Fragrances 101: The Art of Collecting

1. Introduction: Welcome to fragrances 101. The art of collecting, my name is Omar. I'm a medic by background, but I've been an avid fragrance collector since 2018 after amassing hundreds of fragrances and attending several perfumery courses, I founded School of Scent in 2020, a fragrance review Enterprise, which is designed to help men simplify the overwhelming fragrance market. I made a lot of bad purchases and wasted a lot of money with fragrances when I was first starting out because I didn't really know enough about the industry at that point in time. The idea of this course is to prevent to you guys for making those same mistakes. This course will be in the context of men's colognes, but it can definitely be used by women also. The ultimate aim of this course is for you guys to create your foundational five, the five essential types of fragrances I think every single person should own, similar to how everyone's wardrobe has essential items. Let's get into the course and show you guys how it will be structured. 2. Course Structure: Delving into the structure of this course, we're going to first show you guys the basic components of perfumes so you know exactly what you're applying to your skin with the ultimate aim of helping you choose your foundational five, either purchasing them or selecting ones that you already own in your collection. This course is mainly aimed for beginners, but people who are experienced can definitely benefit from brushing up on their foundations. We encourage everyone to share their five fragrances as the class project for this course so people can show off their style and personality and other people can get an idea of the types of phrases they should look into. We're going to focus mainly on designer fragrances. These are the big brands like Chanel, gucci, the Your, instead of niche brands. These are brands like fried or aqua DePalma, who are companies that specialize only in fragrances. That's their niche, their notes, clothing brands as well like Chanel, each fragrance in your foundational five is designed to be used in a different scenario. So we're going to talk through each scenario how to select your fragrance for that foundation. And after you've decided on your foundational five, we'll discuss other tips and tricks regarding fragrances, such as how to apply or how to store them, as well as other phrases types you should look into to continue your journey. But before we get into that, let's first of all talk about the importance of sense to give this entire course the contexts that it needs. 3. Why is Scent Important?: If you're watching this course, you probably appreciate the importance of your personal sense more than most people, fragrance, cologne, aftershave in the context of this course, they're going to be used interchangeably, but they are referring to the industry of fine fragrances. These are fragrances or perfumes I you use to apply in yourself. Our sense of smell is one of the most powerful sensors we have. When you smell a sense that reminds you someone in your family from a long time ago or a PaaS lover, that sense will instantly transport you to that time, meaning the fragrances that you choose to wear every day to present yourself will be creating memories for those around you. Your personal sense bubble is part of your presentation. It communicates things to people around you before you even speak. It tells people a lot about yourself. And most of the time it's improves the impression of you. And of course we cannot forget and makes you a lot more attractive most of the time. And if you're watching this course, you probably appreciate variety in your sense. Also similar to how no one's going to wear the same clothes every day and won't ever change it up. I don't think you should do the same for your fragrances I had there. You're going to be in different scenarios around different types of people, in different types of moods. And I think having that foundational five will give you enough variety for your daily needs. But let's ask ourselves first, what's actually in a fragrance? 4. The Components of a Scent: Perfume r3 is the art of creating sent through the use of molecules. These molecules can come from nature, such as distilling the steam that comes from rose petals, grades a pure concentrated rose oil or using pieces of food from the rotting bulk of an aqua Larry's Tree. But for our purpose, most fragrances and the designer mockup use synthetic molecules. These are molecules designed in a lab in order to recreate a certain sense. For example, the molecule vanillin obviously recreates the sense of vanilla. You'll note in most fragrance packaging and fragrance descriptions online is that each product has top, mids and bass notes. This grace, they're sent pyramids. And all this is referring to is the heaviness of the molecules in the products. So we selling off a top notes, these are the smallest molecules that easily fly off into the air with some heats easily be the first thing do you smell usually in the first five to 20 minutes of the frames his life, the mid nose on a second heavy assessment notes which produced the majority of the frequencies duration. Think of it like the meat or the middle parts of any essay it produces. The majority will show gassing and the bass notes are the heaviest sets of molecules. These are the sense I will smell laws I'm lost the longest on your skin. Think of it like an aftertaste you get with food is, is kind of like an aftertaste of the fragrance. However, in your product, all these frames molecules are packed into the fragrance oil, which produces the sense. And that fragrance oil makes up a certain parts of the products based on the concentration you are buying. Starting from o to Cologne, working your way up to ODA TWA, let au depart Pfam and finally power Pfam. Whatever volume remains left in the bottle is then diluted with perfumers. Alcohol. Coal is a volatile substance, meaning that it allows the fragrance oil to come off your skin and into the air. Generally meaning the higher the concentration of oil in the product, the longer-lasting it will be, but not necessarily as loud because the product doesn't have as much alcohol to help the sense come off your skin. This is a very rough in general guideline and always depends on the brown than the fragrance you're buying. Now that you have an idea of what you're getting when you buy a fragrance. Let's talk about the foundational five and each scenario you'd use these in, you don't necessarily have to buy these in this order, but this is the order I do recommend. We're going to start off first with your versatile sense. 5. What makes a great Signature?: A versatile centers, also known as your signature cologne, meaning this will be your workhorse fragrance and you can wear safely on most days, see it as a jack of all trades, master of none fragrance. This should be your first fragrance to get your money's worth whilst they're still building the rest of your collection. It has big shoes to fill and a nice be reliable. What do I mean when I say reliable? That means it needs to be versatile. It needs to have good performance, that means good longevity. And ideally you should get you compliments. But I think more importantly, you should enjoy yourself if you're going to be wearing with a lot, a good way to make sure you're burst saw fragments has all these attributes is by using a website called fragrant. Everyone in the community knows about fragrance code, but if you don't know what it is, it is like a fragrance encyclopedia website that allows people who have previously boiled the fragrance to act as a community and give their opinions on the products. There are different sections for each fragrance page, but I'm going to show you how to make sure your fragrance has these reliable features to make sure it's versatile, go to the seasons section. Ideally, this fragrance should be able to work in all four seasons, but at the very least three of them, then ideally, it should work in both day and night time. But if you had to choose one, make sure it works for daytime. And finally, check the performance. Look at the longevity. Mainly, make sure it's a long lost in fragrance. And you can also look at the CRH, which basically describes how louder fragrances. And that's up to you to decide how loud you want your scent to be because you're versatile Colonus, so important, we're going to discuss the different types of signature sense that you can weigh. Solving off with the blue fragrances. 6. Different Signature Types: Blue fragrances are a type of signature kilo that have very popular and iconic fragrances such as blood is Chanel, and do your survive? You can usually see it in the packaging as the blue fragrance, if it's a dark blue tinge to it in the bottle as a safe bats, these fragrances are designed around this synthetic molecule of umbra oxen and the bass notes and check the note breakdown. It gives the fragrances a good amount of longevity and overrule. It gives these fragrances a fresh out of the shower feeling these are the safest DNA can go for as your signature sense, uh, be aware they are top sellers and our common. So you might know, smell unique with these. For a guy who only cares about freshness, you'll want to smell fresh and clean every day, focused on fragrances that have prominent citrus or fruit notes, going to be your creed, Adventists or Chanel, aloo OEM sports c's have the advantage of being a bit more bright and invigorating, more fresh. Although bear in mind, they might not be as versatile because they don't work as well in the evening time that may lead daytime sense. The next style are woody frame says These are notes in perfume R3 that are traditionally masculine for a guy who was just smell as masculine and mature as possible. This is a good style to go for you that you'd have very good longevity. Although bear in mind, they might not be as playful as other fragrance types. They're very serious, or let's say you want to smell, it's glossy or as gentlemanly as possible. This would be a fro back to how men's frames are used to smell the food, jags or barbershop fragrances. Day and man would go to the barbershop, get a fresh shave and the shaving cream smell would be the scent they'd have for the rest of the day. These type of fragrances focus on lavender and have a good amount of longevity. Again, not very playful, but they're very clean, elegant, classy fragrances. Think of old-school sense like brewed, drink Anwar jump will go to a law Mal, and then this loss categories for you guys watching this right now, I'm thinking, I'm not gonna follow these rules. I don't care. I'm going to wear my signature Cologne. However, I once for you, I have a category called the creatives. These are fragrances that shouldn't really work as your versatile sense. But because you're so confident and you want to stand out, you rock them every day with no problems. These are going to be sensed like Tom Ford, black old kid or YSL cure-all sense. You don't smell and men every day and have a polarizing reaction from people around you. These styles should hopefully give you a good guideline for how to pick your versatile fragrance. Take a good amount of time to think it through. Choose your one versatile fragrance and add it to your class project. These frequencies are jacks of all trades, but definitely master of none to have a fragrance truly specialized for scenario that's going into the next section told me about date fragrances. 7. Date Night : And they'd not fragrance is something you're going to traditionally where in Close Encounters either Franks is a focus more on sweet notes. They're called Balsamiq notes, things like vanilla bean, myrrh. These frames is don't always have the best performance. They may not be long-lasting, but as long as they cover you for the duration of the dates, you'll be fine. And ideally the woman to be too loud because you don't want to be killing your dates when you're first meeting them. There are two paths you can take with DataFrames is bursting and played more safe. Go for fragrances that are suites, but also how notes like spices or things that smell edible. For example, Dolce and Gabbana. And the one, the Oda power Pfam is the safest date fragments you can buy as your first sentence, or even 1 million lucky, which smells more edible and loss and honey, also very sexy. Or the second path you take is more of a bad boy vibe you're going for. So you're gonna type of guy who likes to wear leather jackets has a bit of a bad attitude when you're going on dates. These fragrances, you generally want to go for notes that have either leather or booze. He knows like whiskey and Rm, such as CAH men prevail. It has sweeteners like Tanga be, but also leather and whiskey in here. The idea of first getting your versatile fragrance and then your date fragrance is that you have a DateTime sense and then an evening sense. So make sure you go those two in your foundational five. And then the third sense would be for another location that you're going to be often in, That's your workplace or school. 8. School/Office: Certain fragrances are definitely designed for the workplace or school sooner to your clothing. These places, most of the time we're not going to be aiming for sex appeal. You're going to wear something sensible and serious. Maybe you're trying to further your career and press a client, get that job interview. A good fragrance for this category has to be clean, inoffensive. You don't want people to be polarized by this sense hasn't been long lasting enough to cover you for those school or work day. And again, it shouldn't be too loud. You don't want everyone in your office or your classroom to smell you. Good brown to start off with is product. They are the kings of soapy fragrances. Get some light, proud alum or Prada, Amber, poor, all very safe professional phrases that work across all age groups. Or if you will, something more affordable get Burberry, touch a sharp and clean mosque fragrance. So we'll go more pricing and Proudhon get something like this, higher-order Mes, which can be a little bit challenging at first, but it's an excellent option for this category. So again, make sure to sense is clean and safe and loss of good amount of time, but isn't too loud. And then add it to your class projects after you've added a third sent to your foundational five, we're going to move on to a more playful category now, and that's clubbing and partying. 9. Partying/Clubbing: Now clubbing and partying frames is, do need to be loud and these are your head turner fragrances that will get you positive attention and packed environments like a nightclub, similar to dating fragrances, they focus on sweeter notes. But then as well, you can go into two different parts of your traditional safe path, like Versace, Eros, this is Apple mints and Bonilla. Super sexy gives you a lot of compliments and very safe. First Club a sense ago four or again, if you're more of a bad boy type with leather jackets for something that contains whiskey rum or leather bad boy notes like TRE MOOC layers, pure molds. These types of fragrances can't technically be used on dates as well as long as you don't go too heavy on the trigger. But in my opinion, they're sent profiles aren't usually as romantic, so just be aware of that. So make sure you find yourself a clubbing fragrance added to your foundational five. And then we'll move on to our last category. And that is a fragrance for the halt weather. 10. Warm Weather : The alcohol from fragrances alone with heats help push sense molecules off into the air from your skin. So the more heat around you during halts, whether the more molecules that will go up into the air and the more intense your fragrance will be. That's why heavy frame says I usually wear in winter time will be a no-go during those spring and summer as kind of like wearing a thick wool jumper in the summertime womb. Whether fragrances have three paths that you can choose from. First of all, are the traditional fragrances like Versace portal made a while back and uses traditional notes like citrus, white flight rules and Musk smell sexy and manly. But in the context of halts whether the second style are aquatic fragrances, these are phrases that replicate the nose of water or the ocean. This would be good for people who like to spend a lot of time around the beach during the hot weather, but sounds like equity GO can be worn and a lot of different scenarios actually, it's worth trying out a quasi fragrances and seeing if you'd like that style. And finally, more modern fragrances since the inception of Packer bands Invictus have this new style of smelling bubblegum. Like bubblegum means it has a lot of freshness still, but it's got this sweetness from fruity notes and makes the frog is smell like bubblegum, androgynous, not particularly macho, but usually these types of frames is get a lot of positive attention and complements. So try out Packer, abandon victims to get an impression of what that DNA is like. All go for the new axon release of Dolce and Gabbana king. Oh, the power from this final fragrance completes your foundational five, congratulations may show to post them down below in the project so you can see everybody else's collections and also get feedback for your own. You might be wondering once you've got these five fragrances and you want to continue expanding your collection. Where do you go next? We'll touch on lightly upon that as well as where to buy frame says and how to apply them. Stay tunes. 11. Expanding on your Foundation: Congratulations, you've completed your foundational five. Where do you go from here? In my opinion, you can go to the from paths. You can add different styles to your collection. Or you can go higher-quality styles that people usually listener collection or things like Google moans, Reagan says that smell edible. For example, Tom fours and more extreme smell like coffee and Indian ice cream desserts, which is a good way of getting a sweet fragrance in your collection with a low of creativity. Or you can go from an old-school fragrances. I used to use a mnemonic notes. So fragrance nose literally from animals. So things like YSL kouros or Chanel's and tias phrases are crazy. They're not safe but are cool. Sam profile to have regardless, people usually don't have bad boy phrases like leather jacket for eyeglasses. So Tom forwards, Andre leathers, good place to start, or the previously mentioned THE MOOC neighbors, pure molds. If you want to go for higher-quality, go for the private lines. All of these big designer brands like Tom forwards or go for niche brands. So these are brands that don't make anything else other than fragrances. Both of these are going to be more expensive bus higher-quality, safe places to start is if you want something more fresh, go for creed fragrances, go for either Adventists or green Irish tweet. If you want something more than sweet and spicy, go for Paul from the Molly, thus their speciality, they create excellent fragrances, 10 out of 10, my opinion, if you want something more affordable but still clause, the inelegant go into awkward DePalma. But apart from just collecting fragrances, we obviously need to know where's it could these phrases from and how to apply them. So we're gonna go into some tips and tricks for fragrances. And these next few sections. 12. The Best Places to Buy : Okay, great. You have the five phrases that you want to buy or you know, how are you going to expand your collection? But we all know that's collecting fragrances can be an expensive hobby. If you've spent any time with the fingers community, you know, that's everyone will always recommend, never to buy from mainstream brands and retailers, always by phrases from discounts websites if you're from the UK, good places though I trust and always by fragrances from our fragrance direct and duty, no, they usually have the best prices if you're from America, I've personally bull from fragrance x. I trust that websites, they have very good prices as well as forager snap. I'm not personally moved from there, but it's the one of the most well-known discount websites in the community. Regardless, you always see some reviews from people on these websites that insists they go fake perfumes. If you really not trustworthy of these websites, then just stick to retailers. Give yourself a piece of mine, so just be aware you might miss out on huge discounts on phrases that are unnecessarily expensive on mainstream websites worldwide, of course, you can always use Amazon or eBay. I haven't had a bad experience with either one of these. That's because I always play it safe and make sure that I'm buying from sellers who have high feedback scores. So in either of these websites, always make sure the seller has a score of at least 97 percent with lots of customer feedback. And there are some regions I would just never buy from, such as the Russian Federation, which is notorious for sending a little fakes. So you can bear those things in mind. You can buy from those two websites as well. Congratulations, you've taken on the advisory board, your fragrance is arrived, but now you're wondering what is the best way to apply a fragrance That's talk about it. 13. How to Apply a Fragrance: For this part of the course, I'm going to show you guys how to apply a fragrance. This will vary based on the strength of the cologne, as well as this scenario you want to wear it in. As mentioned before, fragrances need heat to be activated. That's why when you see people who apply phrases on their skin, they will go for the pulse points, pulls points, the web blood is flowing and I'll give you the most amount of heat for the scent molecules. So if you are applying a super-strong fragrance like Spice mom extreme, which doesn't need more than two sprays. Go for one sprite either side of your neck if you're applying and medium strength fragrance like I have here, equity GO proof remote, apply on the inside of your elbows, just underneath your bicep like this. And then finally, let's say you have a weaker fragrance. You wanted to push out a bit more polite to more sprays on your wrists, just like this on the inside of your wrists. And if you really feel that your fragrance does this performance all in, go for a further two sprays making it aids in total, or two more poles, points just behind your ears. Some phrases are so weak and go for as many spaces you want, but eight sprays are a safe bets. Get familiar with your fragrance, be appreciative of how strong it is, and then use this guideline. Unfortunately, sometimes your favorite sense just doesn't last a long time on your skin. How can we make it last longer? We're going to discuss that in the next section. 14. Making Fragrances Last Longer: Unfortunately, sometimes our favorite fragrance does not last long enough, but we can improve this. Staying on the subject of skin fragrances do not like dry skin. They'd like moisture. So by that logic, if we use a moisturizer as a base, it is known to improve at fragrances longevity by a few hours, I recommend really high-quality. You apply it first, then you spread your fingers on after a few minutes. A different base you can use for your fragrances are actual fragrance molecules themselves. These are things like ISO is super, I'm Brock son to synthetic molecules that give fragrances, a sort of slight woody undertone. Anyways, you can give them in their pure forms from brands like molecule or one. Or you can buy them cheap online, on websites like eBay. These usually out of good few hours as well. Again, apply them first and then apply your main for Egger's a few minutes afterwards, moving away from the skin, you can also apply phrases on your clothing. I always recommend to apply at least half a meter away because if you apply too close for eyeglasses do have oil in them and they can't stay in your clothes, which laws for the rest of the day potentially, how this works is the fact that cloves and I'll have anywhere near as much heat as your skin. In most cases closed legion to keep a sense on themselves for at least a few days or sometimes even weeks. That's why whenever you leave your clothing as your partner's house, they always say it's smells v, That's what those fragrances just don't come off globally for a long time. And lastly, this is a bit of a cheat hack, but you by something called a fragrance atomizer, which is a small vial that you use to transfer fragrance from the main bustle into the small vial itself and you carry it around with you wherever you need it. And then you can just reapply if your fragrance runs outs. But of course, none of these tactics will matter if you can't store your fragrance correctly to make sure they don't expire. So we're going to cover that in the next section. 15. How to Store Fragrances: People worry about buying too many fragrances because they worried that if I don't use them fast enough in a few years, they will go off and expire. You might see on the packaging all of these phrases that they may say efficiently for legal reasons are fragrance will expire after two or three years. But I know many people including myself, who have kept phrases for longer than ten years and they smell great even after that sign. To ensure this kind of shelf life for your fragrance, there are two things you need to know. You need to keep your frame says outs of fluctuating temperatures and out of humidity. What does that mean? That means keep your phrases out of sunlight, out of the bathroom and out of the fridge, which is where some people like to store their phrases during the summer time to give them a cooling effects. If you want the perfect place to store fragrances, ideally, you should store them in a wardrobe or cupboard outside of sunlight. And if you really want to go the extra mile, you keep the fragrances in their original boxes, but most people don't go that far. And that concludes all these sections. And let's go to the conclusion of this course. 16. Conclusion: If you made it to the end of this course, I want to congratulate you. Hopefully this course has given you more confidence and structure in your fragrance gain over the past year, I have seen a little of your collections that you set into me. I do notice a lot of the times people don't necessarily balance out their collection. So if that's something you value through this course, make sure to post down below your foundational five in the class projects. I would also love to see a review from you guys about this course. What did you like about it? What do you think could have been improved? And what other types of courses would you like to see for myself, if you'd like to learn more about fragrances, make sure to follow us and all our social media and go to our website, School of set.com, where we have an ever-growing database, a one-minute reviews for individual fragrances to make sure you get concise information about as many fragrances as possible. I look forward to see your collections down below. Thank you for watching.