Methodology
This page explains how Olfastory’s perfume pages are built: where the information comes from, how it is verified, what the section devoted to critics contains and what happens when a piece of information is missing.
Sources
A perfume’s declared facts, such as its concentration, its ingredient list or its bottle, come first from the house that sells it: its website, its packaging, its press releases. A label read on an actual bottle takes precedence over any other source for what it prints.
A perfume’s history, its perfumer and its composition rely on published sources: the profession’s reference databases, books, the press and reviews signed by their authors. A retailer that repeats a house’s text counts as a single source, the house’s own.
Double verification
A fact enters a page only if two independent sources of different kinds confirm it. Without that double confirmation, it stays out, or it is attributed by name to the person who puts it forward.
A newly released perfume is the exception: what the house alone publishes may be used, presented as its own statement. For a classic, the composition described is that of the version sold today; the year and the perfumer remain those of the original creation, and older formulas are discussed in the text.
What critics say
The section devoted to critics does not give Olfastory’s opinion. It brings together what named critics and reviewers have written, stating who says what; quotations stay short and are always attributed to their author.
A launch announcement, a retailer’s description or a house’s own discourse are not reviews and do not appear there. Without a published review, a page has no critics section.
When information is missing
A page never fills a gap with a guess. A year, a note, an olfactory family or a perfumer that cannot be established stays absent: missing information is better than wrong information.
Pages are completed as new sources appear. When a page shows an update date, it corresponds to the last change to its content.
Writing and translation
Pages are written in French, from the sources described above and according to these rules.
The English and Spanish versions are translations produced by artificial intelligence, automatically checked for proper names, figures and olfactory notes, and reviewed by sampling. A page without a translation is not published in that language.
Report an error
A mistake, a source we missed, a detail to add: the contact form (in French) lets you tell us. Every report is checked against the same rules before any correction.