scent advisory
- based on memory, taste & atmosphere
A few weeks ago I started thinking about how strange perfume culture has become online. Every scent somehow ends up described with the same few words: compliments, projection, longevity, beast mode. The same TikTok reviews, the same talking points, over and over again.
I wanted to try something slower and completely different, as an antidote to the TikTok review cycle. (basically that’s why illatos exists.)
Definitely not a “find your signature scent in 30 seconds” BuzzFeed quiz. Something closer to how people actually experience fragrance in real life: through memory, atmosphere, texture, and contradictions. The smell of a place you can no longer visit. A scent that worked on someone else but never quite on you. Something half-remembered from years ago that still shows up uninvited.
The advisory starts with a questionnaire. Some questions are practical, others more instinctive. What kind of scent keeps returning in your life? What do you avoid? What did a perfume make you feel like, rather than smell like?
Then I spend time with the answers before curating a small selection of perfumes and building a personal advisory PDF delivered within 48 hours.
The first person to go through it was Allie Bartlett (@AllieSmellzBigTime) a fragrance content creator from Nevada. Her perfume taste and eye (rather nose, haha) for detail surprised me, and how naturally the conversation moved away from notes and categories into memory and identity.
Powder, woods, fabric, atmosphere, rich women in Arkansas, scents that felt too loud, or scents that stayed close to the skin. It quickly stopped feeling like a product test and started feeling like documenting someone’s relationship with perfume.
“When I really think about why I love fragrance and perfume, it’s mostly for selfish reasons. It’s not for others; it’s personal, and it’s mine.
My scents are inextricably linked to me — the good: the fresh blooms of the lilac that lives in my side yard; the bad: the trigger scent of Sweet Pea from Bath & Body Works from a time when I was having terrible anxiety; the weird: the grassy, yeasty smell of my dog’s paw; or even the banal, such as the smell of a freshly printed sheet of paper from my office. I know these smells like no one else does.
A scent can transcend time and instantly transport you to a very unique place and moment; this is what I love. It can also be performative or transformational — who do I want to be today? This is why I loved the specially curated personal perfume recommendations generated by Gabor.
After answering his questionnaire about my preferences, he sent me a super niche and distinctive list of five perfumes he thought I might love. I’ve still yet to try all of them, but they’re perfumes I’ve never heard of, and I can’t wait to get my nose on them all and make new scent memories from them.”
It also felt reassuring that even someone deeply inside online fragrance culture responded to something slower and more personal.
If any of this sounds familiar to you, maybe this is for you too.
The scent advisory is now available through the illatos store.
