Why the Base Note Gets Most of the Formulation Time

A customer smelling a strip for four seconds is smelling almost entirely top notes — the most volatile molecules, gone within an hour on skin. It’s also the easiest part of a fragrance to get right, because nobody wears a fragrance for four seconds.

We spend the majority of formulation time on the base: the resins, woods, and musks that are still there eight hours later. A fragrance that’s brilliant on the strip and forgettable by evening has failed at the part that actually matters.