Every perfume is built in three acts. Learn how top, heart, and base notes unfold on skin — and why a scent smells different an hour after you put it on.
Spray a fragrance in the morning and it smells like one thing. Catch it on your scarf that evening and it smells like another. That is not the perfume fading badly — it is the perfume working exactly as designed. A scent is built in three layers, released on a timer, and perfumers call that structure the fragrance pyramid.
Top notes are the opening. Heart notes are the body. Base notes are the foundation that lingers longest. They do not arrive all at once — the lightest, smallest molecules evaporate first, and the heaviest ones cling to skin for hours.
These are what you smell in the first few minutes: bright, sharp, and quick to leave. They set the first impression and then step aside. In our palette that means citrus and aromatics — bergamot, grapefruit, pink pepper, and cardamom. If a scent seems to "disappear" after twenty minutes, you were only smelling the top notes burn off — the rest is still there.
As the top fades, the heart blooms. This is the character of the fragrance, the part most people mean when they describe how something smells. Florals live here — jasmine, rose, tuberose — alongside warmer signatures like saffron and black tea. The heart carries a scent for the middle hours of wear.
Base notes are the slow, heavy materials that anchor everything and give a fragrance its staying power — the trace still on your collar the next morning. Woods, resins, and balsams do this work: sandalwood, vetiver, oud, amber, and vanilla. They also hold the lighter notes down, slowing how fast the top and heart evaporate.
Judge a fragrance by its drydown, not its first spray. Give it thirty minutes on skin before you decide — the opening is the least representative part. And because our formulas are oil-based rather than alcohol-based, the pyramid unfolds slower and closer to the skin, without the sharp alcoholic blast at the top. You can read every material in our palette, one note at a time, in the botanical note index, or see the whole picture in the material library.
Usually five to fifteen minutes. They are the smallest, lightest molecules, so they evaporate first and give way to the heart.
Because you are smelling a different layer of the pyramid. The bright top notes have evaporated and the heart and base — the true character of the scent — have taken over.
Base notes such as sandalwood, vetiver, amber, and vanilla. They are heavy, slow to evaporate, and they anchor the lighter notes above them.