Perfume

Top, heart and base: how to read perfume notes

Perfume notes describe how a fragrance changes on skin: top notes in the first minutes, heart notes for hours, base notes into the next day.

Why a perfume changes

A perfume changes because its ingredients evaporate at different speeds. Light, volatile materials such as citrus, mint and pepper rise first and fade quickly; heavier materials such as woods, resins, musks and ambergris evaporate slowly and stay.

Perfumers arrange these materials in three stages, often drawn as a pyramid: top notes at the point, heart notes in the middle and base notes at the wide bottom. The pyramid is a simplification, but it is the best map for reading a perfume.

Top notes: the first impression

Top notes are the first thing you smell when you spray a perfume, and they are the part most shops sell on. They are usually bright and sharp: citrus, herbs, light spices, fruit.

In Smoky Magma by Posh Stink the top notes are volcanic ash, black lava salt and pink pepper; in Cold Tsunami they are ozone, frozen mint and sea spray. Both are meant to grab you in the first minutes, and both soften within the hour.

Heart notes: the character

Heart notes are the centre of a perfume and the part you wear for most of the day. They appear as the top notes fade and stay for several hours, carrying the character of the fragrance: floral, spicy, green, gourmand or smoky.

In Monkey Punch the heart is monkey-spit coffee, spilled rum and cinnamon bark, which is why it reads as a coffee perfume after the loud fruit of the opening.

Base notes: what stays

Base notes are the foundation of a perfume. They are the heaviest materials, they anchor the lighter ones and they are what remains on clothes and skin the next morning: woods, moss, leather, musk, amber, tonka.

Ambergris, for example, appears in the base of both Smoky Magma and Cold Tsunami. It is a material that forms in the gut of a sperm whale and is aged by the sea, and in perfume it gives a warm, salty, skin-like depth that holds everything above it.

How to read a perfume before you buy it

Read perfume notes from the bottom up. The base tells you what you will smell like at the end of the day, which is the part you live with longest; the top tells you only the first impression.

Then test on skin and wait. Spray once on the wrist, smell it after 5 minutes, after an hour and after four hours. A perfume you love at all three moments is the one to buy.

Read from the bottom up. The base is the part you keep.