Michael Edwards' Fragrance Wheel

Take a tour of the fragrance families. This is an excellent first step toward identification of the scents you are most likely to enjoy. Michael Edwards, creator of the wheel below and the world's foremost expert on fragrance classification, generously invited me to share his work with you.

Click -- it's hot!

Fragrances of the World, 2009, copyright © Michael Edwards.
All rights reserved. Used with permission.

It Musk be Fresh

Consumers express their taste in fragrance with an impoverished vocabulary: “something fresh,” they always say. A sales-clerk will wait on hundreds of customers before realizing that “fresh” is a synonym for “something I like.” Silly girl, she thought you meant the smell of herbs, fresh cut grass, citrus or the ocean. Lo and behold, some heady oriental smells fresh to you. Why? Because fresh is good, this scent smells good and must, therefore, be fresh.

Next time you shop for a fresh scent, perhaps a little soapy to remind you of laundry “fresh” from the dryer, recall this: One of the most popular scents in laundry detergent is musk, a fragrance ingredient formerly obtained from a gland located between the stomach and genitals of the East Asian male musk deer. Musk is used to infuse perfumes with depth and richness while fixing them to the skin and is considered by most to be a sexy smell, not a fresh one.

But the main goal of perfume is pleasure, So if it makes a person happy to say that musk is a fresh smell, why not? I like fresh scents too. Like a nice piece of pizza hot from the oven.