There is so much information online, it’s increasingly hard to distinguish information from advertisement. I want to be clear that my motivation for starting this blog is to share my love of perfumery and connect with other perfume enthusiasts and scent creators.

MY 4 GOLDEN RULES:

1. BE HONEST AND TRANSPARENT

Brands: be honest about what you do and how you do it. Don’t take advantage of the fact that it’s complicated for customers and that it is easy to muddy the waters. 

This blog: I will try to feature brands that are indeed more open and honest with customers, although it can be hard to always know the truth.  For my part, I will always talk about perfumes that I have tried and purchased with my own money, so as to offer my true opinion and not disguised advertisement. 

2. ORIGINALITY AND CREATIVE OWNERSHIP

In truth, most perfumes are “descendents” of others, as it is hard to invent completely new structures.  But let’s be clear, being inspired by a perfume and taking it in a new direction  is one thing. Getting through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) the formula of a successful perfume and copying it almost exactly is another.

I will always in this blog call it as I see it. I will also always mention, to the best of my abilities, the perfumer responsible for each scent I discuss. Although perfumes are generally born of the collaboration between a perfumer and a brand (unless they are one and the same, in the case of artisanal brands), the scent is ultimately the creation of a perfumer. It is unethical in my view not to mention who he/she is.

3. IMPARTIALITY

A lot of perfume reviews online are a collection of personal taste preferences or at worse, disguised advertisement. This is not always helpful to try to evaluate a scent. Perfect objectivity in scent evaluation might be hard, but I will strive to describe clearly what I smell and keep personal preferences to a minimum. Elements that will guide me to evaluate a scent will be: is the perfume well-constructed, is it balanced, is it original, does it smell “nice” (the inevitable subjective part), is it coherent with how the perfume is marketed, what kind of ingredients were used and is the price point in line with the above mentioned criteria.

4. KINDNESS

Finally, as a student of perfumery and a scent creator, I appreciate the difficulties involved in making beautiful and original scents and the odds that small independent artisanal brands face. Which is why I will avoid “bashing” small brands. It’s not my style. So, if I say something positive I mean it. If I don’t like something because I think it is poorly constructed, I might not talk about it at all. However, that being said, deceitful marketing will always be called ou