Building a Fragrance Wardrobe

How many fragrances does one need? It’s a very subjective question. Each individual person is different, but nobody, unless you’re a serious collector needs 100s or even 1000s of fragrances. It just isn’t possible to get through them in a lifetime. Of course variety is the spice of life, and it is always good to change things up but if I was to break it down into numerical terms, I’d say that an optimum number of scents to have in one’s arsenal at any one time would be 10-20. Any more than 10-20 scents, they get lost in the shuffle, and perhaps it’s better to enjoy a small number, than to neglect many in a large collection. Now I’ve fallen too far down the rabbit-hole that perhaps there’s no turning back for me, but I’m hopeful that someone just starting out on their journey or looking to curate their collection might find this blog article useful.

I’ve never been an advocate of wearing citrus scents in the summer or wearing heavy gourmands in the winter but then again, I have a large collection and I’m constantly interchanging between lots of different scents, sampling for the blog and I generally don’t like to wear the same thing a few days in a row. If my collection was curated to 10-20, I think the best way to approach it would be by breaking it down by season, day wear, night wear. One would want a couple of scents for day and night wear, winter and autumn scents could be interchangeable with each other and spring and summer scents could be interchangeable with each other.

Be smart about building your collection. You don’t need to buy full bottles of everything, decants and samples are great options, and one should always sample something before buying it anyway. In the next few weeks I’ll post a blog article on some of the websites I go to source my decants and samples. It’s also important to stand out from the crowd, and one of the ways you can do this is by delving into the world of niche perfumery. Earlier this year I posted an article in my Fragrance Fundamentals section on Niche for Beginners. Go back and have a read of this, pick a few scents from my list and sample them, I think 1 or 2 niche for each season, and 2 or 3 designer scents for each season is a decent ratio.

So let’s take inventory and break it all down.

Summer 5 Scents – Citrus, fresh, florals. 3 x designer, 2 x niche

Spring 5 Scents – Citrus, fresh, florals 3 x designer, 2 x niche

Winter 5 Scents – Woods, spices, gourmand, oriental 2 x designer, 3 x niche

Autumn 5 Scents – Woods, spices, gourmand, oriental 2 x designer, 3 x niche

Occasion – Day / Work – It depends on circumstance and where you work but if you work in a closed environment (office, etc) it is probably best to go for clean, fresh scents that are unobtrusive to colleagues. Probably best to pick from your spring and summer wardrobe. If you work outdoors you can be more adventurous with your choice and choose some of the heavier winter scents.

Occasion – Night – Whether you’re clubbing or going on a date it’s important to have a scent that befits the occasion. Warmer scents featuring sweeter notes such as vanilla and amber are perfect, they can also double as your winter day wear scents.

Generally speaking the more interesting scents are the cooler weather niche scents. They are longer lasting, and have much more interesting development, that’s why I’ve gone with the ratios I’ve gone with above. 4 niche and 6 designer for the warmer months and 6 niche and 4 designers for the cooler months. Add a few decants to complement your full bottles and you should be able to build up a fairly strong arsenal of scents that will see you through any occasion.

What do you think are the optimum number of scents for a collection? Are you like me and can’t stop at 20, and need something different for everyday of the year? Are you planning to cull some bottles in your collection? Do you like to wear citrus in summer and heavier scents in the winter?

Note: Image courtesy of Natanni on unsplash.com