We have a few more fragrance tips to share, which are mostly geared towards fragrance shopping. 

Shopping for a new fragrance can be daunting, and these tips can help you out a little.

-If you don’t know what you’re looking for, a first step can be to just go in and start smelling anything and everything. Sometimes it’s just a trial and error situation and you just need to start smelling to figure out what you like and don’t like. 

Some places will have people who know the fragrances and can help you with recommendations or mini consultations to help guide you. 

-When shopping for a new fragrance, you should definitely try the scent on your skin before you buy. Fragrances will change on the skin from what you smell from the sprayer or cap, vs what you spray onto the blotter cards, vs what you smell on the skin. Trying fragrances on the skin, and giving them time to dry down, or ‘cook’ as Nasreen used to say, will give you an idea of how they’re going to change, if you’re going to like them through all the changes, and if you like how it ends up smelling after the top and heart notes have faded. You may like the fragrance on the paper, but hate it on the skin and vice versa.

-While in the store smelling fragrances, you’re probably going to want to smell everything that has the notes that you like. On the one hand, your nose will only be able to handle smelling so much, and on the other hand, you only have so much room to try scents on the skin.

Start off by spraying a scent you’re interested in on a blotter card. While you still want to try new scents on the skin, smelling them on the blotter cards first will give you an idea of, roughly, what to expect, and help you figure out whether or not you want to level it up to spraying on the skin.

-Once you find a fragrance you want to try on the skin, spray on your pulse points(wrists, inner elbows, neck). These spots create warmth which will help diffuse the fragrance, help it to develop, and to last longer. The back of the hand is a fine spot as well, but spraying on the pulse points will help your fragrance to stay on the skin when you wash your hands, giving the fragrance more time on the skin to develop. You can do two or three spritzes and then give it at least one full minute before you smell yourself. 

-Once a fragrance is on the skin, give it a minute before smelling it. The initial first few seconds can just be fumes and aerosol. If you make an impression of the scent based on this, you will never like the fragrances. Give the scent time to warm up on the skin and develop for a minute. Then smell every minute or every few minutes, depending on how long you’re giving yourself to decide. Your best bet would be to give it a full 30 minutes, or even a few hours to decide how you feel about it. You might like something on your skin every time you smell it for the first 30 minutes or so, but then once those base notes set in, that may change. Sometimes you might not like the initial smell of the scent, but then after 30 minutes to an hour you do. Now, not every scent will take hours for you to know if you love it, but some scents do. Sometimes you know within 10 minutes if you want the full bottle.

-Because of the above, we typically say don’t blind buy, unless you’re okay potentially wasting that money, or the place you’re buying from has a really good return policy. 

-Take notes. Especially as you’re getting to know your fragrance style. Keeping track of the notes of fragrances you like and dislike will make it easier to (kind of) know at a glance whether you might like a fragrance or not in the future. A further step can be to make a note of the perfumer of the fragrances you like, as perfumers can have a certain style that they bring to each different fragrance they make, and you may love every scent they create, no matter for which fragrance house. 

-Even if you take lots of notes, and find ingredients you really love, trying fragrances with those ingredients before buying is still a good idea. Just because it has a note, or multiple notes you like, doesn’t mean you will like the fragrance. Likewise, just because a fragrance has notes you don’t like, doesn’t mean you won’t like it. 

-Read fragrance reviews. This will help with the previous tip as well. We recommend reading reviews aside from what you’ll find on the website of the house that has created them. They probably aren’t sharing the bad reviews. Websites like Fragrantica.com and Basenotes.com will have good and bad reviews of fragrances, which can include detailed descriptions, what other fragrances this scent reminds other people of, dupe versions, fragrance performance, ect. Stuff like this can help you visualize what the scent might smell like. 

-When you’re trying fragrances on blotter cards, you can keep the ones you like and clip them to the vent in your car and you’ll temporarily scent your car with a new fragrance.

We hope this helps you on your fragrance shopping and experimenting adventures. 

We’d love to hear what other tips or tricks you have come across on your fragrance journeys.