Ah, the perfume counter! Have you ever walked away from it and not smelled like a rose… and a violet… and a potpourri pot?

Selecting a designer fragrance should be fun, but with a choice of hundreds of top designer perfumes, it can quickly turn into a frustrating chore.

Which Is Your Favorite Perfume? Click Here to Share!

New! Get a mini designer fragrance in your mailbox each month - Click Here!

The nose is easily confused and when your nose "doesn't know", how do you proceed with selecting the right designer fragrance for you? Even more confusing, how do you select the right perfume or cologne for gift giving and what's the difference between perfume, scented oils, and cologne?

What causes perfume selection confusion?

1. Designers continually create new perfume formulas daily and add them to a roster that's already replete with hundreds of other designer fragrances
2. The difference in types of smells
3. Personal preferences in fragrance
4. Differences in price

Perfume knowledge is perfume power!

Learning about perfume and colognes makes perfume selection much easier. With just a basic knowledge of fragrance categories, perfume and cologne notes (the fragrance evaporation rate), fragrance oils, and perfume price points, you'll be able to choose the best scent either for yourself or for gift giving.

Perfume Categories

A first step in cutting through perfume selection confusion is to learn about the basic categories of perfume:

Knowing the difference between these categories helps you to choose fragrances that fit and put the cork on perfume selection confusion!

Seven basic types of fragrances are as follows:

1. Floral
2. Fougere
3. Chypre
4. Leather
5. Woody
6. Oriental
7. Citrus

Floral: These are flower based notes. They are associated with naturalness and smoothness. This is the largest and most popular category which is created mainly from flower based notes, such as jasmine, rose, gardenia, orange blossom and carnation. They are often blended together in order to create a distinctive floral bouquet.

Fougere: Fougere is French word for “Fern”. Fougere fragrances use the fern or forest-like note of oakmoss which is combined with other herbal notes like lavender, and coumarin. Fougere is very popular structure for men’s fragrances.

Chypre: Chypre represents a perfume structure where fresh notes, (mainly Citrus) are combined with the rich woody-animalic characters of Patchouli and Labdanum and Oakmoss. The fresh notes of modern Chypres may be modified or even completely replaced with green or fruity combinations. Many men’s colognes are usually based on the basic Chypre structure. Chypres frequently display a leather character.

Leather: Pungent animal smokiness characteristic of the ingredients used in the tanning process of leathers. Achieved in perfumery with castoreum, labdanum, phenols, and quinolenes.

Woody: An odour which is linked to the aroma of freshly cut dry wood such as Cedarwood Oil, Virginian, Sandalwood or displaying these notes such as of vetiver or Patchouli.

Oriental: Fragrance family or style based on balsamic notes with vanilla, oakmoss and animal notes. Examples are Shalimar, Obsession, Opium, Samsara. Now frequently also applied more generally to perfumes that are heavy, full bodied and tenacious.

Citrus: They are derived from citrus fruits such as Pomello, Bergamot, Grapefruit, Orange, Lemon. This fragrance type projects a sharp, tangy aura. They are naturally refreshing and uplifting. Citrus blends are among the oldest known scents, first worn by men and now popular with women as well.

Perfume Notes

Perfume and cologne notes explain how a fragrance changes as you wear it. Notes also introduce fragrance oils, essential oils, the differences between the two, and how each is used. Perfumes and colognes tend to use fragrance oils rather than more expensive, less potent essential oils.

Perfume Prices

If you can afford the designer fragrances, cost is probably no more an issue for you than it is for the perfume designer. When looking at designer perfume and cologne prices, it's sometimes hard to believe that perfume manufacturers work to control costs at all. Yet, your perfume budget does influence the types of ingredients and packaging used for each product.

Because of the high prices of many designer perfumes and colognes, discount designer perfumes are increasingly popular in the perfume market. Although discount designer perfumes and colognes use less expensive man made ingredients and cheaper packaging to limit costs, discount designer fragrances are often hard to discern from the original, higher priced perfumes and colognes.

Most discount designer perfumes and colognes tend to follow the trends of current best selling designer fragrances, but some of old favorites also keep a place in the perfume pool. Find them in your favorite department store or boutique as well as a nearly infinite number of sites on the World Wide Web.

Let Perfume-Select.com help you cut through perfume selection confusion.

Perfume-Select.com is specially designed to provide basic perfume and cologne information as well as current information on the top brand name designer fragrances with the goal of helping you select the perfect designer perfume for you.