How to Pick the Right Fragrance for Any Occasion

When it comes to personal style, how you smell is even more important than how you look — even if nobody can smell the stank on your “vintage” grails via Instagram. But combing through dozens of brands, each with their own collection of scents, can be a daunting task for perfume novices. And perfumes can quickly become a pricy investment, making use of expensive ingredients and laborious production processes. Nobody wants to blind buy a perfume they haven’t smelled and end up regretful.

Perfume is perhaps the most personal expression of style, as it commingles with your natural odor and pheromones. The same perfume will smell differently on different people, so these recommendations and tips are just a starting point. Whether you’re looking for a single perfume to wear casually or multiple scents to build a fragrance wardrobe for any occasion, Complex has you covered. Whether you’re headed to the office or the park, grabbing coffee or getting drinks, we’ll walk you through how to pick the right perfume for the event. We’ll even offer you a few ideas for fragrances you might wear. Maybe you’ll find your new signature scent.

Here’s a guide on how to pick the right perfume for any occasion.

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The great outdoors is a place to get in touch with your roots and decompress from the day-to-day grind. Maybe your Salomons will finally see some dirt. Wearing perfume cuts you off from olfactory information — bad for visiting superblooms but perfect for malodorous summer beaches. And sometimes, creating your own sensory bubble in nature is satisfying too (try listening to SahBabii while watching a flowing river).

The perfume you wear out should complement your experience, not detract from it, so leave the pungent and overpowering at home. Instead go for something cleaner and less in-your-face. Whether you opt for something floral or aquatic, mineral or green, a refreshing scent makes the perfect companion to sunscreen and bug spray in your go bag.

Whether hitting the beach or the trail, you’ll rarely go wrong with pink pepper scents, whose blend of herbal, floral, and spicy often evokes salt when paired with musk and benzoin. Maison Margiela’s Beach Walk might be the best known of these salt scents for its balmy, splash-of-citrus take on the trio; Etat Libre d’Orange’s Archives 69 is more medicinal thanks to a notes of camphor and incense.

For a softer, cooler vibe, you might turn to floral perfumes, delicate and soothing. Jo Malone’s Wild Bluebell is supported by a persimmon middle note over a musky base, with bluebell and dew drop top notes;  Nomenclature’s Wood Dew, evoking peonies, is like rain on flowers after the storm breaks. And more aquatic still is Nymphéas by Kismet Olfactive, which is inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies and smells almost exactly like a pond choked with lotus flowers.

The only thing worse than getting stuck on a long trip next to someone who reeks of cologne is getting stuck next to someone who reeks of BO. Still, enclosed spaces offer an opportunity to live by the Golden Rule and respect your fellow passengers — even if you’re all flying Spirit to ComplexCon.

A perfume’s projection describes how far away the scent is detectable. If someone’s perfume has high projection, you can literally smell them coming. Lower projection fragrances make better companions in close quarters. Projection usually has more to do with a perfume’s given ingredients than anything else, although you can expect higher concentration eau de parfums (EDPs) to have bigger projection than lower concentration eau de toilettes (EDTs).

The term “skin scents'' is alternately used to discuss A) fragrances with minimal projection that can only be smelled on the skin, and B) perfumes that replicate or enhance the scent of skin itself. Perfumes in the latter category frequently make use of a compound called “Iso E Super,” which came to notoriety in the late ‘80s thanks to Christian Dior’s Fahrenheit and is more familiar to modern generations thanks to its use in Glossier You and Abercrombie Fierce. It’s also the titular “je ne sais quoi” in D.S. & Durga standout I Don’t Know What and a key component of Le Labo’s Another 13. Cozy, inoffensive, and framing your own natural scent — what’s not to love?

Scent is the last refuge of personal style in the workplace; no matter what your job requires you to wear, a fragrance speaks for you before you’ve even said “Hello.” And whether you’re in an office, a co-working space, or your PJ’s at home with the Zoom camera off, a good scent can help you make a good impression on others and keep yourself in a productive zone.

There is some contention around whether it’s acceptable to wear perfume in the office, and the general consensus seems to be less is more for white-collar workers. You know your workplace. Lower projection is one way to go, but considering a perfume’s sillage (how long it lasts after you apply) offers alternatives. Certain fragrances are short-lived by their very nature, their volatile aromatics quicker to degrade or dissipate; citrus and floral scents tend to wear off faster than spices or musk. Low-sillage perfumes are uniquely suited to office environments for a couple reasons. First, your office air conditioner, which is never set higher than freezing, maintains a cool and dry environment. Heat is by far the number-one enemy of fragile fragrance compounds, and humidity isn’t far behind. Second, since you’re such a diligent employee, odds are you’re never too far from your desk, where you can stash a bottle for periodic respritzing. The delicate neroli and ylang ylang notes of Jardin de L’Orangerie by Dries Van Noten stick around a lot longer when you aren’t sweating them away, the white florals punching up a creamy lactonic base note. For those seeking something more subtle, Jo Malone’s Wood Sage and Sea Salt is bright and marine, like grapefruit juice mixed with kombu. 

When you’re meeting with others, especially out-of-office clients, opting for a stronger perfume projects confidence. Plus, it’s easy to feel good about people who smell good — it’s biological. Santa Maria Novella is one of the oldest perfume brands operating today, and Opoponax exudes confidence, thanks to the inclusion of its namesake gum resin, which smells warm and smoky, with hints of whiskey and incense — but unlike most smoky perfumes, it won’t stick to your clothes six hours later. More sprightly is Vilhelm Parfumerie’s Chicago High, whose blend of leather, tobacco, and champagne notes starts off like whiskey and dries down to reveal fruity notes of pineapple and bergamot over amber.

On days when you don’t have to see anyone, pick something for yourself. In the synthetic environment of an office building or the agoraphobic wonder of a home office, the naturalistic simulacrum of aquatic colognes and green scents can be especially soothing. One of most timeless aquatic perfumes available, which is also shockingly affordable, is Inis, which smells exactly like clean ocean, notes of Sicilian lemon, and jasmine subtly blended into a marine mélange. Inis also offers a wide range of scented bath and body products beyond perfume, which is a nice bonus for those who prefer to avoid mixing different fragrances.

Etat Libre d’Orange is known for some of their more risqué work, including a Tom of Finland collaboration and Secretions Magnifique. Their fragrance by New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr is called You or Someone Like You after Burr’s novel of the same name. The scent opens with ozone, grapefruit, and mint, which dries down to reveal musk that stays fresh thanks to anise and green notes.

Whether you’re grabbing coffee at Cafe Leon Dore or Cafe Kitsuné, it’s important to stand out. Smelling like BR540, Santal 33, Philosykos, or even Sauvage isn’t bad per se, but who wants to end up wearing the same perfume as the tech bro next to them? You might as well wear matching sneakers.

Before dropping bags on the latest hyped perfume or fragrance, order some samples online or head to a store in person. And when you find something you like, try more fragrances from that brand and other perfumes with similar notes. For researching perfume notes, Fragrantica is an invaluable resource and community. Alternatively, sites like FragranceNet, LuckyScent, and ScentSplit offer ways to purchase smaller sizes of perfumes at affordable price points.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of namedrop-worthy brands with stand-out fragrances flying under the radar. Off-White’s four fragrance lineup features two standouts by perfumer Jérome Epinette (who has also developed fragrances for Byredo, Vilhelm Parfumerie, and Boy Smells) that make use of dense green vetiver in distinct ways. Solution No. 2 offers brighter citrus and ginger notes over a vetiver and cedar base, while Solution No. 4 is darker and more complicated, with fig, tobacco, and vetiver over leather, sandalwood, and tonka bean.

Comme des Garçons offers a wide array of perfumes, ranging from the classically manly Wonderwood to the industrial glue-scented postmodernism of CDG. Floriental combines plum, incense, and labdanum for a dry, woody perfume with diffuse sweetness. And Wonderoud offers a striking blast of oud, aka agarwood, a resinous wood formed by mold within aquilaria trees with a heady fragrance that recalls leather, smoke, and saffron. Oud is a fairly intense scent that’s not for everyone. But if you find it to your tastes, Louis Vuitton offers Ombre Nomade, sticky in the nostrils thanks to rose, raspberry, and benzoin mixed with oud.

Packed clubs bring to mind loud, in-your-face scents like Angel by Mugler and Versace Eros, a nostalgic callback to the Victoria’s Secret and Old Spice perfumes of middle school locker rooms, cloying perfume densely layered over stale BO. While the iconic scents of yesteryear have aged into a quiet omnipresence through flankers, reformulations, and a legion of copycats, wearing a perfume with serious projection and sillage is evergreen advice for just about any party.

How long a perfume lasts is largely about the ingredients. Citrus notes are particularly ephemeral and florals are also quick to dissipate, but when combined with, say, musk or oud, can persist for a surprisingly long time. If you’re asking a perfume to stand up to the gauntlet of a humid rave or a long night out, you should pay special attention to the base notes of the perfume, which will last longer than the quicker-lived top notes.

One whiff of Bond No. 9’s Nuits de Noho will leave you craving pineapple, mixing the scent of pineapple leaf and jasmine with vanilla and musk. Fantomas by Nasomatto smells exactly like melon hard candies and lasts forever, even if you work up a sweat. And with nearly as-strong staying power, 1740 by Histoires de Parfums smells like rum and prune, an initially baffling pairing that yields intoxicating results.

A recent addition to Frederic Malle’s line of perfumes, Synthetic Jungle is verdant, oakmoss, and lily of the valley punched up by galbanum. Marissa Zappas’ cult favorite Annabel’s Birthday Cake layers an adult edge of tuberose and latex over the childish scent of frosting and tonka bean. And in a nod to the classics, Versace Eros Flame dresses up a fairly straightforward base of vanilla, patchouli, and tonka bean with geranium, chinotto, and black pepper, a spicy-sweet pairing that you’ll want to keep sniffing all night.

Of course, there’s common courtesy. Fragrance can quickly become cloying and overpowering in the gym, and distracting at doctor’s appointments and funerals. And basic consideration: If you’re going swimming, any perfume you apply will wash right off.

But even if you were just being selfish, living your life ensconced by perfume would be a bit like walking around wearing noise-canceling headphones every waking moment. You’d miss out on the beautiful cacophony around you. Just as important as knowing what perfume to wear is knowing when not to wear it. Our sense of smell is delicate, and there will be times you don’t want to overpower it.

You’re probably already familiar with the way our senses of smell and taste are related, and the fact that scent and memory are highly associated. But when you consider that humans have chemical receptors for anywhere from 10,000 to 100 billion different odors, and our olfactory capabilities in fact rival dogs and rodents, you start to get an appreciation for how complex this sense really is, and how even lighter perfumes can impede your ability to smell.

The most obvious is when you’re shopping for perfume: Completely bare skin means more real estate for trying samples on skin. But smell is closely tied to taste, and so when going to a particularly nice restaurant, or attending an expensive wine tasting, keep your fragrances light, if you wear them. You’re using your nose more than you realize.