Senteur System

We have colour-coded every fragrance and each perfumed article on our website according to one or more of 12 fragrance families, so at a glance you can get an idea what each of our scents smell like; not always the sum total of the listed ingredients but attempt to convey an overall impression and mood of a scent.

Once you have selected a perfume of your own, you can use its individual colour code to match it up with similar coded fragrances to help you find other perfumes which may appeal to you.

  • Amber
    Amber fragrances are warm, comforting, and sensual, though the amber note itself doesn’t truly exist. It’s a blend of ingredients like vanilla, patchouli, labdanum, styrax, and benzoin, creating versatile accords that range from soft and powdery to deep and musky.
  • Aquatic
    A sense of the great outdoors using natural and synthetic ingredients to suggest sea breezes, icy lakes, sunny streams, icy cascades and the salty ocean.
  • Chypre
    Rich dark scents: sophisticated, elegant and urban. Generally chypres feature crisp top notes which soften through fruity or floral hearts into an aromatic woody base.
  • Citrus
    Also known as hesperidic. One of the oldest of the classic perfume families. Oils of orange, lemon, bergamot, neroli, grapefruit. A fresh bright ‘cologne’ accord.
  • Floral
    Fallen petals, bouquets, flowers in a vase: a florist’s, a summer garden or a still life: white, green and velvety. Fresh, sweet and essentially feminine.
  • Fougere
    Fresh aromatic notes, suggestive of herbs, mosses, bracken and ferns - softer and warmer than Green scents with a typical use of lavender, thyme, sage and rosemary.
  • Fruity
    Fragrances enriched with notes of soft sweet fleshy fruits such as peach, apricot and plum. A sense of sensuality, opulence and indulgence. A golden amplitude!
  • Gourmand
    Gourmand perfumes comprise an especially sensual fragrance family which celebrates the close link between smell and taste. Gourmands are all about the sweet pleasures of the table.
  • Green
    Think of all the colour green suggests to you: fresh, sometimes sharp scents dominated by leafy, grassy, arboreal crisp accords. Brisk, energising, natural and clean.
  • Leather
    Leather accords are variously polished, smoky, juicy, supple or suedey. Sophisticated, varied and imaginative. Assertive and seductive.
  • Oriental
    When you think Orientals, think dramatic accords of amber, vanilla, incense, spices and tonka with indulgent sumptuous floral accords to match.
  • Oud
    Oud, derived from the resin of the agarwood tree, is a rare and prized perfumery ingredient known for its dark, smoky aroma reminiscent of tobacco, incense, amber, leather, and wood. Traditionally intense, modern oud scents are now crafted to be lighter while retaining their distinctive richness.
  • Powdery
    Powdery scents evoke a soft, clean aroma like freshly powdered skin or crisp linens. Typically combining iris, violet, musk, or vanilla with subtle woody undertones, iris remains the goddess of powdery notes.
  • Tobacco
    Caron’s Tabac Blond (1919) introduced a century of scents based on accords of tobacco. Acrid, smoky, honeyed, green or damp. Intriguingly aromatic; still mildly controversial.
  • Woody
    Fragrances based on fragrant woods: and, within that remit, very varied - grainy, dry, blond and smooth; or earthy, oily, dark and suggestive of forest depths.