Your perfect fragrance already exists — you just need to know where to look.

By Marie-Sophie Schaupp — Co-founder of Maison Diaphane

Choosing a fragrance is always an intimate process. It's about skin, memories, emotions, but also context and personality. In-store, interaction, testing, and discussion naturally help refine one's desires. Online, the exercise is more delicate: you can neither smell nor test.

This is why, beyond classic filters, Maison Diaphane has chosen to offer search tools based on the olfactory experience itself, to help everyone navigate their discovery more accurately. On most websites, sorting options are generally limited to a few criteria: bestsellers, alphabetical order, price, or brand. These sorts are useful for organizing a catalog, but they give no indication of what the perfume will actually smell like, nor how it will be worn daily.

1. Filter by olfactory family: identify your sensory world

The olfactory family corresponds to the main "color" of the fragrance, its dominant ambiance. It allows for grouping creations according to their main facets and provides clear benchmarks in the diversity of offerings. At Maison Diaphane, eight olfactory families are available in the filters:

• Amber: warm, enveloping fragrances, often built around resins, vanilla, and balsamic notes, associated with a feeling of comfort and depth.
• Aromatic: fresh and invigorating compositions, marked by herbs, green or camphorated notes, evoking nature and a sense of purity.
• Woody: structured, dry or creamy fragrances, built around different wood essences, offering an impression of elegance, stability, and character.
• Floral: creations centered on flowers, sometimes delicate, sometimes opulent, expressing softness, romance, or intensity depending on their construction.
• Fougère: a family historically linked to classic perfumery, blending freshness, lavender, aromatic notes, and deeper bases, often associated with timeless elegance.
• Gourmand: fragrances evoking sweet, milky, or pastry notes, providing an immediate sense of pleasure and comfort.
• Hesperidean: compositions dominated by citrus fruits, bright, fresh, and sparkling, ideal for a feeling of vitality and lightness.
• Oriental: rich and sensual fragrances, built around spices, resins, and warm notes, often associated with a strong personality and great emotional intensity.

Using the olfactory family filter allows you either to stay within a world you already know and appreciate, or to explore new creations while maintaining a certain sensory coherence. It's a way to navigate more serenely, starting from your deep tastes rather than just a perfume name.

2. Filter by concentration: understanding the structure and longevity of the fragrance

Concentration corresponds to the proportion of perfume concentrate present in the formula. It directly influences the longevity of the fragrance, but also its depth, texture, and how it evolves on the skin over hours. Four main categories of concentration are offered in the filters:

• Cologne: very fresh and light, it prioritizes an immediate and invigorating sensation, with shorter longevity, ideal for generous and repeated applications.
• Eau de toilette: balance between freshness and structure, with moderate diffusion and longevity suitable for everyday wear.
• Eau de parfum: more concentrated, it offers a more pronounced evolution and longer persistence, often chosen as a main fragrance.
• Extrait de parfum: highly concentrated, it is worn in small touches, with exceptional depth and longevity, often perceived as a more intimate and intense version of the fragrance.

This filter allows you to adapt your choice to the season, time of day, but also to your personal relationship with the act of perfuming yourself and how you wish to experience your fragrance over time.

3. Filter by sillage: choosing how your fragrance is perceived

Sillage refers to how the fragrance diffuses around a person. It's not just a matter of intensity, but also of relationship to space and others. Some fragrances stay close to the skin, almost confidential, while others leave a more distinct impression in the environment. At Maison Diaphane, four sillage levels allow you to refine this choice:

• Subtle sillage: fragrance close to the skin, discreet, ideal for professional environments or for those who prefer restraint.
• Moderate sillage: perceptible but measured, balanced presence, easy to wear daily.
• Present sillage: assertive diffusion, a fragrance that is noticed by those nearby, an assumed olfactory signature.
• Intense sillage: enveloping, very expressive fragrance that leaves a lasting impression in space, often chosen for special occasions or as a signature scent.

Choosing a fragrance based on its sillage, therefore, means defining how you wish to exist olfactorily in your environment.

4. Combining filters: refining your olfactory journey

The value of these filters lies not in their isolated use, but in their combination. By crossing olfactory family, concentration, and sillage, it becomes possible to build a much more precise and personal search. This approach allows you to move from broad exploration to a more targeted selection, taking into account your tastes, lifestyle, and wearing habits. The choice then becomes more coherent, more reassuring, and closer to what you would naturally do during an in-store interaction.

Want to speed things up? The online olfactory diagnostic

If you prefer direct guidance rather than combining filters yourself, Maison Diaphane offers a free and quick online olfactory diagnostic. In a few minutes, it translates your preferences — desired sensations, occasions, sillage intensity, olfactory memories — into a personalized selection from over 200 references from independent houses. A simple way to find, even remotely, the accuracy of in-store advice.

At Maison Diaphane, we believe that every fragrance is a discovery. That's why we carefully select rare, independent houses that carry meaning and emotion. Whether you are looking for your olfactory signature or curious to discover new creations, our team accompanies you with passion, in-store in Angers or through our online selection.

To go further

• Discover the best-selling niche perfumes in 2025
• Choosing your skincare online: the guide by universe