The Ideal Perfume Experience

Here are our reasons why we believe that evaluating perfume in the hustle & bustle of a Department Store or the Duty Free may not be ideal:

A Maximum 3 Fragrances

Your nose is designed to detect differences!

We all know that we can’t smell the scent we are wearing after a while. Our noses are there to warn us of imminent danger, e.g. a fire, food that has gone off. The best way to do this, is to keep familiar & safe scents in the background and instead continuously stay alert for new smells, i.e. a potential danger.

As perfumers we know that after 3 – 4 perfumes the receptors in the nose become saturated.

This is why some people offer coffee beans to clean the nose. It is, however, scientifically proven that this does not work and it is easy to understand why:

• • It is unlikely that putting something else into your nose, removes what is already there.
  • When you have a nice meal, you eat a sorbet between courses and drink coffee at the end.

Our suggestion is that your nose needs to time to naturally cleans itself. From experience, we know the time needed is approximately 3 minutes.

This means the following:

• • the wonderful cloud of scents you walk into at the perfumery section, immediately begins to block your nose
  • with each new fragrance you smell, your nose will focus on the difference between what it has smelled previously (and what saturated the receptors in your nose) and the new smell (i.e. the potential ‘danger’).

As you are in a rush, you don’t have the ‘time’ to give your nose a rest so that it can ‘clean’ itself before smelling the next perfume

Your Skin

We have all experienced that a wonderful perfume can smell superb on one person but not that exciting on another.

Perfumery Houses work very hard to minimise this phenomenon but it still happens.

This is why we should test a fragrance on our skin.

You are, however, in a rush and the charming sales assistants have already sprayed your two wrists but you really like this last scent. Hence, you spray it a little further up onto your arm.

Now, … this becomes confusing but you like the initial smell on your skin and because you are in a rush you purchase the perfume.

At home though, you discover that you don’t really like the scent on your skin after a while.

Over Time

We have all experienced how perfumes unfold and develop over time.

The top note shows itself immediately, the heart note shortly thereafter but the base note needs a little time to reveal itself.

Do you have the time to enjoy the perfume in its entirety when you browse the perfumery isles and try one scent after the other?

We are sure you have come across scenarios where you have bought a perfume only to discover that you don’t really like what it smells like after a little while.

At Home

A fragrance smells different in your home environment than in the department store.

We have all experienced situations where we liked what we smelled in the department store but don’t really love it when we are in our own 4 walls.

This phenomenon is easily explained:

For years perfumers struggled to recreate the wonderful scent of a rose in a garden or field.

Finally, they discovered that the smells that are in the air around the blooming rose have a significant impact on what we smell when we bend down to smell a rose.

Essentially the same happens in your home. The scent of your own, unique home mingles with the perfume you have just bought. It adds itself to your new perfume as part of its ‘top’, ‘heart’ or ‘base’ note and this combination might not be to your liking.

Effectively, you create a new, unique perfume through the smells that are in your personal environment.

Peace & Quiet

Our noses are impressionable and we need to give them time, peace & quite to discover and really appreciate a fragrance.

Within a bustling department store our noses don’t get a chance to fully experience a perfume, as our senses are in overdrive:

• • eyes: there are numerous displays all around us that are illuminated and some of them even flashing, to attract our attention.
  • ears: a cacophony of sounds envelops us and it is exciting to be distracted by all we hear.
  • touch: we love touching the wonderful bottles, packs and beautiful displays around.
  • taste: did we just try this lovely piece of chocolate?

As you can see, shopping is a wonderful experience for our senses and we love it!

However, did we stop think for one second about our nose? It has been in overdrive working to absorb the millions of scents that are floating all around us. Every second there is a new one.

Is this really the best environment to focus on a new perfume to try and experience it fully?

Our noses need time, peace & quite to smell.

Just run this little experiment or analogy:

• • the next time you eat something, stop before you put into your mouth, and
  • smell it first.
  • then when you chew it, do nothing else and just taste it.

Do you notice the difference?

Do you remember that vast majority of what you taste, is actually smelled? You can only taste ‘sweet’, ‘sour’, ‘bitter’ and ‘salty. The rest you taste when eating, is actually smelled by your nose.

Knowing this, should you not give your nose time, peace & quite to smell fully?

These are some of the reasons why a perfumer evaluates a fragrance over time in a quite and neutral environment.

The Ideal Perfume Experience

With this in mind, we developed the Perfume Experience™ Box in the form of a Fragrance Library.

Sit back, relax and savour each perfume and its evolution, just like you would with a book in your library and enjoy the Ideal Perfume Experience.