Fragrance notes are the individual scent impressions used to describe a fragrance. A blend might include recognizable ideas such as lemon, lavender, vanilla, cedar, rain, amber, or baked sugar even though the finished fragrance smells like one complete composition.
Notes are useful when shopping online because they give you clues about the direction of a scent. They should not always be interpreted as a literal ingredient list. A fragrance described with 'ocean air,' for example, is usually communicating an aromatic impression rather than claiming that ocean air was bottled and added to the product. Think of notes as a vocabulary for describing what a fragrance is designed to evoke.