It's time, again, to get back to the topic of uncovering your true fragrance style, and this is part two. If you haven't read part one, feel free to go back to that post to get caught up a bit.
If you've caught up to this point, well then let's get going to the next part in this series designed to help you to discover what you really love in a scent and how to pick scents out online without smelling them.
So, essentially, in the world of candle scents, there are basic (or traditional) scents that are used to build upon to make those fantastically complex fragrances we've come to love.
These blends are, really, the start of great fragrances that you love.
But just because they're bases and they're often used in blends, doesn't mean they're not quite superior on their own.
It just means that they make an excellent starting point, and these bases are usually just that - a starting point for many of those more elaborate scents we've come to adore over years.
So let's look at what these traditional scents are.
Traditional scents include:
Soliflores - scents from a single flower, such as rose, or jasmine, or lily.
Cyphre (sheep-ra) - the French word for cyprus that includes your patchouli, oakmoss, and bergamot.
Leather - includes those delicate blends of fragrances such as tobacco, your burning (birch) wood, other woods, honey and those scents that give us a aromas of leathery fragrances.
Fougere (foozh-air) - the French word for fern, and all of these are, as you could imagine, your greens and herbaceous scents. This group also includes lavender, oakmoss (yes, this is an overlap with cyphre), and coumarin, which is a natural, fragrant substance found in many plants. It is organic chemical compound found in the benzopyrone chemical class.
Woodsy - As you may have already guessed, these are your sandalwoods, cedarwoods, and other wood scents. It also includes patchouli, which also creates a slight overlap with the cyphre group.
Ambery - includes scents such as vanilla as well as your musky scents that are combined with flowers and woods.
As a candle lover (or even a perfume lover) you could probably see how these fragrances would be part of a bigger picture. But traditional scents are not just a small part of a bigger picture, they're the mainstay of the fragrance itself, the depth of the aroma.
To better understand what I mean, let's get to know scents just a little better.
(Psst. If you've already signed up for parts one and two, you're already on the list to get part 3. I know, cool, right!)
Knowing What Makes Scents
Traditional scents (as I call them) are more commonly used as bases.
Knowing a bit more about the bases of scent can further help you to determine the common element in the scent(s) that you may be drawn to. Knowing more about bases can also help you to determine what you may or may not like just by knowing what the fragrance notes are (without smelling it).
Here's what I mean.
When you're purchasing a fragrance online, you may see a list of notes that give the fragrance its completeness. It may look like just a list of aromas to you when you look at it. But, once you have an understanding of these notes and which you're drawn to, you'll gain a better sense of what you like in that fragrance. And, like I said, your base notes are going to be what reels you in because its what gives you that depth.
Have you ever sprayed perfume on your wrist at a department store and it smelled one way when you first sprayed it, but you either liked it more or didn't like it as much about 20 minutes later?
When all of the other notes have faded, the base notes will linger and last. It's the base notes that you smell last.
Another quick example.
When you light a candle, you first smell the lighter notes, but as you continue to burn it, those lighter notes will eventually fade into a more complex aroma. After hours of burning a candle, your candle fragrance begins to hold a deeper, richer aroma that sticks in the air.
Those lighter scents you smelled during the first few hours of your burn time have actually become something much more!
This, my friend, is what I'm talking about when I'm talking base notes. And when you're in the know about what bases you love, you can easily build on that love and become an online fragrance shopping superstar!
In part 3, we'll take what we've learned in parts one and two and start to categorize them to give you a more direct peek into categories that will fit your overall "scent style." If you want the full series, including part three, get it here.