At Fumerie last week, I saw testers grouped by fragrance families: citrus, floral, woody — well, you get the idea. It inspired two thoughts. First, is there a way to organize fragrances that might speak more directly to what perfume shoppers really want? Next, do I have a personal fragrance classification system?
My guess is that most non-perfume-fiend fragrance shoppers would be happy in a store that classified fragrance fairly simply. Five categories come to mind. “Clean” is the first. I bet “clean” is the first descriptor lot of perfume shoppers utter. (A related category might be, “I don’t really like perfume, but.”)
Next, I’d label a shelf “sexy.” Shoppers might not come out and say it, but a lot of them are looking for babe- or dude-magnet elixirs. We can put the fruity patchoulis there. Good luck to them. Other categories might include “smells exactly like what it says it is” (Demeter, soliflores, most Jo Malones), “just buying the prestige and/or cool factor,” “macho,” and “dessert.”
A personal perfume collection can, of course, organize itself on a whole different scheme. For instance, Robin says she’d list of few of her perfume families as “spawn of Angel,” “wood pudding,” and “Olivia Giacobetti.”
Here are a few (not all!) of the categories in my own perfume collection with sample contents:
Bombshell: Robert Piguet Fracas, Lanvin My Sin, Caron Narcisse Noir, Guerlain Shalimar, Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower, Vero Profumo Onda, Grandiflora Flower of the Night.
Old-school chypre: Rochas Femme, Nina Ricci Fille d’Eve, Acqua di Parma Profumo, Pucci Zadig, Christian Dior Miss Dior, Rochas Audace.
Vintage and just plain old-fashioned: old Lanvin Arpège, Chanel No. 5, Millot Crêpe de Chine, Pierre Bourdon Sous les Magnolias, Elizabeth Taylor Passion.
Comfort (powder, amber, and Oriental subcategories): Amouage Beloved, Sylvain Delacourte Florentina, Rochas Tocade, Chanel Bois des Iles.
Leather and/or iris (their moods mingle for me, so I’d put them in the same box): Chanel Cuir de Russie, Bottega Veneta, Hermès Bel Ami, XerJoff Irisss, Parfums DelRae Mythique.
Other categories might be “wacky,” “lovely floral,” and “perfect for August.”
Do you have a personal fragrance classification system? Do tell!
Note: top image shows a grouping of iris fragrances at Fumerie in Portland, via their Facebook page.
What a great food for thought.
I find pretty original that at Scent Bar they display fragrances not by brand but by dominating note/genre.
Personally I don’t have any classification system, or maybe I have one but am not aware of it, doing some things unconsciously.
Were I to come up with a classification at the moment as we speak, I would split my fragrances into: Pradaholic, nostalgic (irises, roses), moodlifters (citrus), cuddlefluffs (ambers, vanillas) plus probably few more I can’t come up with at the moment.
CUDDLEFLUFFS! That’s awesome.
Thank you ^_^
Agreed! Moodlifter is pretty great, too.
Thanks so much Angela 🙂
Well, that settles ! You should definitely start your own fragrance classification system and issue an annual catalog. I’d buy one.
I might be a new Michael Edwards 😉
It would be a lot of fun. Especially to browse through “the book of cuddlefluffs”
Yes! I’m sure we could all nominate our own cuddlefluffs for you to consider!
Yes please! 😀
Cuddlefluffs is spectacular!
Thanks
Love your categories!!
Glad to hear
I like “cuddlefluffs” too! And maybe occasionally it can used as an adjective: “this one is very cuddlefluffy”.
I”m getting a strong urge to name a cat Cuddlefluff!
I actually googled cuddlefluff, and the third hit was a video titled “Cuddle fluff” showing a cat hugging his/her human. 😉
That’s perfect!
That’s actually quite a pretty cat name
Just added to my list of cat names for the local shelter. Their coordinator is constantly calling to schedule spays and neuters for yet-unnamed animals and I’m often on the spot trying to think up appropriate names that aren’t too cerebral or off the wall for the small-town demographic. Some poor tabby is currently named “Steve” thanks to my overtired brain.
Two of the last three cats I adopted from the shelter were named “Wubbler” and “Mr. Heart,” so don’t feel bad. (They were quickly renamed Mae West and Squeaky.)
What a great list! My classification is broad – vintage bottles and recent bottles. I have a 1970s Miss Dior on its way to me.
I think you’re going to love that Miss Dior! I know I love mine, at least. In fact, I need some on me right this minute….
I have a Winter Tray, a Summer Tray and an Office Tray. The latter is especially useful when I run late and have a nanosecond to grab something.
Oh, that’s a smart idea! It’s almost like having a “sure thing” tray that won’t disappoint.
You’d call it a “trump card” tray, for fragrances that work forever and for always
Yes, and I’ll avoid getting political here, except to say I’d stick with “sure thing” for my own personal tray.
I like Sure Thing or maybe Safe Bet….;)
Safe Bet is perfect!
I need to do that with the office tray!
I know! It’s a smart idea.
I have no classification system. I try to keep perfumes from the same house together, but sometimes one or two are separated from the others. I do put the little bottles of pure parfum together, but other than that I am lacking in perfume organizational skills.
My perfume cabinet is a disaster area of tatty shoeboxes. Maybe tonight’s the night I settle down, spread out the bottles, and put things in order.
Well, I could not possibly imagine a night spent better. Seriously.
I have a bit more work to do, then it’s happening!
I, um, tend to classify my personal collection — at least the full bottles — by which season I wear them in. I’m not averse to wearing something “out of season,” but I truly love making the switch. THere’s just something extra-special about wearing a crackling-leaf spicy thing to a football game, or a classic aldehyde in icy weather.
The current seasonal rotation lives in a hatbox on my dresser, and the rest are in clear plastic boxes in the bedside cabinet. I have Summer, Spring, Fall, Winter, and Season-spanning. Right now, because it’s not high summer but because we’re still having temperatures in the upper 80s, I have some summer stuff, some fall stuff, and some season-spanning in the Hatbox of Current Rotation.
I guess I could mentally categorize my collection as mostly including Aldehydic Florals, Green Florals, Fruity Florals, Vintages, and Lightweight Woods/Orientals, but the season thing works for me.
(I’m changing the subject a bit here, but if you remember Haunani who used to be a regular NST commenter… she told me that once she had moved from northern California to Hawai’i, she found herself ignoring certain favorites because they just “didn’t work” in that warm and humid atmosphere, and choosing far fewer chypres and green florals in favor of citrus and fruit. Seasonal changes aren’t going to suit everyone.)
I simply love “Hatbox of Current Rotation” as a category!
And, yes, of course I remember Haunani. How interesting–but not surprising, I guess–that her favorites are shifting now.
I think that’s great and it really does fit with how most people shop for fragrances, but also all of those categories are so subjective!
What’s sexy for someone may be super far from it for someone else. And again there are different ways of being sexy (or being clean, for that matter!)
But I’m thinking about it the way someone who is into perfume would…
Well, of course you’re right! Big perfume companies, at least, seem convinced that dark fruit and patchouli equal sexiness.
This is why I dislike the category system and find shopping at Scent Bar frustrating. Categories are subjective. I group by house and then within the house I group by type.
Very practical. You can probably find the fragrance you want, too.
It would love to be able to tag perfumes with more than one tag and then use the tags to effortlessly find the perfume that suits an occasion! I realize this would be hard to do and skirts the question posed entirely, but wouldn’t that be nice? If a given perfume could only have three tags, tops, I think one tag would be the season and/or weather I associate with the perfume, another would be the note I chiefly associate with the perfume, and the last tag would be the mood I like to be in to wear the perfume (which sometimes overlaps with the first two tags, but not always).
Oooh, I get it! It probably wouldn’t be hard to do a pivot table in excel with the categories, then you could sort them by mood and come up with the day’s choices.
Oooo – I love the three way tag idea and it coincides with how I think of what fragrance I want to wear each day or for an occasion (weather, mood, note(s) I want to wear).
My samples are currently a kind of mini scent library organized by ‘family’ – whatever fits my own definition of woods, gourmand, classic, floral, etc. which may or may not be the way anyone else would classify them.
My bottles aren’t really organized at all. I’m going to try making 2 –
3 tags for each and use Angela’s pivot table idea. I need to practice my excel skills anyway and this table would at least be fun!
That’s definitely my idea of the way to use a pivot table! Otherwise, spreadsheets aren’t very exciting for me…..
Agreed, I can’t say I’ve ever found pivot tables exciting, but this does sound like it could be great Excel practice 😀 Thanks for the idea, Angela!
If Microsoft only knew!
A wonderful friend (and occasional NST commenter, Daisy!) once suggested that we add a “sexy” section to Arielle Shoshana (which follows this same sections model- I think Scent Bar are the pioneers). But I worry that all of our other scents would be hurt that they didn’t make the cut! 😉
We all want to be thought of as sexy!
I’ve nearly given up on it, but yes!
I know what you mean! For the perfume who likes perfume all right but isn’t a fanatic, that probably would work. But for the rest of us, I don’t know. Maybe a “va va voom” section?
I love the idea of a “va va voom” section! On my one and only visit to Scent Bar, I really liked their displays — many sorted by categories, and others by brand. I thought their system was pretty easy to navigate, especially guided by a very nice sales assistant.
A very nice sales assistant makes all the difference!
I stopped thinking about categories, because I feel dumb if I can’t tell a woody fougere from an aromatic one and so on. The language of perfume is so vague. Who says vanilla is sweet? We probably think of it as sweet because it reminds us of dessert. Saffron probably smells sweeter to me than most, because we use it in sweet bread around Christmas time here in Sweden.
And what smells sexy to westerners probably smells dirty to the Japanese.
Whats exciting though is that, very rarely we see (smell) a completly new category. Angel, for example, and Feminitė du Bois was the first out-and-out woody perfume for women.
There’s no point for me to categorise perfume because I only like a fraction of the ones I smell.
Then one category for you, personally, might be “perfumes I don’t like.” The largest category, of course!
Oh my, THAT…
is awesome.
Love this idea! Didn’t even realize that I have been doing this in my head. I now opened up the Cabinet, looked into absent-mindedly and poof, there really are my own pigeon holes! A few of them are… Powder room, simply perfumey, sticky sweet, crisp woods, vanillas, linden blossoms&honeysuckles, femme fatale, cuddly momma, fall forest, fruity chypres, woodsy violets, powdery violets, zesty, crisp white shirt, yummy booze, nasty skanks, no-brainers, honeys, ambers, memory lane, suntan lotion, fierce&confident, comfort blanket, uhh, and many more..
Hats off, Angela, and thank you! You’ve given me weeks’ worth of warm fuzzies, just thinking about organizing them into these groups IRL…
(Yes, nerd here.)
Hah, just dug out a few samples from my handbag, and they are mostly of the Legally Blonde and For Reading Russians categories. I wonder what that says about my weekend…:/
Ha ha! Love both of those categories!
*love* these two in particular.
Oh, you have some good categories there! I especially love “cuddly mama” and “memory lane.”
Thanks:). Yes, there are certain scents that strangely all my kids seem to gravitate towards:). Those are the cuddly mamas:).
How about classifying scents based on their effect on the mood? It would be interesting if upon entering the perfume shop you immediately saw a shop map and an information board like this one: “Feeling sad? Scents in aisle A will make you cheerful. Tired? Check our energy-boosters in aisle B. Want to feel sexy? Go to aisle C. Having trouble sleeping lately? Scents in aisle D may help you.” And so on, and so on… 😀
Oh, fragrance as medicine and mood correction! Cheaper than therapy and much better smelling.
Yes, this makes sense!
This is such a fun idea. It’s like a perfume Treasure Map!
I want to see that map!
I try to keep the same brands together but truth be told, it is more like wherever I happen to leave the bottle. When I dig something out of a box, I try to replace the gap with another one that may be out of season or one that I don’t think I’ll be wearing for a while. I have most of my extraits in a separate drawer (except for Golconda because the crate is too big). Half used manufacturer’s atomizer samples are in a translucent cotton swab plastic container.
When perfume sniffing, I would rather do it at a place where the brands are grouped together rather than by fragrance family or dominant note.
This works perfectly, as long as you know your brands. (Come to think of it, at Fumerie (for example), although the testers are grouped by fragrance family, the boxes on the visible shelves are grouped by perfume house!)
It sounds like your system keeps the fragrances in rotation, which is good, especially when it’s so tempting to grab whatever’s temptingly close.
I usually do end up grabbing whatever is close by – I have a tendency to decant my FBs so that I can easily wear what would normally need to be unboxed were it not to be decanted and within easy reach.
I applaud your thoughtfulness on this!
I see someone was checking out irises at Fumerie! Favorites? Anyway, I really like their organizing principle for shopping. At home I’ve got samples by main note or company, bottles willis-nillis.
By note is a totally legitimate way to sort. But notes can have such moods! Iris, especially. (Even though I lump my iris fragrances together.) I hear what you say about willy-nilly.
So interesting! My bottles and large decants are organized first by house, then the one-offs are into categories. (Samples are alpha by house stuck in a piece of that green florist’s foam). The random categories are ambers, woody/smokey, roses, green, and then the whole bottom shelf is Things I Used To Love (and maybe would wear again?), Classics I Will Likely Never Wear and finally, I Should Really Throw It Away But.
Those last three categories are so relatable! I bet we all have them.
Green florist’s foam! Clever! I’ve got minis stored in some shallow foam containers; it keeps them from knocking about as the surface has some “stickiness” to it.
I like the idea, too. Now I want to see clear florist foam, though!
It’s nice because it crushes to fit the vials and inexpensive enough that I don’t feel bad replacing it.
My (perhaps too large) cabinet of full-bottles seems to keep a constant 55-60 bottles, even though I give things away frequently. They have to be categorized or I’d never find anything, ever.
Current categories are (1 or 2 examples):
Strict florals (Odalisque, HdP 1804)
BIG feminines (Ysatis, First, Knowing)
Testosteraunch (Yatagan, Rien, Aramis, Kouros, Francesco Smalto…)
Oddball Citrus (HM, Aoud Lime, Benetton Unisex)
Oriental (Habanita, Dzing!, Minotaure, Youth Dew)
Weird (Chypre Mousse, La Fin du Monde, Tar, Black March, Walk of Shame)
This varies every couple of months. I had them sorted by bottle size or color, heavy vs. light rotation, everyday vs. formal…anything but alphabetical!
I love this! Especially “Testosteraunch.” There’s no way your cabinet is too large, either. At least, not compared to mine….
I tend to repeatedly cull my collection so it stays rather small (my son is an ardent & adventurous collector, so most things go to him), but I like to embrace a seasonal rotation with a few twists… informally it probably goes like this:
End of summer melancholy: Eau Sauvage EDT
Autumn cupboard-love: Vintage Old Spice
Winter log splitting: Yatagan
Christmas formal: Eau Sauvage Parfum
April-is-the-cruelest-month: Caron Pour un Homme
False start summer: Caron Third Man
Sweat, yardwork, truthfulness: Guerlain Vetiver
Replays:
Debonair, desiccated & detached: Yatagan in high heat
I wish I were already asleep: Caron Pour un Homme
Always have supplies on hand for gin & tonic: Eau Sauvage EDT
Wow, your categories could make up free verses of their own.
How lucky your son is to be able to share his passion with you!
It’s delightful for me, as he can pull off things I can’t quite manage, like 1980’s ‘powerhouse’ masculines (they make me smell like someone’s overbearing uncle), vintage Opium for Women (a big personality), and younger men’s fragrances like Burberry Touch or JPG LeMale. Every time I pass something his way I mourn it for a day or two because I know he’ll most likely wear it better than I did!
Love all of these, but Debonair is truly a winner among categories!
… And I should have added (to that category, as well as a perennial for “killing them softly”): Habit Rouge EDT.
Perfect!
I love this! If you aren’t a novelist, you should be.
Aw thanks! No gift for fiction (plotting is tough), but I publish a bit of art criticism and poetry (actually, the two categories have merged a little in the form of ekphrastic poems based on fragrances… Kind of weird, but lots of possibilities to explore.)
Yes! And it sounds much tougher than plotting, in my opinion.
I dont categorise my scents, maybe its because I dont need to.
My collection of bottles is pretty small and they fit on one shelf, so I dont have to organise them in boxes and drawers around categories, themes or seasons and whatever.
So my bottles are not ordered, its quite a mess but i can still recognise them by their box colour and size Haha. And this works as long a I dont have more than 2 scents with same packaging.
But I do have dozens and dozens of samples in one box, and it takes longer and longer to pick the one i want. If I am going to organise them (someone here suggested to me once one of those hobby boxes) it will probably be A-Z by name. Easy.
My samples and decants are a disaster, simply piled in boxes, so I completely understand!
There’s a difference for me between how I’ve actually stored my scents (very boring — usually by size, e.g. samples, minis, discovery sets and full bottles, and roughly by brand), and how I think of them. I do have two shelves in an easily accessible cabinet that are 1) Mama’s Precioussses, don’t touch, and 2) the ones I don’t mind my daughters borrowing.
When I think about my scents, it is something like: Date Night, Comfort Scents, Confidence Boosters, Curiosities, Seasons, and Floral Notes.
It sounds like you made the most important classification in lumping some perfume into “Mama’s Precioussses”!
I have no grouping strategy, other than I did recently put what I considered summer scentsmon a mirrored tray on my dresser. The rest are all in boxes in a cabinet grouped in a way that allows them to all fit. Akin to packing a car trunk. Unboxed are on one of those plastic three-row things with higher level in back.
It would all look a lot no rest if my dresser were actually uncluttered. But it’s not…
I keep telling myself I’m going to do the tray strategy, too–it makes so much sense. And I hear you about the dresser!
My bottles of perfumes are easy to physically sort – they all fit on one mirrored tray, and are arranged by size. The categories that I place my bottles into within my head are as follows:
Smells like my grandpa
Classy lady (an aspirational category)
Smells like a place I love
I had a rough day/ Today may be a rough day
Olivia Giacobetti
I’m intrigued by “Smells like a place I love.” An evocative category!
I’m loving some of these categories, and ways of sorting. Some of my standard mental groupings for my perfumes are probably on the odder side, and individual scents sometimes sit in multiple categories:
+ Battle armour (with sub category: take no prisoners)
+ Mess with your head (for really masculine perfumes on high femme days, or on “why smell like flowers when you can smell like metal and seaweed?” days )
+ Inoffensively pretty (la la la)
+ Just plain gorgeous (or how to feel like a million dollars, even when wearing old pyjamas)
+ Return ticket to nostalgialand
+ I can’t hide under the duvet all day, but this feels pretty close
+ Super focused quiet places
+ Wildly alive (and you’ll probably see me dancing when I’m lifting)
Fabulous! These are really inspiring categories, too. I especially love “Mess with your head.”
My categories:
Bad high school memories I refuse to let go of: Ralph by Ralph Lauren, JLo love glow, Calvin Klein IN2U
I’m convincing my guy friends and myself that I’m “one of the guys”: she by Giorgio Armani, Cannibis Santal by Fresh
Oh Lord I hope this scent doesn’t offend anyone: see by Chloe, Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker
I do what I want: For her Narcisco Rodriguez, 1932 Chanel, Lipstick On Maison Margiela, Coco Noir Chanel
This list makes me feel decidedly basic ????
These are some good categories! (And there’s no shame in being basic, especially when being unconventional–usually a decidedly conventional unconventional–is common enough to be boring.)
Haha! I’m just now seeing this Angie, the spoils of our iris fest at Fumerie! XOXO ~T
Thanks to that trip, I’m completely hooked on Ormonde Jayne Vanille d’Iris!