Scent Study: What Your Perfume Says About You

Perfume should be one of the most fun aspects of the beauty world, and yet, selecting a fragrance can be slightly overwhelming (and even intimidating!) for many women. Maybe you've been wearing the same fragrance that your mom picked out for you since high school, because the idea of facing the overly aggressive perfume brigade at the store is, frankly, terrifying. Or, even worse, you're wearing a perfume that smelled fantastic on someone else, only to realize that it's not you at all. But, how do you figure out what kind of scent you should be wearing — the kind of scent that embodies not just your taste, but your personality (or at least the piece of it you feel like displaying today) as well?

With the mission of de-mystification in mind (and putting it all into layman's terms, because most of us don't toss around words like chypre and fougère on a daily basis), we set out to find the elusive connection between fragrances and the personalities of women who wear them. Robert Gerstner, founder of luxury olfactory boutique Aedes de Venustas, schooled us on the top eight fragrance categories and their identifying notes, while Dawn Goldworm (scent director of olfactive branding company 12.29) connected each category to the type of woman who would wear them. Read on to find out: Does your fragrance fit your personality? (But obviously, take it all with a grain of salt. We know you're way too multi-faceted to be defined by a bottle — but you can't pretend this isn't fun, right?)