Scent shapes identity. In the intricate world of perfume, each bottle holds more than fragrance - it captures dreams, memories and the essence of who we want to be. We reach for these bottles before dates, job interviews or quiet evenings at home, creating invisible threads that bind moments to memory.
Michael Edwards, the architectural mind behind Fragrances of the World, has spent years mapping the universe of scent. His guide, launched in 1983, sorts perfumes into four fundamental families: Floral, Ambery, Woody and Fresh. In American markets, floral scents reign supreme, their complex bouquets speaking the language of romance and refinement.
At the heart of this aromatic empire sits jasmine - the only note present in every best selling fragrance analyzed for this piece. From its Himalayan origins, jasmine now blooms globally, with India and Egypt leading production. While hundreds of jasmine varieties exist, perfumers prize two: Grandiflorum and Sambac. During the peak harvest months of July and August, these flowers release a scent that dances between feminine and masculine notes, defying simple categorization.
I have an acute sensitivity to scents – I’m always the first to ask “Do you smell that...?” in a crowd. My fragrance choices influence my purchases, and in turn, the scents I wear enhance my personality, adding touches of honey to my recollections. Like a personal soundtrack, my fragrance wardrobe changes with the seasons, each scent carefully chosen to amplify the natural rhythm of the year.
When joy overflows, I reach for Jo Malone’s Velvet Rose & Oud Cologne Intense. The passionate sweetness of rose, grounded by warm woody notes, takes me back to my undergraduate graduation - a hot yet fulfilling May summer. As spring awakens, Jo Malone’s Yuja becomes my companion. Its delicate, poetic coolness mirrors the misty landscape where new leaves unfurl and flower buds prepare their debut.
Summer calls for Diptyqu’s Fleur de Peau - a clean scent that captures those precious moments at 4 AM when the sun peeks over the horizon. You might question nature’s early rising, but like the dawn itself, this fragrance brims with anticipation for the unknown. As autumn paints the world in fire, Jo Malone’s Peony & Blush Suede accompanies the season’s grand finale before winter’s quiet descent.
In winter’s embrace, Le Labo’s Santal 33 becomes my refuge. Its rich, woody aroma creates an invisible hearth, warming the spirit like a gathering around a crackling fireplace on the coldest nights.
Revisiting these perfumes while writing, memories cascade like the delicate mist from each press of the nozzle. Every burst of scent blooms like a firework - brief yet indelible, connecting us not just to moments but to people who shared them. When that familiar fragrance fills the air, who appears in your mind’s eye?
My inspiration came from a Reddit post: A Brief Analysis of the Most Popular Femfrags in the U.S. . Since there was no readily available ranking of popular fragrances, I manually gathered data from four major retailers: Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Macy’s, and Bloomingdale’s. Using the Fragrance section of each site, I filtered for the highest-rated products and then sorted them by Bestseller. I selected the top ten perfumes from each platform. From this dataset, I ranked 16 perfumes based on how frequently they appeared in the top ten across multiple platforms—each perfume was listed in at least two of the four stores’ top-ten lists.
To analyze the olfactory families and ingredients of each fragrance, I used Wikiparfum, a digital platform for perfume enthusiasts. Since different versions of the same fragrance exist across generations, the URLs lacked a consistent pattern. I manually searched for and recorded each perfume’s URL, then used BeautifulSoup to scrape the olfactory family and ingredient details.
For ingredient analysis, I used pandas. For data visualization, I used R Studio, creating a Sankey diagram with ggsankey and ranking ingredients with ggplot.
The four retail platforms I used cater primarily to female consumers. As a result, my findings are likely skewed toward female preferences.