Listen here for a quick AI discussion of this edition's feature essay.

The Question Nobody's Asking

Too much fragrance can break your brain!

Check this out:

"I have over 300 perfumes and often struggle with which one to wear. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed I walk away and come back again... Sometimes it takes me over half the day to decide."

I found this comment online. A real person. No joke.

300 bottles. Half a day to choose. Still paralyzed.

How does that happen?

I think I know why.

Let me tell you about one of my friends.

She owns 30 fragrances. Okay, maybe not 300. She has a nice collection. But she only wears two of them.

The two she actually wears are both soft and warm. Clean musks and gentle vanilla fragrances with some hints of amber and spice. Nothing fancy. Nothing expensive.

The others she never wears. There was a bold power oud. Several bright citrus colognes. Heavy florals. An elegant leather. She has good taste.

But when I asked her about them, she said something that stuck with me:

“When I wear these ones, I feel like I’m playing dress-up. Like I’m pretending to be someone else."

She likes all of them. But she only loves two.

300 bottles or 30. Same problem, just more bottles.

So why do we like so many fragrances but only love a few?

I’m obsessed with this question. It pushes me to study psychology, consumer behavior, neuroscience. Fields I knew almost nothing about.

And it's completely changed how I see fragrance as a perfumer.

I think I'm getting close to an answer.

And sometimes the clues come from the strangest places. Like a 1952 lipstick ad and a Harvard business school professor.

Part of my obsession involves comparing what brands promise with what their customers actually feel. I call it desire mapping. Looking for the gaps between the promise and the reality.

The first clue took me back over 70 years.

I found an old lipstick advertisement and a quote from Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon:

"In the factory we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope."

His 1952 Fire and Ice campaign barely mentioned the product. One page was a checklist of fifteen provocative questions — "Have you ever danced with your shoes off?" "Do you blush when you find yourself flirting?" The other page featured a stunning model in a scarlet cape. No product claims. No promises about staying power. Just questions about who you are.

Revlon wasn't selling lipstick. They were selling a "new me."

Beauty understood this in 1952.

Fragrance marketing in 2025? Still showing celebrities wet from the ocean. Still telling us what the product is, not what it does for us.

The next clue

Then I discovered the work of Clayton Christensen, a Harvard professor who studied why products succeed or fail.

His insight was simple but powerful:

"People don't buy products. They hire them to do a job."

And here's the part that hit me:

"People don't simply buy or pick products or services. They pull them into their lives to make progress."

Jobs are multifaceted. They have powerful social and emotional dimensions.

Applied to fragrance, this changes everything.

So you're not hiring a perfume to "smell like bergamot." You're hiring it to do an emotional job, like:

"Help me feel confident before this presentation." 

"Create a sanctuary after a hard day."

Or even:

"Remind me who I am when I've forgotten."

Completely different jobs.

The wrong questions

Here's where it gets interesting.

Every fragrance interaction starts the same way:

"What kind of notes do you like?"

"Do you prefer fresh or warm?"

"Is this for daytime or evening?"

We answer with ingredients and occasions. And then we wonder why we end up with bottles we never wear.

Revson would have asked: "What do you want to become?"

Christensen would have asked: "What job are you hiring this fragrance to do?"

Those questions predict love. Note preferences predict more bottles you don't wear.

Why notes don't predict love

The fragrance pyramid, that neat triangle of top, heart, and base notes, is supposed to help you understand what you're buying.

Here's what I've learned after 25 years: the pyramid is mostly marketing bullshit, not technical reality.

The listed ingredients aren't always present in the fragrance. And even when they are, they rarely behave the way the pyramid suggests.

Those poetic descriptions? "Iced rose petals" and "luminous jasmine" are marketing poetry for plain rose and jasmine. Or phenylethylalcohol or benzylacetate.

That's why you'll never see poetic note descriptions from me.

And knowing a fragrance has bergamot, jasmine, and sandalwood tells you nothing about the emotional job it will perform.

That's why you can love two fragrances with completely different notes. And feel nothing from two fragrances with identical pyramids.

What does "Fresh and Confident" actually mean?

In my work as a perfumer, I receive briefs like, we need something:

• "Fresh but warm, young but sophisticated"
• "Masculine but universal appeal"
• "Clean but sensual"

These describe what it should smell like, not what job it should do.

Let me show you what I might think when I hear poetry like "fresh and confident." I picture someone who needs a bit of self-care. A time out. Needs an escape. Let's call them The Burned-Out Scroller.

They're hyper-connected, urban, constantly bombarded by digital noise and hustle culture. Intellectually fatigued. Always on.

They don't need more energy. They need help.

They're "hiring" this fragrance to help them calm down.

The emotional state they're reaching for? Let's call it Alert Calm.

Think: the paradox of tea. Relaxed focus. They don't want something that's going to put them to sleep. They need to feel present. But not wired. This fragrance is for them. Not for others. A personal hug of calm, peace, and focus.

When I picture all of this, I think they'd love something like a matcha latte fragrance. Green, clean and creamy. The scent of a quiet morning before the world gets crazy.

My goal is simple: distill the illusion of a ritual moment.

Undecavertol (Balance): Watery, leafy. Violet-like. Abstract, neon-green like slice of kiwi. One of my favorite green notes. It acts as a "diffuser" in a composition. Long-lasting. Without it, you just have sweet milk.

Mate Absolute (Stillness): The scent of real tea leaves. Green, dry, warm. Bitter. Dry hay and tobacco. I love mixing it with Osmanthus and vetiver. Inky & tar-like facets. It adds the necessary naturalness.

Octalactone Gamma (Comfort): Creamy, soft. Milky. Coconut. Mild sweetness. Reminds me of Tonka. A great bridge between white florals and milky sandalwood. Rounds off the bitter facets.

Hedione (Clarity): Crisp, luminous. Light, jasmine-like scent. Transparent. Diffusive. The space between notes. A calm aura. It keeps the accord from smelling sticky.

Florol (Harmony): Lily of the valley. Low projection. Easy to use when you need a modern "invisible" floral structure. Clean and pleasant. Pairs great with Nympheal. Adds a petal-like softness.

2-Acetylpyrazine (Awareness): Toasted. Hazelnut. Popcorn. Golden, warm. Super-powerful-high-impact material. Perfect for adding a cooked rice note.

Balance all of this on vanilla, sandalwood, and transparent musks and you have something that does the impossible: it wakes you up and calms you down at the same time. Alert Calm. The paradox of tea, captured in a bottle.

But what if I'm wrong?

What if "fresh and confident" means something completely different?

For a different persona? A different motivation?

What if it's for someone who needs to own the room in a high-stakes meeting?

Or someone starting over after a breakup who wants to feel like themselves again?

Or someone who thrives on attention and wants a fragrance that announces their arrival?

Same words. Completely different emotional jobs. Completely different fragrances.

This is what emotional fragrance design has taught me.

The words are the same. The jobs are not.

What's next?

This is what my book is about. A way to understand the emotional jobs fragrances perform. A framework for moving from liking to loving.

But you don't need to wait for the book to start.

Next time you're buying a fragrance and someone asks "what notes do you like?" Pause. And ask yourself instead:

What job do I need this fragrance to do today?

That question might change everything.

Thanks for reading. These discoveries excited me, and you're the first people I wanted to tell.

Until next time,
Scott