Basenotes: Grant Osborne’s Fragrance Community and How to Read It

“The forum ended up being the most popular part of the site.”

— Grant Osborne, founder, 2005

Search for a perfume that interests you, and beside its release information you may find the impressions of someone who has worn it for years. Read further and conversations unfold among people looking for similar scents, remembering an old favorite, or creating fragrances themselves. Basenotes is both a place to find perfume information and a repository of words from people who have come to love fragrance.

Founded in Britain in 2000, the website was not conceived from the outset as a large information service. A young man beginning to learn about perfume on a shop floor wanted to put useful information online. What transformed that modest experiment was the presence of people who wanted not only to read, but to talk.

At a Glance
The Founder and the Website’s Origins
The Fragrance Culture Built by Community and Editorial Work
1. A Place Where Readers Could Discuss a Critic’s Writing
2. From Online Conversation to Meeting in Person
Using the Database, Reviews, Forums, and Articles
Key Milestones
An Aside: A Taste That Is Not Limited to Expensive Perfume
References

At a Glance

Website launched: August 2000; preparation began in 1999
Founder: Grant Osborne
Origins: a British information website about men’s fragrance and grooming
Main content: perfume database, user reviews, forums, news, features, and interviews
Main language: English
Official website: Basenotes

Understanding Basenotes is less about following the history of a perfume manufacturer than tracing the growth of a place to learn and talk about perfume. Product information, edited articles, users’ impressions, and records of conversations are connected within the same website.

The Founder and the Website’s Origins

Art College, the Boots Counter, and an Interest in Web Design

While attending art college, Osborne worked weekends at the British chemist Boots. He was assigned to the photo counter, handling films brought in by customers.

After leaving college, he hesitated to turn the art he loved directly into a career. He did not want making a hobby into a job to cost him his affection for it. Web design attracted him because it was close to both art and computers.

“I thought web design would be arty AND geeky. My two fave things.”

— Grant Osborne, 2021

While considering his direction, he took a full-time job at Boots. A vacancy eventually arose at the men’s fragrance counter, and he chose it as a chance to learn something new.

When he searched the internet to learn about perfume, he found surprisingly little information. Brand websites were far less developed than they are today. One useful resource was The Cologne Guy, but it had not been updated for some time.

He could add what he learned at the counter to his own website. Studying for his job and filling a gap on the web became part of the same project. Basenotes began with both an interest in perfume and an interest in making knowledge usable for other people.

Work Begins in 1999; the Website Launches in August 2000

In November 1999, after the end of a long-term relationship, Osborne devoted his energy to building the website. About nine months later, Basenotes launched with several articles, an alphabetical perfume list, and detailed reviews of around 20 fragrances.

The last addition, just before launch, was a forum. It became the most popular part of the website. A site where one person organized information now had an entrance through which others could bring their experiences.

That sequence is revealing. The forum had not been planned for years as the central feature, yet users gathered there. Alongside the desire to read about perfume was a desire to express one’s impressions and hear someone else’s.

Expansion in 2004 and the Moderators Who Supported Conversation

In August 2004, a women’s fragrance board was added and the database expanded to women’s perfumes. Women had already been participating before then. It marked a broadening of the fragrances covered by a site that had begun with men’s scents.

The board categories were not meant to confine preferences by gender. In 2005, Osborne explained that the men’s board also discussed fragrances marketed to women that men wore, and vice versa.

Nor was maintaining conversation the founder’s work alone. That year, Osborne explicitly acknowledged the moderators’ contribution to the forums’ success. Increasing the number of posts and sustaining a comfortable place to talk are different tasks. Basenotes’ history includes not only visible articles and data, but also the people supporting its exchanges.

Full-Time From 2005: Running the Site Through Self-Taught Skills

In 2005, Osborne left his job to care for his first child and began working on Basenotes full-time. In 2021, he said it had been his main occupation ever since, while adding that a main occupation and an income commensurate with it are not the same thing.

He did not acquire his website skills through formal professional training. Early on, he learned from books; later, he also used the programming question-and-answer site Stack Overflow. Making something behave as intended could feel a little like magic, he said.

“And I never became a website designer”

— Grant Osborne, 2021

An experiment born from an interest in web design became the work of sustaining a perfume website. In his public 2021 Q&A, he also discussed adjusting the new site’s search and how editorial work had taken a back seat during the redevelopment. Behind the screen, producing articles and maintaining a system for finding information continued side by side.

The Fragrance Culture Built by Community and Editorial Work

A Place Where Readers Could Discuss a Critic’s Writing

In 2006, The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis highlighted Basenotes’ candid reviews of men’s fragrances. Users’ words, distinct from advertising, were finding readers.

A 2008 project with Chandler Burr illustrates the connection between edited reading and reader conversation. Burr, then the perfume critic for The New York Times, was to publish on Basenotes passages left out of the final version of his book The Perfect Scent.

Just as a film DVD can include deleted scenes, Osborne wanted perfume enthusiasts to have access to writing that had not made it into the book. The idea was to offer another layer of insight into the background of fragrance creation.

“With these extracts we hope to offer a similar experience for the perfume fan.”

— Grant Osborne, 2008

Each extract was to have an introduction in which Burr explained its context and why it had been cut, with readers able to discuss the text in the forum. Reading was not the endpoint: it could begin a conversation. The project revealed Basenotes’ role as an editorial publication, something less immediately apparent from its database and boards alone.

From Online Conversation to Meeting in Person

In 2010, Denyse Beaulieu, writer of the perfume blog Grain de Musc, described an interview with her conducted by Persolaise and published on Basenotes by Osborne. She also wrote about fragrance enthusiasts she had met online becoming friends in Paris and London.

Perfume cannot be smelled through a screen. Yet a conversation on a screen can lead to meeting someone and smelling the same fragrance together. Writers, readers, and creators get to know one another through a shared interest. Those connections are another contribution information websites have made to fragrance culture.

In August 2026, Damiana of the perfume blog I Sniff Before I Sleep wrote that Osborne had invited her to publish an account of ScentFest SF on Basenotes. The project brought readers the words of someone who attended the event in San Francisco on June 26–28 that year.

On June 11 of the same year, at the Art and Olfaction Awards in Athens, Osborne received the Contribution to Scent Culture Award for his work with Basenotes. It recognizes a contribution to scent culture rather than a perfume creation itself. Established by the Institute for Art and Olfaction, the award highlights not only making perfume, but also communicating it and nurturing places where people can discuss it.

Using the Database, Reviews, Forums, and Articles

Identify a Fragrance in the Database

A familiar perfume is an accessible starting point when beginning to use Basenotes. Look at its recorded information, read users’ impressions, and then follow an interesting topic into the forums or articles. One perfume becomes an entry point connecting information and conversation.

The first question to ask in the database is whether you are looking at the same product you are seeking. If an eau de toilette and eau de parfum share a name, you may be reading impressions of a different product. Matching the brand, product name, and concentration label helps explain why accounts may diverge.

Listed notes provide clues to understanding a scent, but they are not a complete ingredient list for its formula. The presence of rose does not tell you how strongly it will register or what kind of rose it might evoke. When investigating background information such as perfumer or release year, the database can be a starting point for going on to material from the brand or people involved in its creation.

Read Why Tastes Differ, Rather Than Only the Scores

What makes user reviews interesting is that the same perfume divides opinion. One person’s appealing sweetness feels heavy to someone else. A dry woody impression attracts some people, while others dislike its astringency. Reading these differences makes what you want to check when sampling more specific.

A large number of favorable ratings indicates support among the people gathered on that platform. It does not establish scientifically measured ingredient quality or suitability for everyone. Rather than eliminating candidates on scores alone, look at which aspects people enjoy and which they find difficult.

For example, “too sweet” means something different depending on whether the writer is describing fruit sweetness or the fullness of vanilla. A comment about lasting a long time also has different relevance depending on whether it refers to skin or clothing and how much was applied. Accounts that describe the conditions, and comparisons with perfumes you know, can offer concrete clues for your next smelling session.

For older fragrances, it is worth noting the date of a post and the period of the writer’s bottle. An old review records an experience at that time. Different impressions alone, however, do not prove a reformulation. Moving between product information and personal experience reveals the value of reviews preserved over many years.

Follow the Question and Responses in a Forum Thread

Forums accommodate broader questions than fragrance-specific reviews. Comparisons, collecting, a long-lost perfume, and experiments in perfumery bring people with different experiences to the same question.

When reading an unfamiliar thread, read the opening question as well as the title. Even a request for recommendations means something different depending on what the questioner owns and what they want to change. Following the surrounding exchange, rather than isolating one sentence, makes the reasons for a suggestion clearer.

Explanations in a conversation can mix personal experience, speculation, and reports of brand announcements. A post with a source lets you go to the original material. Speculative conversation is useful as a question to investigate next, rather than as established product history.

The DIY perfumery forum is a concrete example. In 2022, Will Carius of Barrister and Mann wrote about researching the Basenotes DIY forum while designing a lavender fragrance. He was looking for a construction that would give lavender a sharp, mint-like impression.

The community thus includes people considering how to construct a scent, not only how to judge a finished product. Their records offer an introduction to the roles of materials and ways of approaching trials. Before actually making something, it is important to check a posted recipe separately from the specifications and safety documents for the materials you will use.

Discover Context and a Writer’s Perspective Through Editorial Articles

News tells you what has been announced; interviews explore what a creator was thinking; features and criticism reveal how a writer understands a subject. Even within one website, these forms of writing serve different purposes.

Burr’s 2008 project offered writing beyond the pages of a book about the places where perfumes are created. A 2026 ScentFest SF article lets you encounter displays and participants through the interests of someone who walked the venue. Making time for context, a little apart from searching for a perfume’s name, is another way to enjoy Basenotes.

Explore a word that caught your attention in a review through the forum, then discover a creator’s thinking in an article. Or look up in the database a perfume you first encountered in an article. Moving between other information websites such as Fragrantica and official sources can help you develop your own questions instead of relying on a single judgment.

Key Milestones

Year or Period	Event
November 1999	Osborne begins devoting his energy to building the website.
August 2000	Basenotes launches. A forum is added just before launch to its initial articles, perfume list, and reviews.
August 2004	A women’s fragrance board opens and the scope of the database expands.
2005	Osborne leaves his job to care for his child and begins running the site full-time.
January 2008	A project to publish passages omitted from Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent is announced.
November 2021	The founder discusses 21 years of running the site in a public Q&A, including adjustments to the new website’s search.
June 11, 2026	Osborne receives the Art and Olfaction Awards’ Contribution to Scent Culture Award for his work with Basenotes.
August 2026	The writer of an on-site ScentFest SF account describes how it came to be published on Basenotes.

An Aside: A Taste That Is Not Limited to Expensive Perfume

Price and rarity alone do not explain Osborne’s perfume preferences. Asked by Stephan Matthews in 2017 to choose just one perfume, he said his favorite changed from day to day, but if forced to choose he would pick 4711 because it smelled clean.

In the same exchange, he named Old Spice as a fragrance men should try. There was no need to seek a vintage bottle: the version sold at the time would do.

“A fragrance doesn’t have to break the bank and be made with all the ‘precious ingredients’ to smell good.”

— Grant Osborne, 2017

Knowing perfume deeply does not mean pursuing only rare or expensive bottles. Familiar fragrances, someone’s long-held memories, and a new creator’s experiments all have something worth discussing. Try beginning Basenotes with a perfume you know well. As you read what attracts other people to it, you may also gain words for describing your own preferences.