Needing a little pick-me-up to 2021?

The best way is by fulfilling, if not all, just one of our 5 senses - our sense of smell. Scents are known to have a direct impact on the way we feel. If there’s a pungent smell, our mood turns sour. However, if there’s an aromatic scent we immediately feel content.

Think about it. If you start your day smelling fresh and delightful, you would definitely be feeling great too! The easiest way to do that is by finding the best fragrance for you.

The question now is, where do we even start?

It’s pretty simple, so here’s your ultimate guide to finding your fragrance:

Testing Scents

Who’d have thought that just going into a fragrance section and spritzing then smelling every scent is actually the biggest mistake anyone could make?

It's no surprise that we all want to find the perfect fragrance quickly. The easiest way to do so is by trying everything at once. However, by doing so, it actually creates one issue - overlapping scents that overwhelm your olfactory bulb. What’s happening here is you’re not giving each fragrance its own proper shot - which defeats the purpose of finding your perfume.

When it comes to choosing your fragrance, you should not make it a rushed experience. Take your time to absorb each scent, and keep it to 3 fragrances per visit so that your sense of smell doesn’t get overwhelmed. For those who don't have a clue what scent they are looking for, these steps are perfect for you. If there’s a scent you keep returning to or can’t stop leaning towards, trust your instincts and know that that is the scent for you.

The next thing that you should know about fragrances is - what those scents actually are.

Understanding Scents

After testing out which scent you attract you to the most, it is essential to understand what those scents are.

Guerlain International Beauty Expert Maxime Poulin broke down the olfactive families into four primary scents existing in all fragrances - fresh, floral, spice and woody.

Fresh
Typically characterised by citrusy notes like lemon and yuzu with a dash of aromatic notes like lavender or rosemary. It often has a very crisp and clean feeling accompanied by it, for example, when your clean laundry is dried out in the sun.

Floral
The most common scent is floral, which is so broad and iconic because of its popularity. This olfactory family is typically associated with romance and tenderness and has been the ideal representation of feminine essence. It encompasses everything from white florals, to roses, and dandelions.

Spice
Typically characterised by scents ranging from incense, smoke, warm spices and leather. Sometimes there's a hint of vanilla with an earthy and tobacco scent - or a smoky and woody smell.

Woody
Filled with chock-full smells associated with nature, ranging from sandalwood to spicy and dank like patchouli to cedarwood. Ever smelt that old musky scent when you’ve walked into an old church or library, or that smell of undergrowth in a forest in the fall - that’s what a woody fragrance smells like.

There are also top, middle and bottom notes. Top notes typically refer to fragrances that are detected immediately after application, essentially being the first scent you would pick up. Middle notes make the primary smell of the perfume and are usually more mellow. You start picking up the scent between two minutes and one hour after application. The final layer, base notes, bring depth and solidity to the entire perfume fragrance - it lasts the longest. Once middles tones start to fade, base notes will waft through and can last up to 24 hours - these scents are usually rich and strong once the perfume dries down.

Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum are also very different in terms of the concentration of fragrance oil and the amount of alcohol in the fragrance present. Essentially, higher alcohol content and lower fragrance oil concentration mean more diffusion of scent, and more diffusion means more people can smell it like Eau de Toilette. Eau de Parfum is the reverse with higher fragrance oil and lower alcohol content as Poulin explains in The Flare and is perfect scent between you and your partner.

Lifestyle and Scents

Now that you’ve tested and understood which scents are best suitable for you and what they are, it’s time to envision how these scents can be incorporated into your daily lifestyles. It’s about what image you want to exude or what sort of person you wish to be - so how does scent fit into all this?

Scent plays powerful roles in our lives, be it to us the wearer or passers-by who get a quick whiff of your fragrances. Our olfactory sense is so strong that it creates immediate reactions once you catch a sniff and can even transport us to memories from long ago. Therefore, let your sense of smell direct you and help decide the best scent for you when making purchases. From fresh to floral, spice and woody scents. If you want to return to a happy memory and aspire to become a goddess in your own right, shining radiantly bright - why not let your fragrance convey that too?

With our Eau de Parfum, Goddess, become the person you wish to be and accentuate the etherealness within you. Consisting of a distinct blend of divine fragrance from the primary olfactory families, this makes it the perfect fragrance for any and every occasion.

When and where you want to put it on? Well, we leave it all up to you now.