How To Clone Your Favorite Perfume or Cologne

How To Clone Your Favorite Perfume or Cologne

Say you want to recreate your favorite perfume or cologne scent. How would you start? Most popular fragrances have LOTS of ingredients. Notes aplenty.

However, you can get a close approximation (or a smell that is certainly inspired by) your favorite scent by focusing on the main notes.

An excellent resource for this is Fragrantica. They have a database of a dizzying number of fragrances - both commercial and indie, synthetic and natural. 

Here's an example. I chose Vetiver Creed, because we recently released a new vetiver essential oil in the store. It is hydrodiffused, and it is fabulous. It blows the other vetivers I've smelled out of the water - including our synthetic version.

Steps to Clone Your Favorite Perfume or Cologne

Step 1: Find the Fragrantica page for your chosen fragrance.

Here is the example we selected for Vetiver Creed.

Step 2: Check out the main notes.

You'll typically find two lists. One is a list of what is in the perfume, and one is a list of what reviewers actually smelled when sniffing the perfume.

And handily, the former is in order according to note (top, heart, base). The latter is in order according to votes. 

For this fragrance, it looks like we'll need vetiver, citrus notes, virginia cedar, ginger, amber, and bergamot

Tip: on their website you hover over the pictures and the names appear.

Step 3: Acquire the main notes.

If you can't find one, you can substitute something similar from the same fragrance family.

Step 4: Begin experimenting. 

Here's a starting point, using fragrance notes and essential oils that are available on our store.

DISCLAIMER: I have never smelled Vetiver Creed, so I have no idea if this recipe approximates it. I just took the notes, and made something I liked out of them.

This recipe is given in ratios (x:100), which is good if you're measuring by the drop or need to calculate for your own bottles size. But know that it is automatically adjusted for the 9ml bottles and 30ml bottles.

You can use either fractionated coconut oil (FCO) or perfumer's alcohol as your base.

Most of these fragrances and essential oils are available in our store! Shop fragrance notes and essential oils.

Vetiver Creed Recipe


  Ratio/ Drops 9ml Bottle 30ml Bottle
Vetiver EO 12 1.1 ml 3.6 ml
Bergamot EO 8 .72 ml 2.4 ml
Lime FO 4 .36 ml 0.9 ml
Ginger EO 3 .27 ml 1.2 ml
Cedarwood EO 8 .72 ml 2.4 ml
Amber FO 3 .27 ml 0.9 ml
Orange Blossom FO 2 .18 ml 0.6 ml
FCO 60 5.4 ml 18 ml

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