The whole store can smell you. You can't.

The cashier leans over the counter to ask if that's your perfume, and you're wearing all of four sprays you stopped smelling an hour ago. That's how a fresh r/fragrance thread about Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia — the one everybody files under light — kicks off. Your nose adapts to a constant smell in roughly fifteen minutes and simply deletes it, so the wearer always smells less than everyone around them.

Sillage, projection, longevity — three different things

Longevity is how many hours the scent stays alive on skin, projection is how many steps away it reads right now, sillage is the trail left in the hallway after you've gone. Sillage is the part that gets on people's nerves, and specific molecules are usually to blame: ambroxan, the synthetic amber that Sauvage and Glossier You hum on, is something some people can't smell at all and others take like a punch. Which is why “but I like it” tells you nothing about how the guy sharing your bus seat is handling your trail.

You never smell your own trail. The line behind you does.

The rule is simple: one or two sprays, under your clothes or between the shoulder blades — then people catch you at hugging distance, not from the checkout line. Office, hospital, plane, public transport — one. And sugary gourmands built on ethyl maltol, the cotton-candy molecule out of Angel, just leave at home in a heatwave. If someone has already said something, don't argue about notes: say thanks and go one spray lighter tomorrow — the person you're bothering isn't the one lying about it.