Perfume Sillage {Perfume Language & Fragrance Words}

"Sillage" is the French term for "trail". It designates the olfactory impression left behind one's person who is wearing a fragrance thanks to the lastingness of the scent, or even better, when a sillage was explicitly designed to leave its signature as the extension of a person, weaving its seductive, serpentine path. If today, eclectism in fragrance wearing is encouraged, for persons who wear a "signature fragrance" as it is called, a sillage becomes the memory and personality of that person.

If many words in perfumery are borrowed from music, sillage comes from maritime terminology designating the wake of a ship. It is pronounced see-ya-j (as in Nicki Minaj). In French "sillage" can be used metaphorically not just for a scent, but also for auditive and visual impressions. It is the trace of something which is perceived in an impressionistic way... A sillage is distinct from a "drydown" which refers to the way a perfume was constructed to include lasting fragrance notes meant to last for hours - and in the past, days - which evaporate progressively or "dry down", instead of being more fleeting as in the opening of the perfume.

 The drydown however plays a major role in creating a sillage since persistence is key but it is not enough as, to me at least, a sillage in its purest form ought to not just be perceived as a cloud stagnating mid-air in a room but offer a dynamic and vivid physicality.

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