Fragrance families

A fragrance family groups compositions that share a frame. The frame is a few materials or accords that decide the overall impression, usually in the heart and base. The SFP table describes families by material: Fougère is lavender, woods, oakmoss and coumarin; Chypre is oakmoss, cistus labdanum and patchouli; Amber is sweet, powdery, vanillic, labdanum and animalic notes.

A subfamily (sous-famille) describes the facet added to the frame. Subfamily names usually join the family name with an adjective: Fruity Chypre, Floral Aldehydic, Marine Woody. The same adjective can appear in several families; the leather note, for example, appears in family G, in subfamily D4 Leather Chypre and in E6 Spicy Leather Woody.

Families are a descriptive tool, not a rule of composition. Many perfumes sit on a border and are placed differently by different sources. Guerlain's Jicky (1889) is a frequent example, placed sometimes in Fougère and sometimes in Amber.

The table is written and updated by the SFP's Technical Commission (Commission Technique). According to the SFP, the first version in 1984 covered only women's perfumes and had five families; the 1990 version added the Hesperidic and Woody families with their subfamilies.

The printed editions that can be verified are Classification des parfums et terminologie of 1998, published by the Comité Français du Parfum and the SFP, and Classification officielle des parfums et terminologie of 2010, the fourth edition, with the Osmothèque. In April 2016 the Osmothèque announced an update of 15 new cards adding perfumes released in 2014. The printed edition lists individual perfumes by subfamily; the SFP website publishes only family and subfamily names.

On its current classification page the SFP names family F Ambrée, with a note that it is sometimes called Orientale. This section uses the name Amber.

The second most used system is the Fragrance Wheel of Michael Edwards, author of the Fragrances of the World reference guide. The wheel arranges families in a circle; neighbouring families share more. According to a 2021 Fragrances of the World article, the previous change was in 1998, when the Water family was added. In June 2021 Edwards replaced Oriental with Amber in all English classifications: Floral Oriental became Floral Amber, Soft Oriental Soft Amber, Oriental Amber, and Woody Oriental Woody Amber.

The wheel now has 14 families: Floral, Soft Floral, Floral Amber, Soft Amber, Amber, Woody Amber, Woods, Mossy Woods, Dry Woods, Aromatic Fougère, Citrus, Water, Green, Fruity.

The two systems differ in three ways. First, the SFP is a coded table in which each perfume belongs to one subfamily; Edwards is a continuous circle. Second, the SFP keeps Chypre and Leather as families; Edwards has neither, Chypre being closest to Mossy Woods and leather spread across the woody families. Third, Edwards gives Water, Green and Fruity their own families, while the SFP treats them as facets within subfamilies, for example B5 Green Floral, B8 Floral Marine and E7 Marine Woody.

A fragrance pyramid divides a composition into three layers by evaporation rate. The top notes are fast-evaporating materials such as limonene in citrus, noticed first and fading soonest; how long they last depends on concentration and skin. The heart, usually flowers, spices and herbs, is clear for several hours. The base is woods, resins, mosses, musks and vanilla, which may last many hours, sometimes into the next day.

The pyramid is a simplified diagram. Many materials span several layers: patchouli and vetiver are present from the heart to the end; lavender has a bright top and a dry heart. Note lists on packaging usually describe an impression, not a formula, and may name notes with no matching ingredient.

When placing a scent in a family, the heart and base matter more than the top. Almost every family opens with citrus; what decides Chypre, Fougère or Amber is what remains after an hour. On each family page the structure lists typical materials by layer, with links to material and constituent pages in the library.

The existing Families and Facets page uses seven teaching groups, including Aromatic and Oriental, and treats leather as a facet. This section follows the SFP table: it has a separate Leather family, no separate Aromatic family (herbs appear as subfamilies within Citrus, Fougère, Chypre and Woody), and uses Amber instead of Oriental. The two pages complement each other: one for looking up oils, one for understanding structure.