How should I evaluate SOSA's floral fragrance options if my personal favourites include Libre, Chloe and Alien?

Three bottles cannot be evaluated against nine pyramids until they are in the same units. Your nose does that conversion in twenty minutes and nothing else can do it at all.

The answer, in full

Start by changing the unit. You have given me three bottles and I cannot work with bottles, because SOSA publishes nothing about any designer or niche perfume, so I cannot tell you what the bottle on your dressing table contains and I will not guess at it. What I can work with is materials, and you are the one person in this transaction who can supply them. So: Spray your own perfume on a paper strip rather than on skin, leave the strip twenty minutes somewhere out of the sun, then write down the three words you would use for what is still on the paper. Do it for each of the three, on three separate strips, and you will have nine words, of which perhaps four will repeat. Those repeats are your brief. Now check them against the nine published pyramids, which are printed on the nine scent pages under the heading Fragrance Pyramid with a Scent Family beside them. Three of the nine are florals. Jasmine ₹459 publishes a family of Floral, soft, familiar, with a heart of white jasmine, mogra-inspired warmth, soft white petals. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499 publishes a family of Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex, with a heart of French lavender core, soft herbal sweetness, a whisper of clary sage and chamomile. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 publishes a family of Floral, citrus, neroli. Its heart is the white neroli flower in full, honeyed petals, soft floralcy, the calming linalool heart. If lavender, orange blossom or white jasmine is among your repeated words, the range has a real answer for you and the answer has a product page and a price. Now the part that matters most on this particular page. No SOSA pyramid publishes a rose note, so there is no rose anywhere in the nine, and no tuberose, no ylang, no iris, no violet, no lily and no lotus either. No SOSA pyramid publishes vanilla, tonka, caramel or praline, so there is no gourmand direction in the range at all. If rose is one of your repeated words, and for a reader with your three favourites it may well be, then that word has no answer in the nine and the honest advice is to keep the bottle you have. One format point: Mysore Orange Blossom is a spray only and has no refill, while Jasmine and Lavender and Sandalwood each come as a 10ml spray or a 12ml hanging bottle at the same price per scent. SOSA publishes no strength ranking of the nine and no prediction of what any reader will prefer, so the last step of this is yours. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.

A four-step evaluation, and the one result that cannot be improved

The method converts three bottles into a handful of words and then checks the words against print. Step four is where it either lands on a product page or stops honestly.

Convert bottles into materials: three strips, nine words

You own three perfumes and I own nine published pyramids, and the two cannot be compared until they are in the same units. So: Spray your own perfume on a paper strip rather than on skin, leave the strip twenty minutes somewhere out of the sun, then write down the three words you would use for what is still on the paper. Do it for each of the three on separate strips, label them in pencil, and write three words per strip. Then look for the repeats. A word that turns up on two strips out of three is a real preference; a word that turns up once is a mood. This is the only measurement in the whole exercise that has touched an actual composition.

Nine words, four repeats, one brief.

Check them against the nine: three florals, three prices

Jasmine ₹459 publishes a family of Floral, soft, familiar, a heart of white jasmine, mogra-inspired warmth, soft white petals, and a base of clean musk, light powdery softness. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499 publishes a family of Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex, and a base of linalool settle, powdery soft musk-free residue, dry woody calm. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 publishes a family of Floral, citrus, neroli, and a base of warm petitgrain-like woodiness, a clean soft musk, a sunlit drydown.

Accept the gap where there is one: rose, and the sweet florals

No SOSA pyramid publishes a rose note, so there is no rose anywhere in the nine, and no tuberose, no ylang, no iris, no violet, no lily and no lotus either. No SOSA pyramid publishes vanilla, tonka, caramel or praline, so there is no gourmand direction in the range at all. That is a genuine limit on what this range can do for a floral reader, and it is the reason this page is worth reading rather than skipping. A series of a hundred pages in which SOSA happens to match every perfume anybody wears would not be believable, and it would not be true. SOSA publishes no strength ranking of the nine and no prediction of what any reader will prefer, so the last step of this is yours.

Named, so you can stop looking for it in the nine.

The three published floral pyramids, in full

Jasmine ₹459, family Floral, soft, familiar: top notes of fresh green floral, delicate aldehydic brightness, a heart of white jasmine, mogra-inspired warmth, soft white petals, and a base of clean musk, light powdery softness. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499, family Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex. Its heart is French lavender core, soft herbal sweetness, a whisper of clary sage and chamomile. Its base is linalool settle, powdery soft musk-free residue, dry woody calm. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559, family Floral, citrus, neroli. Its heart is the white neroli flower in full, honeyed petals, soft floralcy, the calming linalool heart.

Three strips and three pyramids is the exercise; a three-spray discovery set at ₹709 to ₹909 is the cheapest way to add SOSA's three florals to it. See the discovery sets →

Your repeated words, against the nine published pyramids

A last word on what an evaluation can and cannot settle. A published pyramid tells you the direction of a composition; it does not tell you how that direction behaves in your cabin, and nothing published compares the 10ml spray with the 12ml hanging bottle of one scent. SOSA publishes no coverage area, no cabin volume and no scent-throw figure, and no rate or timescale for how perception changes across a journey, so I will not give you one. So the evaluation ends with one ordinary week of your own driving, which is the one test nobody can run on your behalf.

“Three bottles in, nine words out, four repeats that matter. Then the pyramids either carry those words or they do not.”

The evaluation, in four steps

1. Spray each of your three favourites on its own paper strip, not on skin.
2. After twenty minutes, write three words per strip and circle the repeats.
3. Check each repeated word against the nine published Fragrance Pyramids.
4. If rose is one of them, stop: no SOSA pyramid publishes a rose note.

Questions, answered