The starter kit

Starting out means facing a wall: suppliers list thousands of materials and every guide says "buy what you like the smell of". The useful question is a different one — which bottles get you into the most compositions — and answering it takes a few hundred real formulas.

We hold those. Here is the calculation, over 796 published formulas.

Ten materials cover 44% of the average formula. Twenty reach 57%.

The order is not how often a material turns up but how much weight it carries: one sitting at 15% of every formula is worth more than one appearing everywhere in traces. Solvents are excluded — you buy those anyway.

Where to buy them

Not from a perfume shop. You want suppliers who sell to perfumers: Pell Wall in the United Kingdom, Hekserij in the Netherlands, Fraterworks and Perfumer's Apprentice in the United States all ship small quantities. Order by CAS number where you can — the same molecule travels under several trade names, the CAS does not.

What comes next

Ten materials do not make a whole formula, they make half of one. The rest is what gives each perfume its identity, and it is only a few materials at a time. Start from a fragrance your nose already knows: five are free here, doses included.