The Basenotes Fragrance Directory contains over 20,000 fragrances and over 90,000 fragrance reviews by the site's visitors. Users of the site can search for fragrances by name, house, year of launch, gender, notes, perfumer or bottle designer. Visitors to the site can submit information to be included in the directory. The consumer reviews on the site have been described as "admirably prosaic" by Alexis Petridis in The Guardian.
The Basenotes community
Basenotes has a lively fragrance forum, described by The New York Times as "the rialto for perfume talk", where registered members can discuss fragrances and trade fragrances in the Basenotes Marketplace.
The Basenotes Fragrance Awards
Each year Basenotes asks visitors to the site to vote for their favorite fragrances that year. Regular winners include Old Spice, Shalimar, Vetiver de Guerlain, Chanel No.5, YSL M7, Green Irish Tweed and A*Men. There are also categories for the best new fragrance and best celebrity fragrance.
Other features
The site also has regularly updated industry news, user blogs, articles and interviews with figures in the fragrance industry.
Awards and recognition
Basenotes has won five awards for its editorial content at The Canadian Fragrance Awards in 2007, 2008 and 2009. All three of these winning articles were written by Marian Bendeth, a regular contributor and fragrance expert. In 2009, the website won a prize for Best Web Editorial at the Jasmine Awards for an article by the writer, Liz Upton. The following year, the same prize was won by the Basenotes writer, Walker Minton. In 2018, Claire Vukcevic won the Best Practical Guide Award for her guide to summer fragrances on Basenotes. In August 2008, Basenotes was one of 50 websites recommended by Men's Vogue in a best-of-the-web round-up which also featured IMDb, Slashdot, Boing Boing and eLuxury.
Controversy
Much suspicion surrounds the censorship process on the site, whereby opinions which differ from the orthodoxy as presented by the site moderators are removed. Frequently, this results in the banning of members who express non-compliant views. It has been suggested that there are commercial motives behind this censorship. Fragrance house O'Driu, who apparently suffered as a result of this perceived bias, famously responded by releasing a fragrance called "Basenotes Kiss My Ass", which won an award at the Cafleurebon 2015 fragrance awards.
