Pure Perfume, Parfum or Extrait De Parfum
These names may be a little deceptive because they are not referring to pure perfume oil, which would both smell unpleasant and irritate your skin. Still, pure perfume is the highest concentration of fragrance available — usually between 15 and 30 percent perfume oil — and is enough to make the scent potent, noticeable and last all day.
The sillage, or how far the fragrance extends from your body in the air around you, is always very noticeable with pure perfumes. They tend to seem dense and thick in the air, with clouds of scent you can walk in and out of, cut with a knife, almost taste. When you hug someone who is wearing a pure perfume, chances are that you will smell like them for hours after. Just like a lipstick, they can transfer.
The perfume you see in the store is not the pure perfume essence and has been diluted. However, it is the most concentrated of all the fragrance options, and it is the most expensive for this reason. It tends to be slightly oilier and will typically contain 15-40 percent pure perfume extract. It has a slightly thicker, oilier consistency. It tends to be sold with “stopper bottles” and not sprays. It is too strong to spray all over (and too expensive).
The percentage of pure perfume extract is not necessarily an indicator of the quality of perfume, though. As mentioned, there are many essential oils that you wouldn’t want to smell like in small doses. Real musk and ambergris are expensive and not pleasant in their pure forms, so a single drop can dramatically increase the price of a perfume, but you wouldn’t want more than that single drop.