Welcome to part 2 of the fragrance myth-busting series. Today we are taking a closer look at some persistent myths about perfume quality and performance, storage, and a few stragglers that fall into the “general confusion” category.
Perfume Quality & Performance Myths
“More longevity = better”
There’s a growing trend among fragrance lovers to chase the longest lasting perfume possible. I understand the perception that more hours on skin equals more value. Speaking as someone who works entirely with natural materials, creating a fragrance that lasts a very long time isn’t always possible (or desirable).
I often choose natural materials that help a scent linger, such as resins, botanical fixatives, terpeneless citruses, and absolutes in place of essential oils. Even so, sometimes longevity needs to give way to the overall effect. That tradeoff isn’t a flaw. It simply means you get to enjoy the luxury of reapplying.
“More projection = better”
Alongside longevity, there’s an enthusiasm for what some call “beast mode” perfumes. These are fragrances designed to announce themselves before you enter a room. While I understand why bold projection is appealing to some, not everyone around you wants to be drafted into your scent story.
There’s real value in choosing a fragrance that makes you feel great even if only you and the people in your personal orbit can smell it. A scent doesn’t have to radiate across a football field to be considered high performing.
“Price reflects the ingredients in every perfume.”
When it comes to designer perfumes and niche brands owned by major conglomerates, the cost of the fragrance itself is only a tiny fraction of the retail price. In many cases, a department store perfume’s actual product cost, including the fragrance concentrate, alcohol, bottle, box, and label, falls somewhere between one and three dollars. Everything else in the price tag reflects distribution fees, royalties, research and development, transportation, marketing, advertising, placement fees, and profit.
Independent niche houses spend more on fragrance materials than large conglomerates. Natural perfumers tend to spend the most, since high quality naturals are significantly more expensive than synthetics. More on that in a separate post you can find here.
Perfume Storage Myths
“Perfume lasts forever.”
Perfumes can last for years, but they are not immortal. Heat, light, and time all play a role in how a fragrance ages. The next myth explains more about storage, but here is one practical tip. Once a bottle hits the halfway mark, the increased air in the bottle speeds up oxidation, as well as the evaporation of top notes. There is no reason to save your fragrance for a special occasion. Use it and enjoy it.
“Where and how you store perfume doesn’t matter.”
You might be tempted to keep perfume on a dresser or bathroom counter where you can admire it and keep it in easy reach. Unfortunately, exposure to light, heat, and moisture will break a fragrance down more quickly. For best results, store your perfumes away from all three. A cool drawer, cabinet, or closet shelf will keep them happier for longer.
General Perfume Myths
“Perfume has a gender.”
One of the most common questions I get is whether my fragrances are made for men or for women. The idea of a perfume having a prescribed gender is a marketing invention. While many of us associate certain styles of scent with masculinity or femininity, anyone can wear anything.
I designed my packaging to feel as gender neutral as possible because I want customers to simply choose what they love. Men buy my florals. Women buy my woods. No one needs permission. If you fall for a fragrance marketed to the “wrong” demographic and the bottle throws you off, decant the perfume into a different bottle and recycle the original one. Problem solved.
“Perfume has a season.”
We often associate specific fragrance styles with particular seasons. Those associations come from habit and culture rather than rules. You can wear a citrus cologne in winter if it lifts your spirits or reach for a deep amber in summer if it makes you feel grounded.
If you love the idea of staying within seasonal scent themes, go with what you enjoy. Just know that nothing in perfumery requires you to wait for the calendar to give you the green light.
“Making a perfume at a scent bar means you know how to make perfume.”
Scent bars and beginner workshops are a wonderful way to learn fragrance basics. They often introduce the fragrance pyramid, scent families, and simple construction ideas. The experience of making a commercial perfume, however, is completely different.
Scent bars typically offer a small set of pre-diluted materials or premixed bases. These blends are designed for quick customization. They don’t reflect the depth of knowledge needed to create a formula from scratch, balance dozens of raw materials, and refine a composition over many iterations. They are a fun entry point, not a full education. And once you’ve been bitten by the fragrance-making bug, there’s a good chance you’ll want to continue learning about it and getting hands on with experimentation.
“Fragrance families are fixed categories.”
Retailers often organize perfumes into families like ambers, fougeres, citruses, or florals. These categories help shoppers get their bearings, but fragrance families are not rigid. Many perfumes straddle multiple categories or feel at home in more than one.
If you want to explore this further, take a gander at my blog post on fragrance families here.
Wrap Up
If you missed the first installment of this series, you can go back and read Part I here. It covers the earliest and most stubborn perfume myths that tend to set the stage for all the others.
Part II has focused on clearing the air around quality, storage, and how perfume behaves in the real world. In Part III, we’ll explore one of the most challenging areas of confusion, the myths about natural materials versus synthetics, what they bring to a formula, and why the conversation is rarely as simple as it seems.