How to read a fragrance pyramid

Every fragrance on this site lists three things: top notes, heart notes and base notes. They are not three ingredients. They are three stages of one composition, and they arrive in order.

The top notes are what you smell first and what you smell for the shortest time. They are built from the most volatile materials in the formula, which is exactly why they are gone within twenty minutes. A fragrance you dislike in the first minute is a fragrance you have not smelled yet.

The heart is the composition's argument. It emerges as the top notes burn off and holds for two to four hours. Rose, jasmine, saffron, agarwood: what a perfumer chooses here decides what the fragrance is about.

The base is what remains, and what other people remember. Vanilla, musk, patchouli, woods. Heavy molecules that hold to skin and can still be found the next morning. In an extrait, where the oil sits between twenty and thirty percent, the base does most of the work.

Which is why a fragrance is judged on skin rather than paper, and after an hour rather than on the first press. The pyramid is a sequence. You have only read the first line.