A Perfume Founder Says Your Fragrance Isn’t Lasting Because You’re Skipping One Step

If you’ve ever sprayed your perfume in the morning only to have it completely disappear by noon, it’s not just you—and it’s probably not the perfume either.

Between testing scents in chaotic Sephora stores, falling for anything labeled “clean,” and wondering why everything suddenly smells like dessert, most people are doing at least one thing wrong when it comes to fragrance.

On Breaking Beauty, Barb Stegemann, the founder behind The 7 Virtues (the clean fragrance brand that’s been taking over TikTok and is now in over 2,000 Sephora stores), shares some of her best tips from over 15 years of building perfumes. If anyone knows how to make your fragrance game smarter without making it harder, it’s her. Here’s what to know. 

Clean Perfume Tips and the Gourmand Fragrance Trend Explained

Your perfume isn’t lasting because you’re skipping one step

If your fragrance disappears an hour after you put it on, Stegemann says the fix is simpler than you think: moisturize first. Their lab-tested longevity study found that perfume lasts significantly longer on hydrated skin versus dry. “You wouldn’t put makeup on a dry face,” she says. Same logic applies to fragrance. Hit the body with cream or lotion first, then spritz. That one step can be the difference between your scent fading by lunch and still getting compliments at dinner.

Close your eyes when you’re testing perfume

“The sensory of sight and hearing blocks out half of what you’re smelling,” Stegemann explains. “You’re overwhelmed. The music’s playing, your friend’s talking, your dog is there. Close your eyes, and now you can really smell all the notes.” Once you’ve narrowed it down, put your two favorites on different wrists, walk around, and see how they work with your body chemistry. Your nose knows more than you think when you actually let it do its job.

The gourmand trend is here to stay

“I think people want to smell like food,” Stegemann says. “It’s comforting.” And she thinks there’s more to it than just vibes. Between the rise of GLP-1 medications suppressing everyone’s appetite and the general state of the world right now, it makes sense that we’re all reaching for scents that feel like a hug. 

There’s also a deep nostalgia factor at play. “People always say to me, it brings me back somewhere really happy,” she says. Smell is the only sense that’s directly wired to the part of your brain that processes memory and emotion. That’s why a random whiff of sunscreen can teleport you to a beach vacation from 2014 faster than any photo ever could. Fragrance taps into that instantly, no prescription needed.

What ‘clean’ perfume actually means

“Clean means there’s no phthalates, no parabens,” Stegemann says. “You go through serious audits with Sephora to meet the standards and all the European regulations to be deemed safe. There is no formaldehyde, none of the chemicals.”

The demand for clean fragrance has exploded in the last few years. Vegan, cruelty-free, and non-toxic aren’t just bonuses anymore. They’re baseline expectations. But “clean” isn’t regulated the same way “organic” is in the food world, which means brands can slap the word on basically anything. So if you’re actually trying to shop clean and not just fall for the marketing, here’s what to look for:

• Check for Sephora’s “Clean at Sephora” seal. It’s one of the easiest shortcuts because the brand has already been audited for you.
• Read the ingredient list. If you see phthalates, parabens, formaldehyde, or synthetic musks, that bottle is not clean no matter how pretty the packaging is.
• Look at the fragrance concentration. Clean perfumes that use higher fragrance loads (closer to 20 percent or above) are going to outlast the ones cutting corners at 10. An eau de parfum will always beat an eau de toilette.

You can make your own custom perfume for the price of a Sephora bottle

The 7 Virtues has a fragrance atelier on the Halifax waterfront where you can literally build your own perfume from scratch. You smell your way through their collection using blotters, narrow it down to your favorites, wave them all past your nose together, and that’s your starting point. 

Then you sit down with pipettes and start mixing. “And then you finish it—now you got to name it,”  Stegemann says. “And you’re basically creating a brand new perfume that never existed.” You leave with a decorated box, a silk scarf, and the unshakable confidence of someone who just invented a fragrance. “It costs the same as buying a perfume at Sephora,” she says.

And the scoop Stegemann was explicitly told not to share but did anyway because, in her words, “as if I’m ever going to follow the rules”: a second atelier is opening at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto this October. Bachelorette parties, bridal showers, team building, solo main character energy outings—all fair game.

Listen to the full episode on Breaking Beauty with Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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