) is the reach of your waft. Sillage can be thick and fill a room, delicate but still voluminous, soft and close, or even shrill and close. Sillage depends on a fragrance’s materials and, of course, how much you apply. Even though it carries a higher concentration of scent, Extrait isn’t necessarily more potent sillage-wise than Eau de Toilette or Eau de Parfum. (In fact, Extrait often carries a more intimate sillage, which can make it terrific for when you’re in close quarters with other people, like in the audience at a play.) Also, a hearty sillage doesn't necessarily translate to longevity. Sometimes a good, loud Eau de Toilette can burn off before you make it to work.
Just as an orchestra can play pianissimo or forte to best serve the music, in my opinion there’s no ideal volume of sillage. I remember reading somewhere that perfume should only be smelled within an arm’s length. I disagree. Sometimes it’s nice to wear a much quieter fragrance, and some perfumes, such as Guerlain Vol de Nuit, are nicer — feel more personal — when they're quiet. Other times I like a trumpeting blast when I first spray on a fragrance, knowing that it will tighten to my skin within a few minutes. Every once in a while, especially if I’m going to be among competing smells, I like robust sillage.
Fragrance can smell different depending on where you stand in the perfume’s sillage. Some perfume seems to create an airy cage of scent, and you can smell its facets almost as if you were standing in a garden. (To my surprise, this is how vintage Schiaparelli Shocking comes off to me.) Some perfume is dreamy from a distance but a punch in the nose up close. (Exactly how I feel about Chanel Coco Mademoiselle.)
The best sillage, though, happens when a perfume really agrees with you. Then, the fragrance doesn’t so much stand out, but it complements you so well that it doesn’t draw attention to itself, even when its sillage is clearly legible. It’s like a dress that doesn’t look like a beautiful dress — instead, it makes you look beautiful. You notice the scent, but almost as an afterthought, because it blends so well and subtly with the person wearing it. For me, that’s the ideal sillage. Or maybe it's simply the ideal perfume.
Do you think about sillage when you buy perfume? Do you have any fragrances that waft the ideal sillage for you?
Note: top image is Twisty smoke [cropped and brightened] by Jez Elliot at flickr; some rights reserved.
Several of my favourite comments from the LT/TS Perfumes: the Guide are about sillage. I have always loved the LT review of Givenchy Xeryus (from the mid-80s): “Some from that period feel like a mariachi band has crept up behind you and burst into ‘La Paloma’ without warning.” Ah, mental imagery.
Agreed about Coco Mademoiselle, by the way. It has a lovely, compliment-attracting sillage, but I find it too solid at a personal level, like big grey-peach wall.
Nice! Another sillage comment I like from Perfumes: The Guide has to do with Shalimar, which LT says is best a mid-range.
Since you’re on the topic of sillage, have to comment on a phenomenon I’ve observed recently/locally: men’s fragrance waftage.
I live near Lake Michigan, and when the weather’s decent, I walk to the beach (we had a big storm on 2/1, followed by -2 degrees on 2/2, so the 46 degree day on Sat had us out in droves). Anyway, the beachgoing men are usually with their wives or girlfriends, and it’s by far and away the men whose sillage is detectable. And it’s not young Axe wearers. I wonder if guys become anosmic and overapply, or if men’s fragrance is just made to be louder. I’ve been noticing this trend for months now!
Interesting! And curious. I’m going to have to pay attention to that now. Maybe it’s a higher quantity of alcohol plus “lighter” citrus and green notes that make it poof so loudly.
when I read the title I thought : that’s the topic every parfumista must have a theory about…
and then – only 1 comment! why, I thought?
After reading I know why: all what had to be said is said beautifully, doesn’t need any additions….
Angela just re-confirmed why perfume is an Art and not a needless wish as so many is convinced it is…..
unfortunately….
obviously sillage it’s the best when in harmony with the wearer and the world around her/him
Thank you! And I think your comment about sillage and harmony sums it up beautifully.
My favourite sillage is a very close-to-the-body one when a scent kind of disappears, and then you move your hand near your face to adjust your glasses or you reach for something and little puff of air billows out of the collar of your shirt, and you suddenly remember that you’re wearing a wonderful scent and you smell great.
L’Instant de Guerlain Pour Homme is the master of this.
I adore I’Instant Pour Homme and prefer it to the feminine version. So nice!
I have a strange problem with many/most perfumes: either I’v always sprayed too little, or else too much. Too little and I can’t smell it enough – too much and it has me by the neck and is throttling me 🙂
I’m wearing Pour Monsieur now, and of all my loves, it probably has the absolute least sillage…
Sometimes the sillage varies through the day, too, and it can be nice to freshen up with a spritz partway through. Or, the sillage might seem ideal at first, then knock you out flat (Carnal Flower does that to me).
Great thought provoking post! My favorite sillage tends to be close to the skin and intimate. I like the sense of mystery that quiet sillage evokes too. After thinking more about it though, my social setting will often influence the kind and amount of sillage I waft. So application is key. My bolder and sexier scents I will dab on instead of spray when going into public, but when I’m home I spray, spray, spray with abandon! For beautiful understated sillage I love Delrae Mythique, Guerlain Bois D’Armenie and Vero Profumo Rubj extrait. And for bolder but not assaulting sillage I dab a little Carnal Flower, Ubar and Absolu Pour Le Soir!
What delicious fragrances you choose! I also like Mythique for a quiet, nearly skin-like sillage, and Rubj extrait is a perfect one for dabbing. (And now you’ve made me crave some Ubar.)
There. Ubar applied, and now I’m happy, dang the sillage.
I’ve gone and sprayed on some Ubar too! Our sillage smells great!
Yes!
That may be the way to go with Lyric. Next time I will try dabbing it.
Lyric can be a beast when sprayed too liberally (but I love it!).
I love a dab or two of Ubar! It is especially interesting that Ubar is a scent that feels VERY different as a dab and as a spray. The notes seem to unfold into very different feels! Sprayed, it is brash and cheery, dabbed it is more intimate and sophisticated.
I sprayed (day off today), so I have maximum cheery sillage! It’s a whiff of spring time on a dreary rainy day.
I love it both ways! You smell great!
I’m not surprised that you can smell me across town! It does have a powerful sillage.
Since I’m far past the point of buying perfumes that I “need” (meaning want to have for different occasions – office, party, vacation, etc. – and can afford them) and I have at least a dozen for every occasion at this point, I never think about sillage when I buy perfume but I’m extremely mindful of it when it comes to wearing. Or at least I try to be (she said trying to figure out if today’s three sprays of Tauer’s Une Rose Vermeille were too much for the office wear 😉 )
Oh, I hear you! I think I have a good handle on my sillage, but I’m often surprised with “you smell nice” coming from someone coming in a door way across the room…
I put on a little bit of Champagne de Bois this morning and had to take the dog to the vet at mid-day. The vet tech walked into the exam room, making kissing noises at the dog, and said “You smell wonderful, big puppy!” I didn’t say anything but I suspect it was me she was smelling. I had no idea CdB would waft that far with two small spritzes–she must have been six feet away. Then we came home and there was your marvelous article about sillage. So apt!
Imagine, a dog who smells naturally of Champagne de Bois! That would have to be the best dog shampoo on Earth. (I suspect the dog would rather smell of dead squirrel.) Seriously, though, I bet you were the best-smelling thing that passed through that office today.
Eau du Canine is vile to the human nose.
Rolling around in a dead animal must be the puppy equivalent of a purfumista score!
CdB is HUGE on me! I always have to remind myself to only spray once and then share it around to wrist, décolletage, etc.!
Huge, but so nice!
My sister complimented my dog’s fragrance after I’d been cuddling with her wearing Champagne de Bois! Guess it clings to fur quite well! CdB has beautiful rich sillage. It’s the fragrance I get the most compliments from cashiers on so they must be able to smell it from a distance!
It’s a well-loved fragrance, and for good reason.
I like my fragrances to have PRESENCE. I don’t want to overwhelm, trigger an asthma attack, or to distract someone from their dinner, or make their gum taste like a BWF, but I *DO* want to notice my scent without sticking my wrist to my nose. If it’s that close to skin, I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth. I would rather select fragrances for occasions based on fullness of the compositions, rather than based on sillage. A full scent–rich and enveloping–is less polite at the theater, but I don’t think a waft of bright spices (or some other airy composition) should be unwelcome!
Maybe “airy” is the key. Some supposedly “light” scents, like citrus and classic EdCs, can be kind of obnoxious when they’re sprayed too liberally. Of course, they usually burn away fast, too. But it is nice to know you smell good at more than 2 inches away…
Alas my skin just swallows perfume so I am lucky if the sillage is beyond my immediate skin. Usually it involves dousing my clothes… and that changes the quality of the sillage – usually lighter and involving the top notes. Not as warm. Likewise florals don’t stay well in summer but their sillage sparkles sweetly in winter. Admittedly this is probably why I can wear something like Fourreau Noire in 37C heat and not flinch. Still, sometimes I wish I could move beyond ‘subtle’ and just radiate.
I enjoy my friend’s sillage… she just radiates for all perfume, no matter what. Always smells lovely.
Maybe it’s a blessing to have perfume-eating skin. You can wear all the whoppers without breaking a sweat!
Have you tried an unscented lotion base to keep your skin from soaking it up? I’m not sure it would help, but you never know.
Perhaps! Nothing like smelling like smelling of bonfire/explosion of animalic undertone in a quiet, private way even at work. Or wear four different scents sans complaint. Still, it makes me a bit sad to not waft! Ridiculous really.
I tried it for a bit, but while it made some scents ‘stick’ it didn’t change the sillage much. Maybe I need to try mixing some perfume in with the lotion and layering the sprays… Then getting it on everything.
Yes, I can see how simply making something wear longer but not louder is a bit of a drag. Well, I’ll cross my fingers that you find your sillage bomb eventually!
I love this post so much I want to use sillage as a verb and keep using it that way! Yeah, I’m weird.
I’m with Undina – I consider sillage when I wear perfume, not when I buy them.
Sillage sillage sillage! It does sound kind of nice.
To sillage or not to sillage; that is the question. 😉
Do you sillage what I sillage?
I think the aspect that frustrates me most about sillage is not when it changes from big-and-airy down to skin scent within, say, an hour. I hate that. If it’s loud, like Samsara, I just put on less, and if it’s a quiet Annick Goutal, I use the spray-until-wet technique.
If it’s LOUD then gets too quiet to smell without bringing wrist to nose, like Terracotta Voile d’Ete, I don’t know how to dose it. I really, really hate that. Even though I liked TVdE, I couldn’t manage the incredible shrinking sillage, and I had to pass that bottle on because it frustrated me so much.
That *is* frustrating. Unless you carry the bottle with you, you’re stuck barely scented.
Whoops. Please strike “not” from that first sentence.
That’s funny–I don’t even think I read the “not”!
I completely agree, Mals. I avoid fragrances like that. If I could draw my ideal sillage as a graph, the line would not descend suddenly, but with a little dip at the beginning, to represent the way it settles in the first few minutes, followed by a gradual downward curve after that.
That sounds just about right. It’s always odd to wear a fragrance that gets louder, too.
Unfortunately, the Tauers do that on me… 🙁
Generally I prefer a close sillage, especially at work which means that my bottle of the wonderful Tauer Incense Rose will last me a lifetime. I love Gold Man, but it is a sillage monster for me (though it is a perfect black tie scent. Many times with a sillage monster I will dab instead of spray. The smallest drop of Kamali Jazmin on my ankle is more than enough.
Gold Woman is a bossy fragrance, too. You’re so right–dabbed is just the answer sometimes!
Lately I’ve been enamored of Vanille Insensee and Bois Blonds. They both waft about me in a way that makes them seem as is they are alive on my skin. The sillage is lovely, and the effect is the same whether I apply lightly or moderately. I almost never apply more than three or four dabs, or one or two spritzes, of any fragrance.
I love the idea of a fragrance “alive” on skin! So poetic.
It seems to me that sillage also seems to follow fashion trends. The big over the top 80’s, with the Dynasty-esque shoulder pads brought us Poison and Eternity that you could smell 2 blocks away. When Poison came out (85?) you almost needed a gaz mask to walk downtown. Then things calmed down, even before IFRA restrictions.
It seems also that these days I choose my sillage not just base on what I prefer, but based on where I’m going and who will be there, especially after my employer tried to ban all fragrant products last year. It was never really enforced, but one day it could…
Oh, I know what you mean. Better safe than sorry with perfume. There’s no reason to give ammunition for a ban. My office is pretty scent-tolerant, but I do try to keep the Amouage (for instance) to dab levels.
It was the wonderful (at the time) and great sillage of early Youth Dew that first got me into wearing perfume…it was about 1968 – I was in school and we had a terribly glamourous new young teacher who looked so cool…long black hair parted in the middle and mini skirts and lots of makeup – just so right for us young girls to want to emulate but she wore YD and we could smell that wonderful sweet resinous sillage wafting thro’ the corridors of school and I was so impressed – so bowled over – just by a smell. I saved hard and bought the bath oil and wore it as perfume!! Oh I thought I was so so cool! But sillage is hugely important – I like getting compliments about a perfume I’m wearing but more importantly I like to smell the residue on clothes and in my wardrobe ….so love the sillage of Coco Mademoiselle but can never wear that awful perfume….have bought several bottles over the years and they always end up on ebay. But I’ve just really got into Serge Lutens and am slowly working my way thro them (by samples) and I feel my holy grail is getting closer…..
Love your Youth Dew story.
Massive fan of YD bath oil here .
That’s my favorite form of it.
Lovely story! Serge has some wonderful fragrances. I’m sure it won’t be long before you’re inspiring the people around you the same way your teacher inspired you.
Being in a same sex relationship had really helped me to understand sillage . When my partner wears a fragrance from my collection, I get a understanding of what others my experience when I’m in there presents . I agree with your opinions on length and distance, as I notice only certain notes being quite prominent when being within his close space .
When it comes to sillage , I’ll take it any way it comes . From the all out assault of EL Azuree to a discreet dap of Cuir de russie extrait . Depends on my mood , intension and destination .
Terrific article . X
That should be ‘ has ‘ on first line . I’m still in one 😉
EL Azuree is really a bomb on that front. I wore two tiny sprays on a snowy afternoon to go have a manicure and erm, wax. It was in a tiny room and at some point during the process it occurred to me I had bombed the place. The beautician was very gracious about it, she said that “it, um, grows on you?”. Hehe.
(Off topic, but I found that Azuree does not work in the cold, not for me at least. It’s too dry for snow).
Great story . Thanks for the knowing chuckle.
Perhaps 100mlEdP’s Cuir de Russie extract would be a delicious alternative!
Hey, that’s great you have your own in-house perfume model!
I, personally chase down my step daughters & spray them. Amazing how different scents go depending on who’s wearing. I cannot stand Angel edp- smells great on my step- one spray sillage monster. I prefer Angel edt & spritz hair & throat.
I really like the sillage of Eau des Merveilles on me. It’s not obvious – on the contrary, it’s quite sneaky, it seems that it’s not there, but it very much is. Does this make any sense? This perfume is my most complimented one.
Besides that, most perfumes I have tried from the Maison Francis Kurkdjian line have excellent sillage – Lumiere Noire, APOM and Aqua Universalis Forte, for example. Their sillage is just right, not suffocating – just enough for people to pick up when you walk by.
I think that “sneaky” sillage is the perfect one. When you notice someone’s sillage only after spending time with them, then realize you smelled it all along.
This is a lovely piece on a topic which, as others have said, is close to the heart of every perfumista but which nevertheless is often a source of puzzlement. Because, it can be very tricky to judge how much a perfume you are wearing is trailing. And perfume newbies are often surprised, I think, to realise that perfumes differ in terms of their sillage, exactly as you have described. And then there is the whole business of spray vs dab! (It does make a difference, I am convinced.)
Chanel No 19 EDT has the perfect sillage for me. Surprising perhaps, but true. Has to be sprayed though.
It really is hard to judge! I always wince a bit inside when someone who comes into my office complements my perfume before he’s even in the door (not that my office is so huge, though).
Great sillage/presence is the deal-breaker for me. I like fragrances that say Hello! and stay that way (within reason, of course). Otherwise, it seems like a waste of money – why buy perfume you have difficulties detecting?
I think some of it has to do with not having grown up with the idea of ‘wanting to smell nice’ by using perfume or [obviously] scented grooming products. There’s a sharp distinction between not having scents around at all, and consciously choosing to wear perfume which I discovered in my late teens. If it’s perfume, it better be there 🙂
I find many modern fragrances disappointingly quiet and polite in that regard. One recent exception is Lush. I sprayed it three times on my hand. I felt VERY self-conscious walking down the street. 🙂 I couldn’t wait to scrub it off my wrist, and then went back the next day to buy a bottle. Lol.
Other fragrances with a great presence are YR Secret d’Essences Neroli, VW Boudoir and FM PoaL. Oh, and Coco.
I can definitely see where you’d be disappointed if you were looking forward to really smelling something! Still, I do love the “just I know” feeling of wearing a quiet extrait.
Of all the fragrances I have tried L’Heure Bleue is still the one with the best sillage. Present but not loud and so radiant.
I vary between big sillage and low sillage fragrances as I do between sweeter and greener/fresher scents. Yesterday I enjoyed the gentle but persistent presence of Cuir de Russie while today’s Jean Louis Scherrer is a trifle more insistent.
Your comment about Coco Mlle has finally made me understand why I always compliment others on it , yet cannot bear to wear it on myself.
Great though provoking post!
I’ve been loving Cuir de Russie a lot lately. It’s not loud, but it has terrific persistence. It’s been a real go-to for me.
A wonderful post Angela!
Sillage is indeed a rather mysterious/magical thing.
For me, I prefer my perfume’s sillage to reach an arm’s length at least. Perfume, I think, while it shouldn’t suffocate those around you, deserves to be noticed.
If my fragrance turns out to hover no more than an inch above my skin, I feel a little let down, as it to me, defies to a certain level the purpose to be scented.
Now this also leads to another problem I have… I adore perfumes in Parfum strength because they can be the most “glorious” form but their sillage leave SO MUCH to desire!
If only we had giant jugs of parfum and could splash it on without restraint and often!
Great post, Angela. I’m a close and personal sillage girl, but two things occur to me: one, my skin can hold onto scent forever, even through showers, so I feel like I get big sillage even from scents that others say are quiet or close to the skin. I wonder if others have found a relationship between sillage and either scent-eating skin or scent-glue skin.
And two, iso e super is used to boost certain notes and also to extend a fragrance, and I’ve found that newer fragrances using lots of iso e tend to be sillage monsters on me and I can’t do them.
That’s such a great point about iso e super. I know someone who wears it alone (properly diluted, of course) and I can smell it across the room.
Sillage is pronounced ‘see-yazh’. http://fragnameoftheday.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/sillage.html