Isn’t it magical to enter a room with the smell of sandalwood, jasmine, or bergamot announcing your arrival? Perfumes and scents can make heads turn in a good way, but how do you make that effect last? Some might be intimidated by the price points of perfume, but they’re expensive because of their oil concentrations.
Perfume has the highest fragrance concentration, containing between 20-30% of oil, and it usually lasts up to eight hours. That’s why perfume costs more, and people with sensitive skin may do better with perfumes as they have far less alcohol and therefore are not as likely to dry out the skin.
The next highest fragrance concentration is Eau de Parfum. Containing between 15-20% oil concentration, you can get a solid four to five hours of your fragrance on average. Parfums are made to last on the skin without giving people next to you a headache or transferring onto someone else’s neck after a hug. These are the most common fragrance category and the scent will be prominent from morning to evening.
Eau de Toilette contains between 5-15% of oil concentration and normally lasts two to three hours. That’s why they are usually cheaper than Parfums.
Now that you know the difference between the different categories of scents, here is the right way to wear your perfume and make them last longer.
Usually, you apply perfume on your pulse points like the insides of your wrists and elbows, behind your ears, on your neck, and on the back of your knees. This is because the blood in the veins flows close to the skin at these points, emitting heat, which helps fragrance develop and diffuse faster.
When you apply the perfume to your pulse points, you might instinctively rub your wrists or elbows together to smudge the wet fragrance on your skin, but rubbing your perfume is actually a big no-no as it makes the top notes burn off a little quicker. If you would like to blend two fragrances together, try tapping or dabbing them instead.
When you buy your perfumes, you might notice that the shop often provides the scent in their shampoo, soap, and even moisturiser. By using other body products in the same scent, it’ll also help the scent last longer because hydrated and moisturised skin can hold fragrance a lot longer.
Some perfume lovers also layer their fragrances by including different scented lotions under their perfume, choosing scents that complement each other well. By checking the scent notes, you can sniff what works well and try them to see if it creates an even more unique scent that is the most ‘you’.
Besides your skin, you can also spray your Eau de Parfum on your clothes as they will last longer on fabric. Since your sweat and natural oils can accumulate throughout the day, it makes the scent wear off, but scents tend to cling onto your clothes for a long time, as you may notice when spritzing onto your clothes.
Besides that, the formulation of the perfume will also affect how it smells. If you’ve ever gotten into an empty elevator and smelled the person before you, what you were smelling is their perfume’s ‘sillage’.
Sillage is the French word for “trail”, as in the scent trail that a perfume leaves behind. Bold florals, deep animalistic bases, and very high fragrance concentrations are known for their monster sillage.
‘Projection’ is another term for how your perfume can radiate off your skin, and while it can be related to sillage, it’s slightly different. While it’s rarer, sometimes a fragrance can have a hearty projection, but not leave much of a trail.
This can be common with a lot of men’s scents based on citrus notes. So while someone’s skin could be radiating heat and projecting the fragrance, you might only catch a brief whiff as they leave. Thus, they’re not leaving much of a wake (low sillage).
Knowing these can help you decipher how much perfume to apply and how it behaves around you. Now that you know a little more about fragrance, go ahead and find out what kind of trail you’d like to leave today.
