Hello perfume lovers!

So we can all tell the difference between a man’s fragrance and woman’s fragrance when we smell them…but what actually is it that makes them so different? Let’s take a look at our citrus perfumes, we have both male and female citrus fragrances: Purple for men and Yellow for women. They are categorised by being put into the same ‘scent family’, however, we can all smell how different they are. Each individual fragrance has their unique scent ingredients to create the perfume. But through some in-depth research I have been able to find out why there is such a big difference between male citrus fragrances and female citrus fragrances. Let’s take a male and female fragrance inspired by the same brand and put their ingredients and main accords side by side. Our woman’s fragrance Yellow 04 and male fragrance Purple 10 are both in the citrus scent family due their citrus fruit top notes: Yellow 04 has orange and Purple 10 has grapefruit…however this is where the similarities end.

Okay so far we have discovered why male and female fragrances that smell so different are in the same scent family. Now we are going to see what makes these fragrances so different. What is it typically that a male fragrance has that makes it masculine, rather than feminine? When putting three different male fragrances side by side (all from the citrus scent family) two obvious similarities kept appearing. I chose to compare their main accords (main accords are what you can smell the most of in a perfume). Purple 01, Purple 04 and Purple 08 all have aromatic and fresh spicy main accords, whereas the three women’s citrus fragrances I studied do not. However, we can see a similarity between our women’s fragrances (all in the citrus scent family). Yellow 03, Yellow 04 and Yellow 05 all have white floral among their main accords.

Clearly we associate aromatic and fresh spicy smells with men and masculinity, whereas we associate white floral smells with women and femininity. It’s strange, by just having a citrus fruit in a perfume or citrus as a main accord, all of these different scents are bundled into one scent family, but now that we have discovered what it is in the perfumes that changes that citrus perfume into a female or male scent, we are all going to be able to smell and select our scents with a lot more knowledge and ease.

***Vegan equivalents to: Purple 01- Aqua di Gio by Armani, Purple 04- Eau Savage Extreme by Dior, Purple 08- Tommy Hilfiger by Tommy Hilfiger, Purple 10-Spicebomb by Viktor & Rolf, Yellow 03- Forever Sexy by Victoria Secret, Yellow 04- Bonbon by Viktor & Rolf, Yellow 05- Daisy by Marc Jacobs

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