Michael Edwards and Fragrances of the World: A History

The key question to ask at retail is, “What perfumes do you like to wear?”

— Michael Edwards

When looking for a new bottle at a perfume counter, it can be difficult to explain your tastes. Asked whether you like flowers or woods, you may find both in the perfume you already wear. You can name a fragrance you love, yet struggle to take the conversation any further.

Fragrances of the World builds a bridge from that name to your next scent. It is not a perfume brand. What began as Michael Edwards’s classification guide for retailers has grown into books, a database, and fragrance recommendation services.

Its emblem is the Fragrance Wheel, which arranges scent families in a circle. Yet Edwards’s work involves more than finding a place for a perfume on a diagram. He assesses fragrances with their creators, organizes records of releases, and preserves the stories behind great perfumes in the words of the people who made them. Classification to help people choose perfume and history to help them understand it have remained two strands of the same person’s work.

Key Information
Michael Edwards and the Origins of the Guide
The Fragrance Wheel and the Work of Classification
Preserving Perfume History in Books
1. Bringing Creators into View with Perfume Legends
2. Extending the Record with American Legends
How Perfume Lovers and Sales Staff Can Use the Resources
References

Key Information

Founder and author: Michael Edwards
Where it began: Australia. Work on the guide began in 1983, and the first edition of The Fragrance Manual was published in 1984
Renamed with its current title: 2000
Fragrance Wheel created: 1992
Online database launched: 2004
Main activities: Classifying fragrances and organizing information, educating sales staff, developing fragrance-finding tools, and publishing perfume history
Official website: Fragrances of the World
Professional database: Fragrances of the World.Info

Michael Edwards and the Origins of the Guide

Memories of Malawi and Marketing Everyday Products

Edwards was born and spent his early childhood in what is now Malawi. One scent that stayed with him was bathwater perfumed with wood shavings. The wood’s dry yet honeyed aroma remained in his memory. As a boy at boarding school, he bought a lavender scent in a small bottle and enjoyed it in secret.

His professional route into fragrance was through marketing, not perfumery. After studying biochemistry, he worked on everyday consumer products at the Beecham Group in the 1960s. He became intrigued by how simply changing a shampoo’s scent could make consumers feel that the product itself had improved. Fragrance was not merely a decorative detail in a product’s description: it could change how the product was perceived. He discovered that power through his work.

Discovering Fragrance Families in 1975

In 1975, at a workshop run by Firmenich, Edwards received a technical guide called Bouquet de la Parfumerie. It grouped perfumes into families, categories with related olfactory characteristics.

Taking the guide into perfume shops, he smelled and compared fragrances placed in the same family. Perfumes he had previously learned one by one began to form groups he could compare. Later, while based in Paris and working on Halston’s international fragrance business, he began thinking about bringing this approach to sales staff. After Firmenich stopped producing its guide, he obtained permission in 1981 to update and simplify it, then distributed it to staff around the world.

At the time, grape varieties were becoming a useful guide to choosing wine. People could communicate their preferences through words such as Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc without first mastering the complexities of wine regions.

I suddenly thought if that works for wine, why wouldn’t it work for fragrance?

— Michael Edwards

To make classification useful to the public, what mattered was not adding more specialist terms but finding words that connected with perfumes people already loved.

Going Independent in Australia and the First Edition in 1984

After moving to Australia, Edwards was responsible for integrating businesses including Halston with Max Factor. Following the acquisition of the parent company, however, he lost his job and went independent. He established Michael Edwards & Co, focusing on training sales staff and using fragrance families in stores.

The workshops needed a booklet that participants could consult afterward to look up the fragrances they had smelled and apply what they had learned at the counter. That became The Fragrance Manual. Speaking in 2024, Edwards said he had started working on it in 1983 and identified 1984 as the year his first guide appeared. That first edition contained 323 fragrances.

The starting point was to ask customers to name a few perfumes they liked. Looking them up in the guide might reveal that their preferences clustered in one or two families. That pattern could then suggest perfumes they had not yet tried. The training booklet was designed less to help people memorize perfumes than to move the conversation between customer and salesperson forward.

Working with Nordstrom and Classifying Across Gender Categories

In 1988, the American department store Nordstrom discovered the guide. It asked Edwards to include more American fragrances, and in 1991 the work extended to matching men’s and women’s fragrances family by family.

smell is smell.

— Michael Edwards (excerpt)

Edwards questioned the use of separate classifications and vocabularies for men’s and women’s fragrances. Comparing scents across gendered marketing categories could offer a wider range of choices, whether for oneself or as a gift. This was not a claim that all men’s and women’s perfumes were alike. It was a decision to discuss smells such as flowers, woods, and citrus in a shared language.

In 1998, niche fragrances were added to the classification at retailers’ request. Covering only familiar perfumes was no longer enough to address the new choices appearing in stores. By the 25th-anniversary edition in 2009, the guide had expanded to more than 6,500 entries.

From a Booklet to Online Search

In 2000, The Fragrance Manual became a hardcover book and was renamed Fragrances of the World. Meanwhile, fragrance-finding tools had already begun expanding into stores and online. An in-store search terminal appeared at House of Fraser in London in 1995, and an online fragrance finder was developed for Beauty.com in 1999.

Fragrances of the World.Info launched in 2004. The annually compiled book and the continuously updated database took on distinct roles. Looking back at perfumes included in an earlier edition is not the same task as searching current information. The knowledge accumulated in the guide also led to digital tools for finding options across brands.

Timeline of Key Developments

Year	Event
1960s	While marketing everyday consumer products, Edwards becomes interested in how scent changes people’s perceptions of a product
1975	Learns about fragrance families at a Firmenich workshop
1981	With permission, updates and simplifies the company’s classification guide and distributes it to staff
1983	Begins work on his own guide
1984	Publishes the first edition of The Fragrance Manual, containing 323 fragrances
1988	Nordstrom adopts the guide
1991	Matches men’s and women’s fragrances family by family
1992	Creates the Fragrance Wheel
1995	An in-store fragrance-finding terminal appears at House of Fraser
1996	Publishes the perfume history book Perfume Legends
1998	Adds niche fragrances to the classification
1999	Develops an online fragrance finder for Beauty.com
2000	Renames the guide Fragrances of the World
2004	Launches the online database Fragrances of the World.Info
2019	Publishes Perfume Legends II
2021	Announces the change in terminology from “Oriental” to “Ambery” in June
2024	Publishes American Legends, a history of American perfumery

The Fragrance Wheel and the Work of Classification

Seeing Connections Between 14 Families

The Fragrance Wheel depicts the relationships between fragrance families in a circle. While identifying the broad directions of Fresh, Floral, Amber, and Woody, the current official guidance covers 14 families.

For example, a scent centered on flowers and a floral scent with a soft, powdery texture share certain qualities while differing in others. The distinction between Floral and Soft Floral provides a way to discuss that difference. Woody scents, too, need not all be grouped under a single word: attention can shift toward mossy or dry qualities.

The purpose of the circle is to keep families from becoming isolated boxes. Once you find a family you like, you can explore the differences around it. Even fragrances in the same family do not necessarily share the same sweetness, strength, or impression on the skin. Classification shows relationships between scents that help narrow down where to start trying them.

The language of classification has also changed. In June 2021, a change from the traditional term “Oriental” to “Ambery” was announced. The current official wheel uses labels such as “Amber” and “Soft Amber.” This can be understood as a shift from an older name suggesting a geographical region toward words describing the character of a scent.

The timeline on the current official website places this change under 2022. Here, the announcement in 2021, which can be confirmed in contemporary reporting, is distinguished from the terminology used today.

Smelling the Drydown and Checking with the Creators

we evaluate on dry down, not on top note.

— Michael Edwards (excerpt)

Drydown refers to the scent of a perfume after it has been worn for a while. Although the first impression may prompt a purchase, the later stages contribute to whether someone wants to wear it repeatedly. In 2024, Edwards spoke about waiting one or two hours before evaluating a fragrance and encouraging his team to leave scent strips on their desks until the following morning.

Evaluation does not end with his judgment alone. He smells the fragrance with the people who have spent a long time developing it, seeking to understand what the work is trying to achieve. He shares the classification and invites them to get in touch if there is a problem. This dialogue helps check for differences between the classification and the work’s intent while maintaining a consistent system.

As the team refines classifications through these checks, it updates the database daily. The work is not simply to lengthen a list whenever a perfume appears, but to maintain records that can be compared with one another.

Classification is not the analysis of fragrance materials to publish a complete formula. Nor do the notes and olfactory pyramids in the database reveal every part of a product’s composition. Two perfumes listing the same notes will not necessarily smell alike, and classification cannot be treated as the sole scientifically correct answer. LCP’s article on fragrance wheels and perfumers’ evaluation data examines that relationship from another angle.

Free Listings and a Business Built on Data

Edwards has maintained a policy of not charging brands, large or small, to have their perfumes listed and classified in the guide or database. A system favoring perfumes whose brands paid a listing fee would make it harder to maintain a basis for comparison across brands.

The business, meanwhile, provides database subscriptions and fragrance-search and recommendation tools for retailers. Not charging listed brands is different from making the entire database freely available to everyone. Services for users support the work of organizing fragrance information.

Preserving Perfume History in Books

Bringing Creators into View with Perfume Legends

Published in 1996, Perfume Legends serves a different purpose from the classification guide. It explores not only which family a great perfume belongs to, but who created it, what they had in mind, and how they made it.

When Edwards began thinking about the book in the early 1990s, perfumers’ names were less visible than they are today. The support of Guy Robert and Edmond Roudnitska helped open doors to the creators.

I’m a curator of their creativity.

— Michael Edwards

A curator selects works and reveals connections between them. Rather than choosing great perfumes solely on his own judgment, Edwards also asked their creators to nominate iconic works. The selection criteria were an innovative scent or accord, an impact significant enough to establish a trend, and an appeal that endured.

Perfume Legends II, published in 2019, updated the research and covered 52 creations. Féminité du Bois was one addition, considered for the innovation of its woody scent and its subsequent influence. Rather than ranking great perfumes by popularity, the book offers a way to read what passed from one creation to the next. LCP’s introduction to Perfume Legends provides another starting point.

Extending the Record with American Legends

American Legends, tracing the history of perfume in the United States, was published in 2024. A companion to the book on great French fragrances, it drew on more than 30 years of research.

Whenever Edwards visited the United States, he interviewed people involved and gathered records. For long periods, the demands of classifying new releases pushed writing into the background. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, spending more time in Australia allowed him to make progress on the book.

In this work, history is carried not only by perfumers but also by executives, the people who brought products to market, and bottle designers. Perfume does not enter the world through its smell alone. Looking at its name, container, presentation, and the lives of its wearers helps reveal what a creation meant in its time.

How Perfume Lovers and Sales Staff Can Use the Resources

Start with the Name and Version of a Perfume You Like

Perfume lovers can begin with the official wheel and fragrance search, both freely accessible. The current website offers the Fragrance Wheel and Match My Scent as starting points. When using a search previously described as “Match My Fragrance,” it is worth checking its current name and how to reach it.

For example, entering “Eau Sauvage” in the search field brings up separate options for its eau de toilette, cologne, parfum, and other versions. The aim is to select the version you like, not merely a bottle with a similar name. When checked on October 14, 2026, selecting the eau de toilette displayed recommendations based on that fragrance.

Once suggestions appear, compare them with the perfume you love. They may share a bright citrus quality while differing in the woods, herbs, or softness that remain afterward. A search cannot smell a fragrance for you; it helps find something worth comparing.

Compare Scents Across Brands at the Counter

Edwards has also proposed displaying products by brand while arranging testers by fragrance family. The products retain their brand identity, while customers can compare similar scents from different houses.

Starting with the name of a favorite perfume also makes the conversation more concrete for sales staff. Rather than beginning with a category question such as “Do you like florals?”, they can ask “What do you usually wear?” and explore together which qualities of that fragrance the customer would like to keep. Explaining classification is not the purpose of the consultation in itself; it is a tool for understanding the other person’s taste.

Distinguishing Free Starting Points from the Paid Database

The professional database Fragrances of the World.Info lists search criteria including launch year, brand, perfumer, bottle designer, and olfactory direction. Paid plans for individuals are based on the number of logins, while corporate subscription information is tailored to the size of the organization.

As of October 14, 2026, the current official homepage stated that more than 65,000 fragrances had been classified and matched, while the database entry page displayed more than 63,000 records. Because the figures on the two pages did not agree, each is reported here as displayed. It is also important not to confuse them with the number of perfumes in an earlier book or the number classified in a particular year.

Resource	Purpose and Scope of Access
Official Fragrance Wheel	A public starting point for understanding family relationships and examples. At the time of checking, it could be viewed without registering
Match My Scent	A public search for suggestions based on a perfume you like. At the time of checking, searches and recommendations were available without registering
Fragrances of the World.Info	A paid database for searching perfume information across multiple fields, with information for individual and corporate users
Printed classification guides	References to the perfumes organized in a particular edition. Their role differs from that of the daily updated database
The Perfume Legends series / American Legends	History books exploring how perfumes were created and how their times changed

Engaging with Edwards’s work means more than memorizing 14 family names. It offers a way to discover, through actual scents, whether the perfumes you love have something in common and how your preferences respond when that quality changes slightly. Classification supplies the language for that conversation; the books convey the time and work that brought a perfume into being.