how to wear perfume: 14 posts

Why does it happen that the scents you detest linger the longest? My capacity to tolerate unpleasant odors has increased markedly during my perfumery training–remind me to tell you a story involving a place called “the stinky room”, but even so, I occasionally encounter fragrances that make me wrinkle my nose. Sometimes it can just be an innocuous perfume tried on the wrong day. I know as soon as the liquid dries on my skin that I’ve made the wrong choice. My throat tightens and an oppressive, sickly feeling rises up slowly from the pit of my stomach. At that point, there is nothing to do but remove the offending scent.

Rubbing wrists raw with soap and water won’t make much difference because fragrances are formulated with ingredients soluble in alcohol, rather than H2O. Following this logic, you can rub your skin with pure alcohol, but this is a harsh solution that would turn sensitive skin into a patchwork of angry red spots. Instead, here are my three favorite methods to get rid of unpleasant perfumes in a gentle and effective way. Some of them even double up as beauty treatments.

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Please welcome a contribution from Courtney Humphries, who will join us at Bois de Jasmin. Courtney is a freelance journalist and author living in Boston, and she writes about science, health, and culture for a variety of publications. I especially recommend her article for Wired, Engineering Replacements for Essential Perfume Ingredients. Courtney became enamored with perfume after wandering into a Diptyque shop several years ago and smelling Philosykos, which immediately captured her attention. As she describes, “A quick web search on it led me to perfume blogs and reviews, and my journey went from there.”  

Before I became a perfume lover, I regarded fragrance much the same way most of the people I know do: as an afterthought. Perfume was a functional product to help me smell good in social situations. I usually owned just one bottle of perfume, and if I remembered I’d spritz a tiny bit on before going out to a party or on a date. Just as often, I’d forget to put it on before leaving the house, so the bottle would languish on my dresser for months or years, until I tossed it in the trash (in those days I believed perfume “went bad” after a year or two).

When you own only one bottle of fragrance, your choices are minimal—you’re either perfumed or you’re not. For me, that decision depended on whether the occasion met a certain threshold of “specialness” that justified going scented.

But when I became interested in perfume, I began to see fragrance as a source of personal pleasure. I had to make a leap from what had been my “normal” way of thinking about perfume—that everyone needs just a single fragrance—to the quite radical notion that one can collect an entire wardrobe of fragrances.

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My day-to-day perfumery work requires an extensive library of fragrances, but for pleasure, I can make do with a small wardrobe. When I had to pack in preparation for my move to Belgium, I faced a Sophie’s choice many perfume lovers dread–which perfumes to take with me. We didn’t know if we’d be moving for a couple of months or a couple of years, and the limited luggage allowance left me with few options–three or four full bottles maximum.

I relied on this small fragrance wardrobe for several months as most of my collection made its way the ocean, but I’ve never felt deprived.  Perfumers often say that a single perfume can be worn in such ways that it can smell like a completely different blend, but this was the first time I had experimented enough to discover this for myself.  Depending on how I applied a fragrance, I enjoyed different facets of my favorite perfumes. It was both fun and liberating, proving once again that one need not spend a fortune to be beautifully scented.

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Elle Magazine recently published my article “How To Be Unforgettable” at Elle.com. In this piece, I explore what makes a fragrance memorable and why some perfumes receive more compliments than others. I hope that you will enjoy it.

Perfumer Sophia Grojsman was returning home one evening when she noticed a man following her. As she quickened her step and clutched her handbag, the man shouted, “Wait, wait, I don’t mean any harm, I just want to know the name of your perfume. It’s amazing!” The fragrance was Calvin Klein Eternity, which Grojsman was designing at the time. Once launched, Eternity rapidly climbed to the top of the charts, and today, this explosive floral is still among the best sellers. Grojsman’s anecdote is an extreme example of a perfume compliment, but the poignant reactions that scents can provoke made me wonder—what is the ultimate head-turning perfume? To read the rest, please continue to Elle.com.

Do you ever compliment others on fragrance? If so, what perfumes have received compliments from you?

Painting: Cassatt, Mary, A Corner of the Loge (In the Box), 1879. via Wiki-images, some rights reserved.

My friends who know about my fragrance hobby always ask me which perfumes might be appropriate for office/work situations and which might be overkill.  In today’s cramped spaces, the question is more important than ever.  Joy might be a joy for you, but not for your office mate!

I don’t wear perfume to work, but I don’t feel cheated. I only wear it socially. This break from perfume also means that I am not competing with the strong smells occasioned by my job—I’m an events photographer and I attend a lot of catered functions where the air is often thick with garlic, cheese, coffee, chocolate, and wine. Phew! I do my part not to contribute to the overload.  Believe me, a ripe Brie duking it out with Frédéric Malle Noir Epices is not entirely pleasant.

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