Perfume is extremely complicated. Perfumists (called "noses" in the trade) create perfumes by carefully blending a variety of different fragrances in very specific quantities. A great perfume can have dozens of scents mixed together. You may smell a perfume as one coherent fragrance, but a perfume expert can pick out at least a few of the various elements.
When you first get a whiff of perfume right out of the bottle, what you are smelling are called the "top notes." It's no secret that perfumists spend a lot of time and money trying to get the top notes to be exactly right since most people buy perfume based on how it smells when they open the bottle or get a spritz on the arm.
Common top notes are flowery scents (roses, gardenias, lavender, lilac) or fruits (all kinds of citrus) are often used.
The thing about top notes is that they wear off. Top notes last minutes; maybe an hour or so at the outside.
Perfume experts call this period the "dry-down." As the perfume dries on the skin, the top notes disappear and what are left are the middle notes, commonly called the "heart notes." Heart notes are different than top notes.
This is why perfume that smells one way in the bottle can smell completely different on the skin an hour later. In the bottle, you're getting top notes. On the skin an hour later, you're smelling heart notes.
If you train your nose, you can pick up heart notes right from the bottle. They're there, but they're more subtle and "behind" the top notes. Think of the top notes as the kids in elementary school who jump up and down and shout "pick me! pick me!" whenever the teacher calls for volunteers. The heart notes are the kids in the background who raise their hands, too, but don't jump and lunge.
But heart notes don't last forever, either. After they fade, base notes are left. Although spelled "base" notes, if you imagine a fragrance as music, base notes would be the bass line. This is what's in the background of the scent. Base notes are strong and serve to direct the whole fragrance, but they don't really emerge (that is to say without competition) until the last phase of the perfume.
This is why perfume tends to "change" when you wear it and why after several hours, the perfume on your skin differs so much from what you smelled in the bottle.
Since most people buy perfume based on top notes, manufacturers tend to make top notes effervescent, sparkling, enticing, and sexy. But when people wear perfume, they're mostly going to be wearing the heart and base notes.
If you like a perfume, you can often use the internet to look up its "notes." Check out a perfume-selling website or the perfume's manufacturers. Most of them will somewhere describe at least a few of the perfume's notes.
You can also ask the sales person where you buy perfume. Some sales people won't have a clue, but there are a great many perfume experts out there, sometimes where you least expect it.
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