The bedrock of perfumery, roses are inextricably linked to the fragrances we’ve come to know and love. In fact, rose comprises more than 400 known constituents, with a variety of reconstructions across every price point. Its scent is powerful and rich, with floral and fruity facets of contrast: sweet yet spicy, green yet honeyed. Rose is often described as a feminine note with floral, powdery facets. Roses in perfume - it gets no more classic, no more romantic, and no more legendary than this. Rose notes are THE most versatile, and paradoxically, the hardest notes in perfume to obtain. It takes nearly a warehouse full of rose petals to distill enough oil to add their hypnotic scent to a perfume.Rose can be icy, full, velvety, silky, candy-sweet, dark, airy - there’s a rose scent for any mood you’ll ever experience. Rose notes go with any other note, style, and texture of fragrance - they blend in a scent better than any other material. And of course, a rose perfume is NEVER out of style, or season - her majesty is welcomed everywhere. If you have only one perfume in your collection, make it a rose fragrance.

Labdanum (pron. Lab-DuH-numb) is a sticky, brown resin distilled from the rockrose plant found in the Mediterranean. It’s sweet, thick, smokiness lends a spicy backbone to Oriental style perfumes, and combines well with leather and other heavy spices. Labdanum is also one of the best “fixatives” in perfume, making other notes last longer and smell stronger in a composition. If your favorite scents are smoke, vanilla, caramel, black rubber, or peppery spice - labdanum’s unique scent will appeal to you. Labdanum scents are best for colder weather, and reveal their smoky-sweet mystery the most in evening fragrances.

A must-have in any perfumer’s arsenal, sandalwood forms the base note of countless fragrance compositions. Its milky, suave facets make for a deliciously blendable fixative that has inspired perfumers for millennia. It’s a woody and ambery note with a pervasive warmth that is both velvety-smooth and decadently creamy. Sandalwood’s mystical scent is found everywhere in perfumery. It’s luxurious, milky, tangy, and caramel-sweet aroma infuses a fragrance with deep, exotic accents. Sandalwood can also appear bright and bone-dry, and display its arid, woody side in a gorgeous and austere perfume. Sandalwood’s depth of tone and smooth, polished texture adds elegance, refinement, and mystery to any perfume - it can mimic vanilla’s deliciously sweet, butter-fat heaviness, or fade into cedar’s sharp and bitter feel. It’s also a fantastic and evocative scent on it’s own as well as in a blended fragrance. Sandalwood’s tastefully exotic lusciousness is wearable year-round by either sex, and you could spend a lifetime sampling all the different ways it can be used in perfumery.

Patchouli is a deeply spiced, thickly herbal and immediately recognizable note - it’s “dirty hippie” reputation doesn’t do it justice. Patchouli’s scent lies somewhere between cumin’s sharp and acrid tang and nutmeg’s smooth, sweet warmth, and it can carry a fragrance or blend easily with other, spicier notes. It is ideal in heated, spicy perfumes that feature leather, smoke, resins, and lighter aromatic notes like lavender and geranium. Patchouli’s exotic strength can be an acquired taste in perfume, but it’s many moods and blends make it an endlessly fascinating note to explore in the spicy end of the scent spectrum.