Five families organize most of perfumery. Understanding which one you naturally gravitate toward is the fastest shortcut to a fragrance that feels like you — and the most useful map for explaining, to yourself or to someone else, why a perfume you love smells the way it smells.
The five-family system in common use today derives from the Société Française des Parfumeurs classification, which expands into a more detailed seven (and sometimes fourteen) families when used inside the laboratory. For the wearer, five is more than enough resolution to choose well: floral, citrus (also called hesperidic), woody, oriental (also called amber), and chypre. Most perfumes sit primarily in one family and borrow from one or two others; the borrowing is what gives a composition its character.
The largest family by volume. Built around flowers — most often rose, jasmine, tuberose, ylang-ylang, neroli, orange blossom, narcissus, mimosa, violet, lily of the valley. A floral perfume can be a soliflore (a single flower carried through the composition, as in a true rose absolute) or a bouquet (several flowers in dialogue). The family ranges from the green and translucent (lily of the valley, violet leaf) through the radiant and luminous (rose, jasmine) to the heady and almost narcotic (tuberose, ylang-ylang, gardenia).
Florals tend to perform on most skin types. They are the most-worn family, historically and presently, for good reason: they are emotionally legible, broadly read as feminine without being narrowly so, and sit comfortably across daytime and evening wear depending on concentration.
Aimée fragrances anchored in floral: the rose-led compositions, the orange-blossom soliflore, the jasmine-tuberose oriental hybrid. Browse florals →
Built around the peel oils of Citrus species — bergamot, lemon, lime, mandarin, bitter orange, grapefruit, yuzu — supported by aromatic herbs, neroli, and clean musks. Citrus is the quickest family on the skin: top notes lift in the first thirty seconds, the heart resolves within an hour, and the dry-down is typically clean rather than heavy.
The classical structure for the family is the eau de cologne — bergamot, lemon, neroli, rosemary, lavender — invented in the seventeenth century and worn ever since. Modern citrus compositions extend the genre with tea, woody anchors, or floral hearts.
Citrus is the most universally pleasing family and the most universally underestimated — a well-built citrus performs longer and reads more sophisticated than the family's reputation suggests. Wear it during warm weather, in formal contexts where heavy projection is unwanted, and as the lighter half of a layered pair.
Photosensitizing note: certain citrus oils contain furocoumarins (bergaptene, in particular) that increase skin sensitivity to UV when applied to exposed areas in sunlight. Aimée uses furocoumarin-free (FCF) citrus oils throughout the catalog so this is not a concern with our compositions.
Built around woods and roots — sandalwood, cedar, vetiver, cypress, pine, guaiac, and the resins associated with them. The woody family is structurally an anchor family: woods sit in the base of most compositions, releasing slowly across the entire arc of the dry-down. A primarily-woody perfume foregrounds these notes rather than burying them.
The family ranges from the dry and aromatic (cedar, cypress, vetiver) through the soft and creamy (sandalwood, guaiac) to the smoked and resinous (oud, birch tar). It is also the family most often called unisex in marketing copy, though the specific construction matters more than the label — a creamy sandalwood reads differently from a dry vetiver, and both differ from a smoked oud.
Wear woody compositions in cooler weather, when projection benefits from warmth, and when you want a fragrance that lasts the full day on a single application.
Built around resins, balsams, and warm spices — labdanum, benzoin, frankincense, myrrh, vanilla, tonka, ambrette, cinnamon, clove. The oriental family is the warmest and densest in perfumery. Compositions in this family tend to be slow-developing, long-lasting, and high-projection; an oriental on the right skin will read across a room hours after application.
The family includes the amber sub-family (built around a labdanum-vanilla-benzoin accord), the spicy oriental (cinnamon, clove, cardamom), and the floral oriental (oriental base under a heavy floral heart, as in classical Shalimar-type compositions).
Wear oriental compositions in cooler weather, in the evening, and when you want a fragrance that announces itself rather than whispering. The family is also the most likely to feel like an acquired taste — orientals tend to either land immediately or take several wears to settle into. Both are normal.
Named for the island of Cyprus, after François Coty's 1917 fragrance Chypre. Structurally, a chypre is built on a specific accord: bergamot top, floral heart, oakmoss-labdanum-patchouli base. The combination produces a fragrance that is simultaneously bright and grounded, modern and antique. Most classical perfumes built before 1980 contained a chypre or a chypre-adjacent structure.
The family fragmented in the 1990s when oakmoss was restricted under IFRA limits for allergen safety. Modern chypres often replace traditional oakmoss with substitutes (clearwood, Treemoss low-atranol) that approximate the structure within current regulations. The result is a family that has become harder to recognize from contemporary commercial perfumery — but the structure remains, in well-built compositions, one of the most adult and architectural in the discipline.
Wear chypre when you want a fragrance that reads as composed and recognizably mature, in formal settings, and across both seasons. The family ages exceptionally well on most skin.
Most customers arriving at Aimée without a clear preference fall into one of three rough patterns:
None of these is a verdict. They are the working hypothesis a discovery set is designed to test. The set, the notes you keep across the seven days, and the one you still want to wear at the end — that is your answer.
Fragrance is personal — and it shifts on every skin. Our discovery sets let you live with seven Aimée scents over a few weeks: wear them through a workday, sleep with one on a wrist, see which one you reach for again. When a bottle calls to you, the value of the discovery set comes off the price.
It is the most honest way to find a scent that belongs to you, and the calmest way into the maison.
A starting point matched to this guide — a small edit of fragrances that sit closest to what you've just read.
Letters from the perfumer's farm — context, ingredients, and the seasons behind the scents.
