Sillage (pronounced see-yazh, /ˈsiː.jaʒ/) is a French word for a wake — the trail a boat leaves behind it in water. In perfumery it means exactly that: the scent trail you leave behind you. It is the part of a fragrance other people notice in a room you have already walked out of.
Sillage, projection and longevity are three different things
These three words get used as if they mean the same thing. They do not.
- Projection is how far the scent pushes off your skin right now — the size of your scent bubble at this moment.
- Sillage is what is left behind in the space you have moved through. Someone walks in after you and can still tell you were there.
- Longevity is time — how many hours the fragrance stays detectable on skin.
A perfume can sit quietly against your skin all day: long longevity, almost no trail. Another can announce itself for an hour and then disappear: big trail, poor longevity. What most people actually want is a fragrance that does both, and that comes down to what is in the bottle.
Why concentration decides how far a fragrance throws
A fragrance is aromatic material carried in a solvent. The higher the concentration, the more aromatic material each spray puts on your skin and the less carrier there is to flash off in the first few minutes. That is the whole mechanism behind a good trail.
Parfum Extrait sits at the top of that ladder — it is the most concentrated format a perfume is made in, more so than eau de parfum or eau de toilette. Everything we make is Parfum Extrait at 30% concentration, in one 33ml bottle, which is why it wears up to 18+ hours depending on the fragrance — every product page states its own figure — and keeps throwing a trail instead of collapsing flat against skin. In Indian heat that difference is not subtle: thinner formulations burn off fastest exactly when you need them most.
How to wear it so it actually leaves a trail
- Spray onto skin, not into a cloud you walk through. Most of a cloud lands on the floor.
- Use pulse points — sides of the neck, behind the ears, chest, inner wrists. Warm skin lifts the scent through the day.
- Do not rub your wrists together. The friction and heat crush the top notes.
- Moisturise first. Fragrance holds on hydrated skin and fades faster on dry skin.
- Go easy with an extrait. At 30% concentration, fewer sprays do more. Start low and add one — you can always add, you cannot take it back off.
Good sillage is not about spraying more. It is about wearing something concentrated enough that it does not need to be sprayed more.
All third-party brand and fragrance names are trademarks of their respective owners, referenced only to describe scent character. The Sillage Studio is not affiliated with or endorsed by these brands.