Extrait, EDP, EDT — what strength actually means.

Pick up any two bottles of the same perfume — one marked eau de toilette, one marked eau de parfum — and you’re holding two different experiences of the same idea. Same name, same notes on the card, different behaviour on your skin. The difference is one quiet number: concentration — how much actual perfume oil is dissolved in the alcohol.

It’s the most useful number in perfumery, and the industry has done a remarkable job of never explaining it. Here’s the whole story, plainly.

The ladder of strength

Every fragrance you’ve ever worn sits somewhere on this ladder. The percentages are perfume oil; the rest is mostly alcohol, which exists to carry the oil to your skin and then politely disappear.

• Eau fraîche · 1–3% — a whisper. Body mists and splashes live here. Gone within the hour.
• Eau de cologne (EDC) · 2–5% — the classic citrus splash. Bright, brief, made to be reapplied.
• Eau de toilette (EDT) · 5–15% — the daytime standard. Two to four hours of presence, then a soft fade.
• Eau de parfum (EDP) · 15–20% — the modern default for “good” perfume. Four to eight hours, with a real drydown.
• Extrait de parfum · 20–40% — also called pure parfum. The strongest form perfume takes. Eight hours to all day, worn close to the skin.

Two honest caveats. First, these bands are conventions, not law — one house’s EDP can out-muscle another’s extrait. Second, concentration isn’t the only lever: the materials themselves matter enormously. A citrus extrait will still leave before a woody EDT does. Molecules have their own opinions.

What extrait changes — and what it doesn’t

The common myth is that higher concentration just means louder. Mostly, it means the opposite. More oil and less alcohol changes how a perfume sits on you:

It wears closer. An extrait doesn’t shout across the room the way a fresh spray of EDT can. It settles into a rich halo around you — what perfumers call sillage becomes intimate rather than broadcast. People smell it when they’re near you, which is rather the point.

It lasts longer. With less alcohol flashing off, the composition unfolds slowly. The drydown — the base notes of amber, woods, musk and resin that appear hours in — gets room to actually perform.

It’s smoother. Alcohol is sharp in the opening minutes. Less of it means less of that boozy first blast, and a rounder, warmer first impression.

This is why extrait has always been the collector’s strength — and why it’s the strength our studio composes for. Small batches at extrait concentration are expensive to make, which is exactly why the mass market rarely bothers.

Reading a bottle like a perfumer

Next time you’re at a counter — or reading one of our reveals — here’s the checklist:

• Find the strength word. Toilette, parfum, extrait. It’s usually in small type under the name, and it changes everything about value.
• Price against concentration, not volume. A 50 ml extrait can hold more actual perfume than a 100 ml EDT. The bigger bottle is not automatically the better buy.
• Apply for the format. EDTs enjoy a generous spray; extraits want two or three placements on warm skin — wrists, chest, the side of the neck. More than that is enthusiasm, not technique.
• Judge at hour three. Any perfume can charm for ten minutes. Concentration shows its worth in the drydown — wait for it before you commit.

Which strength is yours?

There’s no wrong rung on the ladder — there’s only what you want a perfume to do. If you like a bright refresh you can reapply all day, EDT is a joy. If you want one considered application that’s still telling its story at dinner, that’s extrait territory.

And if you’re not sure what story suits you in the first place — floral, fresh, woody, amber or animalic — our sixty-second scent quiz will tell you which family your nose already belongs to.