Department Store Dilemmas

Shopping for a new fragrance at a department store can be an intimidating experience for perfume newbies. Even seasoned fragheads find it can be an often-frustrating experience. A myriad of aromas wafting in the air and over exuberant sales assistants looking to peddle the latest offerings hot of the production line, make it a challenge to select a new fragrance. The conflux of fragrant odours is hard to avoid but don’t be too hasty to fob of the sales assistant, they can be a good friend to have. In today’s blog post, I’ll go through a few of the steps I follow when selecting a new fragrance.

Step 1: Time is of the essence – Time needs to be taken to sample a fragrance, through to dry down. You need to live with a fragrance over the course of the day, ensuring you experience the various nuances and phases a fragrance goes through. Don’t, and I’ve been guilty of it myself, purchase a fragrance on the spot based on just the top notes. Top notes are often fleeting and die out within a few minutes, leaving you with a fragrance you may not like for the remaining 6,7, 8 plus hours. That leads me to step 2, sampling techniques.

Step 2: Sampling technique – Every fragrance department has tester bottles and tester strips out on display, waiting for the eager consumer to come along and spray to their heart’s content. By all means spray the strip with the fragrance, but understand this, it will react differently on your skin. As you’re going to wear the fragrance on your skin, so it goes the best way to test the fragrance is on your skin. However, don’t go crazy and spray 15 different fragrances on your skin at once, because it will all become to muddled and confusing, and your nose won’t be able to differentiate between the scents. I recommend just spraying 1 fragrance, a couple of times on each wrist. At a stretch you can spray 2 different fragrances (on different arms / wrists), but no more than that. Selecting a new fragrance is a process that can take some time, you may have to come back to the store multiple times. However, there may be a more efficient way, and that’s where the good old sales assistant comes into play.

Step 3: Befriending the sales assistant – It’s a very good idea to get talking with the sales assistant. Most, but not all, have an excellent knowledge of fragrance and can be very helpful in assisting you with your purchase. Let them know what you like and in what situations you intend wearing the fragrance. They should be able to steer you in the right direction, making sure you sample fragrances that are appropriate to your lifestyle and circumstance. Ask the sales assistant if they have any samples, there’s certainly no harm in doing so. Once the sales assistant gets to know you, they will inevitably become more forthcoming in providing samples. So, with any luck you’ll be able to take home a couple of samples to try at your own leisure, perhaps even saving you a couple of trips back to the department store.

Step 4: Bring a friend – Go along with a well-informed fragrant friend. They can make the process a lot easier, steering you in the right direction in much the same way as the sales assistant. They may also act as a well-informed intermediary between you and the sales assistant.

There are a few of other rules I now live buy when buying / sampling fragrances, they are:

• Do not blind buy – meaning don’t buy a full bottle of a fragrance without sampling first.
• Don’t rub the fragrance in after spraying it, let it evaporate on skin. Rubbing the fragrance in destroys the top notes.
• Wear unscented body lotion when you test and wear fragrance, as it will extend the life of the fragrance and wear unscented deodorant / anti-perspirant to avoid clashing with the fragrance.
• I tend to sample floral, citrus and green fragrances in the warmer months and the heavier, gourmand and oriental fragrances in the winter. Purely a preference though.
• Enjoy it. It should be fun.

If there is nowhere to sample fragrances, near where you live, there are a myriad of online options such as eBay that sell decants / samples. In a future post I’ll go through some of the online stores I use.

What are the buying / sampling rules you follow?

Note: Harrods Image courtesy of James Healy @essentialprints on unsplash.com