Lavender

What it is

Distilled from the flowering tops, grown mainly in Provence and Bulgaria. It carries a large share of the fougere structure and has done since the 1880s.

What it smells like

Clean, herbal and slightly soapy, cooling at the top and faintly sweet underneath. In Britain it reads as a linen cupboard and in France as a men's fragrance, and that split explains most disagreements about it.

How strongly it is worn

The average strength this accord is listed at, where 100 means it dominates the fragrance.

64 / 100

What builds it

How much more often than the catalogue average. 1.0x would be chance, so these are the things that genuinely travel with it rather than the things that are simply common.

Accords it sits beside

Same measure, with its own family filtered out. Saying woody turns up with oud is a restatement, not a finding.

When it is worn

Against the average fragrance here. The line marks that average, so a bar past it means this is worn in that season or setting more than most.

Houses that use it most

Counted across the fragrances here, which reflects what we cover as much as what a house makes.

Jean Paul Gaultier (13), Armaf (12), Lattafa (11), Yves Saint Laurent (11), Paco Rabanne (10), Ajmal (7).