Intensity, sillage, wear: three different things

Three words come up in every fragrance description. Intensity, sillage, wear. They are used as synonyms for “power”. They are three different quantities, and they are not measured in the same place, nor by the same person, nor over the same length of time.

Telling them apart changes the way you choose a fragrance. Here is the short rule: intensity is judged on yourself, sillage is judged by others, wear cannot be promised.

What is the intensity of a fragrance?

It is the density perceived at the moment of the gesture, in contact with the skin. You spray, you bring your wrist closer, you smell. What you perceive at that instant is intensity.

It depends above all on the amount of odorant material in the bottle. An extrait de parfum contains more of it than an eau de parfum, which contains more than an eau de toilette. It is the only one of the three quantities you can assess alone, immediately, without a witness.

What is sillage?

It is the trace left in the air, perceived at a distance, by someone else. Sillage begins where your nose stops.

It cannot be deduced from intensity. Take Narcisse Taiji, by Atelier Materi, composed by Marie Hugentobler: narcissus, tuberose, leather, hay. The composition is dense at the wrist. Its documented sillage is nevertheless discreet — it is a fragrance that stays on the person wearing it.

Conversely, a fragrance can fill a room without giving that impression of density on contact. Diffusion depends on the volatility of the materials, not only on their quantity.

A fragrance can therefore be intense and discreet. That is not a contradiction: they are two measurements taken in two places.

What is wear?

It is duration. How long the fragrance remains perceptible on skin or on fabric.

It is the most requested quantity, and the only one of the three on which nobody can give you an honest figure. It depends on your skin, on the ambient temperature, on the dose applied, on the surface — a fragrance sprayed on a scarf outlives several days of skin. Two people wearing the same fragrance on the same day do not get the same duration.

That is why our product pages show no duration in hours. We cannot guarantee it, so we do not write it.

The term on the bottle does not give it either: the categories overlap almost entirely, as our article on concentrations shows.

How do the three combine in practice?

Two bottles from the same house, on the same accord, let you see it without leaving the catalogue. Les Eaux Primordiales have declined their amber into two versions.

• Ambre Superfluide, an eau de parfum from 2019, signed by Amélie Bourgeois and Arnaud Poulain — honey, cinnamon, cardamom, benzoin, tobacco.
• Ambre Supermassive, an extrait de parfum from 2024, signed by Arnaud Poulain and Studio Flair — cinnamon, honey, amber, vanilla, tobacco.

Same family, same house, same spicy register. The second is more concentrated than the first: intensity rises. The sillage of both is documented as very strong. What really changes between them is not the reach, it is the thickness of the material on contact.

The counter-example is just as instructive. Reflection Man by Amouage, composed by Lucas Sieuzac in 2007, brings together rosemary, neroli, jasmine, iris and sandalwood. Neither intensity nor sillage is pushed. The fragrance has stayed in the catalogue for nearly twenty years. Discretion can be worn every day, which a demonstration cannot.

Which quantity should you look at, depending on what you are after?

If the question is “am I going to enjoy smelling it on me”, look at intensity and the olfactory family. You can decide alone, in a few minutes.

If the question is “is this fragrance right for an office, a plane, a family lunch”, look at sillage. And have someone else confirm it.

If the question is “how long does it last”, the only reliable answer is a trial on your own skin, for a whole day. That is precisely what a 2 ml Try Me sample allows: checking on yourself what no product page can promise.

— BH