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Take the perfume for a test drive!
Your experience with any fragrance starts with the top notes – something that evaporates after the first 15 minutes.
The top notes of the perfume are just like the outer façade of the house. Nice as it might be, the facade should never be the reason behind purchase. A rule of thumb when picking perfume seems to be a necessity to take it for a spin around the block.
The middle notes of the perfume (the ones that appears as soon as the top notes evaporate) is the hallway of the house. You may fall in love with every detail, yet it is still too early to make a decision: you have to see the rooms first.
There is an obvious connection between one’s personality and the perfume they prefer. If you like the spicy oriental perfume notes, then you are most likely a woman who likes mystery and seduction.
If you are leaning more towards caramel, chocolate and vanilla perfume notes, then there is a great chance that you are a cookie monster. If you love the aquatic perfumes, then it appears you are a woman that finds true happiness in the simpler things.
To cut a long story short, choose wisely. Perfume is after all your second skin, an extension of who you are.
The proper ways of perfume testing
First thing first, the perfume testing requires some serious and meticulous dedication.
When you walk inside the beauty store, you should restrain yourself from testing more than three or four perfumes. If you do not want to test the perfume on your skin, you can use the blotting paper.
However, you should avoid making this mistake: you must not bring the testing paper too close to your nose. This will impair your olfactory perception because you will inhale loads of alcohol, so you will be thinking that the aquatic herbal fragrance smells a lot like the third or the fourth round of mojitos on a Saturday night (and who in their right mind would like to smell like a mojito?).
Also, you will be leaving a small trace of the perfume on the nose, so every other perfume you will test will smell a lot like the first. The perfume-sniffing experts say that you can get rid of the fragrance if you smell a freshly ground coffee beans between each sampling, however I think that the salesperson would call security if you start grinding coffee in the middle of the shop.
So, the obvious solution is to take the little samplings at home and test them between few sips of coffee. Either that or the beauty shops can offer one gram of freshly ground coffee beans for every ml of perfume we buy.
But I have a better idea, and it’s called Scentbird.
Forget about the painstaking process of roaming beauty stores in order to find your perfect scent.
Forget about orphaned perfumes standing on your table, loading you with guilt over their abandonment and their costs.
Scentbird enables you to properly test as many perfumes as you want for a low cost and offers a very stylish way of doing it.
Scentbird is a luxury fragrance subscription service that sends you a 30-day supply of a fragrance of your choice for $14.95/month.
You’ll receive a selection of fragrances each month for $14.95, and add other perfumes you want to try to your queue for an upcoming delivery.
For $14.95, Scentbird is your monthly pass to fragrant elegance, chicness and refinement.
How to take care of your perfume
Next, after you have decided which perfume will accompany you in the next few months, you should take a great care of it.
I do not mean that you should take it out for walks or buy it dinners, however you should keep it in a dry and cool place, shielded from the sun. Like in Scentbird’s cool, sleek case that you get for free.
You know how you always close the lid on your toothpaste otherwise it will turn into a dry good for nothing paste?
You must always close the lid of the perfume after each application. Men usually have hard time to obey this rule, and since they always keep the toilet seat up, try to be less judgmental.
Dos and Don’ts of perfume application
Now, we have reached the application part. I usually love Coco’s sayings, however I have a hard time agreeing with her that you should wear the perfume on the places where you want to be kissed.
Just imagine that you put the perfume on your lips. Or if you apply the perfume behind your neck and your boyfriend starts passionately kissing your neck. He will get a mouthful of alcohol and various fragrance oils that will just spoil the moment.
For me, this rule goes like this: If it is summer, you must never ever wear perfume on a bare skin. According to Michael Edwards, the sun’s ultraviolet rays react with the perfume ingredients, leading to creation of small discoloration in the form of skin patches.
The ideal place to wear perfume is on your hair ends. Even if you have a short hair, the movements of your body, the heat of the sun and the wind will force the fragrance molecules to react with the air.
You should not apply the perfume on your roots, as the fragrance oils will make your hair look like you haven’t taken a shower in a while.
In the colder days, you should opt for the pulsating parts of your body. The wrists, the elbows, behind the knees and between your cleavage are the points will make your perfume announce its presence with every move you make.
If it is winter, you can apply a very small amount of the perfume on the inner side of your coat, making sure you don’t ruin the fabrics. In fact, not all of the fabrics are perfume friendly. You must never ever apply perfume on a silk fabric, and you have to make sure that you spray the perfume on some hidden places.
Plus, it is a bad idea to apply perfume on your neck if you wear some jewelry piece, as the oils in the fragrance can react with the material and ruin your favorite necklace.
When is the right time to walk into a mist of perfume?
Now that you have learned the dos and the don’ts of the perfume application, you should also get some knowledge on the right time to apply the perfume.
The best time is to spray these pulsating points on your body just after shower. Still, the soap may interact with the perfume in some unexpected manner, so it is a good idea that you use neutral shower soap.
If you have a dry skin, you will need to apply the perfume more frequently than your friend who was “blessed” with oily skin. This is all due to the fact that the dry skin lacks the capacity to retain the scent molecules for a longer period of time.
Also, if you are one of those people who want their perfume to announce their presence even before they enter the room, you will need to reapply it a few times a day, because the perfume’s strength to ooze your personality declines as the hours pass by.
Which is when Scentbird also comes handy, with their travel-size perfume vials packed in amazingly elegant perfume case.
4 comments
I just love any great smelling scents ! I don’t care if it grass a flower or perfume !
Me too, Terrie. I love the smell of rain, of baby powder and I particularly love the scent of my favorite perfumes.
Marina, since you are the expert, and like me, maybe always looking for the Holy Grail…what are your favorite scents or I mean, perfumes…
Marina, since you are the expert, and like me, maybe always looking for something new to add to “the wardrobe ” maybe you can shed some light on your favorites “of the moment “.