How long should a fragrance last?
The question comes up more often than any other. It is badly put, and that is what makes it interesting: the verb “should” implies a standard. There is none.
A fragrance does not have to last a given number of hours. It lasts what its composition, your skin and the day’s temperature allow it to last. Here is what really governs that duration, and why price is not part of it.
Does the term on the bottle announce a duration?
No, and it is the least known point in perfumery.
The terms “eau de toilette”, “eau de parfum” and “extrait de parfum” are defined by no text. We checked it at the source: European Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, which governs every cosmetic product sold in the Union, defines neither eau de parfum, nor eau de toilette, nor extrait. The expressions appear only in recital 7, as examples of cosmetic products, without the slightest numerical threshold. In the United States, the regulation accepts these terms on the label without attaching any percentage to them either.
The ranges you read everywhere are therefore commercial custom, not rules. And those customs overlap: the same formula can be presented as a high eau de toilette or as a low eau de parfum. The choice belongs to the house.
Practical consequence: the term on the bottle indicates a tendency, never a duration.
The overlap can be checked on our own catalogue, term by term: an eau de parfum can outlast an extrait there. We set it out in detail in our article on concentrations.
What actually makes a fragrance last?
The mass of the molecules, first. A fragrance is a mixture of materials that evaporate at different speeds. The lightest leave first — those are the top notes, citrus and aromatics. The heaviest stay longest — resins, woods, musks, vanillas. The olfactory pyramid is not a poetic metaphor: it is a chronology of evaporation.
A fragrance built on a resinous base will therefore last longer than a citrus one, at equal concentration. Compare Nice Bergamote by Essential Parfums, built on Calabrian bergamot and closed by a Haitian vetiver, and Oud Stallion by Maison Crivelli, saffron, oud and leather. These are not two levels of quality. They are two speeds.
Temperature, next. Heat speeds up the evaporation of every material. A fragrance worn at 32 °C leaves faster than at 15 °C, and it leaves faster on warm skin than on cool skin.
The dose, finally, and the surface. Two sprays last less long than four. And a fragrance laid on a garment outlives every skin in the world, because fabric does not perspire.
Why does the same fragrance not last the same on two people?
Because skin is not a neutral surface. Its temperature, its hydration, its sebum production vary from one person to another and, in the same person, from one season to the next. Dry skin holds less well than oily skin: there is less material for the molecules to cling to.
It is a constant observation in practice, one every fragrance seller has made a thousand times. We will not give it a detailed chemical explanation here, because the explanations circulating about skin pH are more confident than the data supporting them.
Should you rub your wrists after spraying?
No, but not for the reason usually given. The common explanation — that rubbing “breaks the molecules” — does not hold: rubbing two wrists together does not supply the energy needed to break a chemical bond.
What rubbing actually does is simpler. It spreads the fragrance over a larger surface and it warms the skin. Larger surface and heat: both speed up evaporation. The fragrance leaves faster. The stated result is right, the reasoning was wrong.
Why do our product pages not show a duration in hours?
Because a figure in hours would be a promise we cannot keep. It would depend on your skin, on the thermometer and on the number of sprays — three variables we do not know.
Our pages therefore indicate a tendency for wear, without a figure. We prefer information that is true and imprecise to information that is precise and false.
The only measurement that counts for you is the one you take on yourself. A 2 ml Try Me sample lets you wear a fragrance for a whole day before deciding. Spray in the morning, note the hour at which you no longer smell it, and remember that this hour is not the one at which it disappeared for other people.
— BH