Fragrance families are the coarsest useful way to sort perfume. They will not tell you whether you like a specific bottle, but they will stop you wasting time in the wrong half of the catalogue. We sort the whole range into six, and many perfumes belong to two.
Citrus
Bright, sharp, clean. Bergamot, lemon, grapefruit, sometimes with a salty or mineral edge. Reads fresh and unfussy, works in heat, and is the family most likely to be called "clean" rather than "perfumey".
The trade-off is longevity: citrus molecules are light and volatile, so these are the shortest-lived compositions in any range. That is the nature of the material, not a defect.
Start with Empire, Inception, Sorrento or Slow Living. Browse Citrus.
Floral
Built around flowers — rose, jasmine, violet, orange blossom. The broadest family in perfumery and the most varied: floral can mean soft and powdery, or green and sharp, or dense and syrupy.
Worth knowing that "floral" does not have to mean old-fashioned. XOXO Rosy is a modern rose; Marbella leans bright and sunlit; Moroccan Vanilla pairs rose with vanilla and lands much warmer. Browse Floral.
Fruity
Berries, peach, pineapple, tropical fruit. Usually cheerful and approachable, and the family that most often crosses over — fruity-floral and fruity-gourmand are both common.
Our largest family. Dreamscape, Inferno, Nautilus and Satin Blanc show how wide the range is. Browse Fruity.
Gourmand
Edible: vanilla, caramel, coffee, chocolate, milk, bakery notes. Divisive and worth testing before committing, because the line between "warm and comforting" and "too sweet" is personal.
Gourmands tend to perform well in cold weather and poorly in heat, where sweetness can turn cloying. Try Cafe Drops, Milk Drops, Matcha Latte or Bonfire Vanilla. Browse Gourmand.
Musky
The quietest family. Musks read as soft, warm and skin-like — often described as "clean laundry" or "smells like you, but better". They sit close and are the usual choice when you want to be noticed only at conversational distance.
One oddity: a meaningful share of people cannot smell certain musk molecules at all, so a musk that is obvious to one person can be nearly invisible to another. Try Penthouse or Baby Love. Browse Musky.
Woody & Vanilla
Sandalwood, cedar, amber, tonka, tobacco, vanilla. The heaviest and longest-lasting family, and the one that most reads as "expensive". These are evening and cold-weather fragrances almost by definition.
Try Aphrodite, Senja, On The Rocks or Untamed. Browse Woody & Vanilla.
Families are a starting point, not a verdict
Most perfumes worth wearing sit between two families, and ours are labelled accordingly — Untamed is Gourmand and Woody & Vanilla at once; Coconut Dreams is Fruity and Gourmand. If you have written off a whole family based on one bad experience, it is usually worth trying a crossover before deciding.
You can filter the full range by family, notes, season, occasion and intensity. To go a level deeper than families, read fragrance notes explained. For choosing by weather, see choosing a perfume by season, and for what the gold line on our product pages means, see what "inspired by" means.