About Underscentable

Buying fragrance online is unusually opaque. You cannot smell the thing, the price for the same bottle swings by a factor of three between shops, and most of the advice you find was written to earn a commission on whichever bottle it happened to be selling that week. Underscentable exists to make that decision legible: what a fragrance is made of, what it resembles, what it costs, and how confident anyone can honestly be about each of those.

Who makes it

Underscentable is built and maintained by Colin Jonk, working independently from the Netherlands. It is not owned by a fragrance house, a retailer or a media group, and nobody pays to appear on it. No brand has ever been given placement, a higher position in a list, or a review in exchange for anything.

That independence is the only reason the lists are worth reading, so it is stated plainly rather than buried in a policy page.

Where the data comes from

Fragrance records come from the Fragella database: brand, note pyramid, accord profile, longevity, sillage, season and occasion fit, and an indicative price. That data is not collected by us and it is not edited by us. What the site adds is selection and structure, which records are worth putting in front of you and in what order.

Dupe lists are generated by a fixed set of rules rather than by opinion, and those rules are published in full, including the parts that limit what can honestly be claimed. They are on how we pick dupes.

How the site pays for itself

Underscentable earns through affiliate links. When you follow a buy link to a retailer and purchase something, the site may receive a small commission, and you pay the same price either way. Commission rates play no part in which fragrances are shown, how they are ranked, or what the data says about them, because the rankings are computed from the catalogue before any retailer is involved.

The full terms, including where pricing comes from and what it can and cannot tell you, are on the affiliate and data disclaimer.

What this site is not

Underscentable does not sell fragrance. There is no stock, no checkout and no order to track here, so anything to do with a purchase, a delivery or a return has to go to the retailer you bought from. Ratings shown on the site are the aggregate held in the source database, not reviews collected from visitors here, and they are never presented as ours.

Getting in touch

Corrections are welcome, particularly on the data. If something on a fragrance page is wrong, saying so is the fastest way to get it looked at. The address is on the contact page.