Guides
Beginner's Guide
Everything we know, written plainly.
We have been buying and selling fragrance since 1998. These are the things worth understanding before you spend money on a bottle, including the parts the industry would rather keep vague.
Three guides, in order.
If you are buying your first serious bottle and do not know where to begin, read these three in sequence. Together they take about fifteen minutes and will save you from the two mistakes almost everyone makes.
- Scent families and notes Learn what the words on a note list mean. Read this first, because everything else assumes it.
- Concentrations explained EDT, EDP and Parfum decoded, so you buy the right version rather than the strongest one.
- How we know it is real How to tell authentic from counterfeit, and how to check any bottle you receive from anyone.
Learn
Scent families and notes
Note lists are written by marketing departments. This is the plain version: what oud, vanilla, tobacco, vetiver and twenty-four other materials actually smell like on skin, and how the eight families differ. Includes why the counter sniff is never what you end up wearing.
EDT, EDP and Parfum explained
What the letters mean, drawn to scale. How long each tier lasts, why an extrait often projects less than an EDP, and why the eau de parfum version of a fragrance is frequently a different composition rather than the same scent concentrated.
The Arabian fragrance guide
The fastest-growing corner of the fragrance world and the least well explained. Oud, bakhoor, taif rose and saffron decoded, the houses worth your money, why these bottles cost what they do, and an honest answer to whether they are copies of designer scents.
Buying with confidence
How we know it is real
Counterfeit, untraceable stock and authorized overstock are three different things, and almost nobody explains the difference. Where our bottles come from, what we check and what we deliberately do not, and how to verify any fragrance yourself when it arrives.
Why Fragrance Boulevard
We spent 28 years supplying the stores before we sold a single bottle direct. The route a bottle takes to a department store counter versus the route it takes to you, our price match promise, and the things about ordering from us that are genuinely inconvenient.
Frequently asked questions
Shipping, returns, price matching, payment, packaging, testers and storage. Twenty-six questions with straight answers, including the ones where the answer is not in our favour.
Still want a second opinion?
Call us. We have smelled the catalogue, we will talk you through it honestly, and we will tell you when the cheaper bottle is the better one. Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Pacific.
(213) 255-5918