Reading fragrance reviews
Sillage, projection, and longevity
Three ways to describe performance: the trail behind you, the space around you, and the time a scent remains.
The short answer
Trail, distance, time.
Sillage is the trail a fragrance leaves in the air as you move. Projection describes how far people can notice it around you. Longevity describes how long it remains detectable. A useful wear report says which of these it measured.
In this guide
01 · Three questions
Performance has more than one dimension
Projection
How far the scent radiates from you right now.
Sillage
The scented trail that remains as you move.
Longevity
How long the fragrance remains detectable at all.
The word sillage comes from the idea of a wake or trail. In this guide, projection describes the scent around a wearer at a given moment, while longevity describes elapsed wear. Reviewers do not always use the first two words consistently, so look for a description of what they actually noticed.[1]