u/Humble_Hovercraft_20

I stumbled across a couple "favorite notes" posts recently, and it seems like everyone hates what I like. 🤣 Below are some of my favorite notes/materials that everyone seems to hate. What are yours?

1. Patchouli. The patchouli hate makes me feel like I'm defending a friend that's being bullied. 😭 I understand the scent association with hippies and masking BO with patchouli oil, but there's a reason it's in basically everything. Warm without being spicy, earthy, green, herbal and woody, and there are so many different subtypes of patchouli materials to choose from. The material Clearwood is so lovely, crisp and refreshing that I have to stop myself from adding it to every fragrance I make. I want to be embalmed in patchouli oil when I die.
2. Ambroxan. I understand genetic-based scent sensitivities, so this one is very understandable. To me, ambroxan smells like how pure MSG tastes, but like the smell version. Savory, warm, almost woody, salty, like the lightly sweaty skin of a lover. It totally does dominate dry downs when used in too high a concentration, and some dry downs are just Ambroxan, but it's still a delicious smell to me.
3. Calone. I feel like some people get a scent of sulfur from this one, so I get the hate. It smells like fresh water from a creek in the spring to me, and when used in conjunction with ambroxan and musk, baby that's ocean spray. Dip me in a vat of that any day.
4. Rose. Rose haters HATE rose, so they must be experiencing it differently than I do. To me...one of the best smells in the world. Some synthetic rose materials do smell screechy and pull attention from other notes, sure, and the powdery aspect of some rose compositions/materials can become grating after a whole, but it's one of the first essential oils humans tried to distill for a reason! When used correctly, it's so complex and delicious and lasts forever for a natural material. One of my personal hobby projects lately was duping MFK's l'Homme À la rose so I can make my laundry smell like it because I'm extra and very serious about rose. 😂
5. You know what, speaking of: Florals, in general. Flowers smell good, damn it! They get so much hate, and I think part of it might be a scent association with deodorizing sprays like Febreeze and cleaning products that use a lot of synthetic floral materials. Not liking some florals is understandable (I'm looking at you, tuberose), but to discount the entire fragrance family, like I saw in a lot of comments, hurts me.
6. Lavender. First of all, how dare you? Sorry, that was harsh, let me try again. Who hurt you? Was it bathroom cleaning products? That's not lavender's fault! Sweet, floral, rosemary adjacent woodyness, complexity that somehow still pairs with many materials, therapeutic and antiseptic properties! She really is THAT girl, haters must just be jealous. 😤 There are cities in France that are so obsessed with the stuff that they make it their whole identity, come on.
7. Musks. Some musks are better than others, but some commenters just blanket-hate the whole genre of materials, and that makes me big mad. Have you ever smelled Helvetolide straight from the bottle? It's so mmm and lightly sweet and sheer and comforting. Galaxolide is pretty sharp and clean-chlorine adjacent, and it's used in like every laundry product, but it's in the grojman accord and therefore most perfumes for a reason: it good. Musk good.
8. Myrhhe. I never went to a church that used it, so I have no scent association with it other than, "wow that smells so nice, more please". I find all the resins to be complex in their own ways and hard to describe (except benzoin, that can be easily described as "sexy vanilla cinnamon") Even baby Jesus liked it!