Sillage, Projection & Longevity: Fragrance Terms Explained

Fragrance reviews can read like a foreign language: "great sillage, moderate projection, EDP longevity, gorgeous dry-down." Each term describes something precise — and once you know them, product pages and reviews turn from poetry into information. Here is the working vocabulary.

The big three: performance words

Longevity

How many hours the fragrance remains detectable on your skin. Benchmarks by family: fresh and citrus scents at four to five hours are performing well; florals typically manage five to seven; woody, oriental and gourmand compositions should deliver seven or more. Longevity depends on concentration, composition and your skin — technique helps too, as our longevity guide shows.

Projection

How far the scent radiates from your body while it is at full strength. High projection fills a room; low projection stays within arm's reach. Neither is "better" — a first date wants projection; an open-plan office does not (see our office-safe guide).

Sillage

The French word for "wake" — the scented trail you leave behind as you move. A fragrance can sit close on still skin yet leave a beautiful corridor when you walk past. Sillage is what makes someone turn around after you have gone; classic oriental and amber compositions like Smoked Amber are famous for it.

In one image: longevity is how long the song plays, projection is the volume, sillage is the echo in the hallway.

The structure words

Note pyramid

The top / heart / base structure of a composition. Top notes (citrus, herbs, light spices) greet you for the first fifteen to thirty minutes. Heart notes (florals, fruit, spice) carry hours two through four. Base notes (woods, amber, vanilla, musk, oud) anchor everything and linger until the end.

Dry-down

The final phase — what remains after the top and heart have faded. Experienced buyers judge a fragrance mostly on its dry-down, because that is what colleagues at 4 pm and dinner companions at 9 pm actually smell.

Accord

A blend of notes engineered to read as a single new smell — a "marine accord" or "leather accord" is built, not extracted.

The review-culture words

• Opening / blast: the first spray impression, often the loudest moment
• Skin scent: the phase (or style) where fragrance is detectable only up close — intimate, not weak
• Beast mode: enthusiast slang for extreme longevity and projection
• Cloying: sweetness that has crossed into suffocating
• Versatile: wearable across seasons, settings and dress codes
• Signature scent: the one you wear so consistently it becomes identity — finding it is a process we mapped in this step-by-step guide

Using the vocabulary to shop

Now a sentence like "moderate projection, excellent longevity, cocoa-tonka dry-down" translates instantly: polite in a meeting, still alive at dinner, warmly sweet at the finish — that is Velvet Vixen in one line. Every product page in the iLAVIN collection describes notes, family and performance in exactly these terms, so you can buy with a reviewer's eye from day one.