Lucky Scent (mentioned in this article) has a boutique in LA. If you're nearby, you can go in and sample to your heart's content. Perfume boutiques are unfortunately rare but most large cities will have something and they're accessible and inviting in my experience. There really is a _lot_ more out there than what a Sephora or Macy's will ever show you.
Nice article. He correctly notes that vocabulary for describing odors is limited for most so reviews and descriptions trend quite "purple" and abstract. There is a vocabulary, though, but it'd take some time spent with some books and a perfume organ to make progress on that front.
Taste is just a combination of 5 basic tastes, vision is a combination of 3 primary colors, etc.
Food reviewers don't note the levels of salt, sour, etc. They describe flavors and textures and parings.
But also, I don't buy that taste is just the composition of 5 components. This sounds like a reference to that diagram of the tongue we've all seen. It's as complex as scent is. There's no way you can define the taste of cinnamon by specifying some sort of 5-tuple.
It’s still true that we can only taste salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. All other flavor complexities come from scent simultaneously giving us information. It’s why everything tastes so boring when you have a head cold.
Food also has a universe of possible consistencies.
You can get pretty close to what you're seeing this way.
With scent? Not even close.
Hearing is quite similar in that there are numerous different length hairs in the ear drum that can sense different frequencies of sound.
Sure, this is a finite number, but for practical purposes it's not really decomposable.
I wish I knew what is so irritating in so many perfume so I could militate to have that substance banned instead of being in the no perfume militia!
Essential Oils like fir needles, black spruce, orange, rosemary... don't affect me, I even like them (but I find lavender repulsive but it's not hurtful).
And I don't feel like going to an allergy specialist for something as superficial as this is a good use of my time since my coworker, friends and family are not into perfume.
I know I was lucky, but the point is that yes, it is sometimes possible to "reverse the problem".
A bit east of Elkhart Indiana, there's a place that claims to sell "natural perfume". Does anyone who is perfume-sensitive have any experience with that? Is it possible that the chemicals used in "non natural perfume" are at the root of the sensitivity? (I haven't dared to test it on my wife, so I'd be interested in any reports.)
Instead of migraines, it's closer to hay fever type allergies.
I don't understand how this is distinguishable from random smells going about life, like traffic, fresh rain, flowers, cooking, grass, etc.
Traffic chemicals appear strongest on busy motorways with stagnant air, where people outside of cars don't spend much time.
Flower chemicals can cause problems but usually dissipate within 10 feet or so.
Fresh rain primarily eliminates free-floating chemical attacks and does not cause one itself.
Cooking is self-regulating because the person actively triggering the chemical emission is exposed much more strongly than people elsewhere even in the same room.
Grass can only be crudely avoided or mitigated during the seasons where it's problematic. (Thank God for COVID bringing awareness that masks make it physically easier to breathe.)
But perfume? You never know when you'll run across a person who chooses to be a targeted, walking violation of the Hague Convention. There's no way to mitigate this other than avoiding people entirely (which some people do choose to do, but which has negative side effects).
That said, in recent years I find the perfume from cleaning supplies or laundry supplies to be more problematic than the perfume from people.
> not because someone wears to much or smell to intensely
a normal perfume/cologne wearer is not going to smell 10 feet away
also
> Fresh rain primarily eliminates free-floating chemical attacks and does not cause one itself.
yes, petrichor
I'm aware of petrichor existing. I'm not aware of it ever effecting a chemical attack the way perfumes do.
again, no one is arguing that people who wear too much perfume are not obnoxious
> a chemical attack
what chemical?
If I have my inhaler at hand, that feels like pulling knives out of my lungs - better than before, but the wound remains. But we don't expect people to get much work done if they've been stabbed today.
It would be extremely annoying if that was a regular occurrence. Luckily I only seem to be sensitive to something rarely used.
Eh, we get pretty angry about people going around with music in public spaces (and tend to require licensing for it) and I think we're right to.
Here’s the description:
The abandoned chapel of a Cistercian abbey.
Cold stonewalls, covered in Moss.
The scent of waxen wood, of the tabernacle and ornate pews.
The linseed oil of the unfinished painting.
Myrrh and Frankincense still linger in the air,
When a peppery whiff catches you, unawares:
That of white lilies, still fresh and yet so spicy.
The subtle scent of golden pollen mingles with that of solemn green leaves.
A beam of light breaks through the stained glass windows illuminating this olfactory tumult of feelings, shifting from humility to jubilation.
A divine call.
When I visited the site in Paris, which was a lovely experience, we did sample this perfume among others and were quite impressed. Something weird happened in America, maybe the Axe Body Spray takeover, where at least those with a working class upbringing thumbed our noses at such frivolous things but now I have come to appreciate fragrance a bit more.Funny enough, we actually randomly had dinner with the founder of a perfume shop who was visiting Paris with his wife and it was fascinating to learn a bit about the industry.
https://www.orizaparfums.com/en/ultimateproduct/170/coffret-...
[1] reasonable within the context of their prices... YMMV.
The way I see it, perfumes should replace your scent. They should complement it. They should go together like wine and food.
Axe Body Spray covers your natural scent -- the entire marketing is "You smell bad so you should smell like something else". That's how we've marketed fragrance in the US since forever. Somebody finally figured out that we could sell it to boys as well as to adult women.
Lorca wrote here, Picasso sketched here, Buñuel and Dali schemed to shock the world here. Even today, you'll still find ideas hanging in the air at Madrid's Cafe Gijon-along with the pungent smoke of Ducados.
Stir sugar into your cortado and watch the room unfold in the nearest mirror. There are so many, reflecting into each other, you can see everything from one spot.
Are those young ladies debating García Márquez? It's perfectly acceptable to stroll over and get involved. All it takes is confidence-and this jacket. Spanish Café Linen Blazer.
Also male perfume nowadays is either too weak or too sweet (or too expensive if you go the niche route). So either I'll wear a perfume that will smell for 30 minutes and nobody will notice or I'll bite the bullet and wear a club perfume that will suffocate people (and not even smell good).
There is lots of interesting brands that don't go for mass appeal, for example Pineward.
Costco has some nice deals on high end perfumes, like Roja or Tom Ford.
There are also local perfumeries which can be interesting.
I don't know if it's still a good route, but I used to be able to buy sacks of random perfume sampler bottles from eBay sellers for peanuts and then I could try a couple every day and note down which ones I liked or not.
Plus I’ve found it’s a power move when I smell good in a room of people who have no aura.
Humans are animals/automatons after all, and it’s a neat hack.
> I couldn’t get all the ones Nguyen highlighted from LuckyScent and some sampler packs were sold out, but I settled for 39 samples total on 8 February 2021. (Which cost $153 [2021; $190 in 2025], so amortizing to $3.90 [2011; $6.03 in 2025] each.) At that point I felt I had gone a bit overboard, so I didn’t do an additional order from CB I Hate Perfume, which Nguyen praises for doing the most interesting ‘abstract’ perfumes, to pick up ones that LuckyScent didn’t have in stock.
It’s a distinct smell and I’m not really sure if it’s purely from the electronics or if it comes from the papers inside the box too.
There are also bunch of sellers who package samples (aka "decants" - buy a 100mL, split it into smaller bottles). I found that 1-2mL is plenty to get an idea. I've had great experience with LuckyScent (mentioned in the article), Surrender to Chance, as well as random reddit swaps and highly rated Ebay sellers.
The perfume scene is super wide and diverse, and I found that although there are general trends, it's hard to even know all the popular brands, and everyone's nose is unique. Skip stuff like Aventus and Sauvage and buy some discovery sets (surrender to chance puts together some good ones).
There is definitely a spectrum between "wearable crowd-pleaser" and "avant-garde storytelling" - Afrika-Olifan comes to mind - love it for the creativity and execution, but it would be rude to go outside wearing it. There's also some storytelling - Black March, for example, starts off with grassy fresh earth after a rain, then turns into flowers.
For those not in America, SF and LA are counties in the united states of america.
The high end ones are purer in ingredients, but the mainstream are just the cheapest combination of chemicals you are putting on your skin/breathing in.
Perfume gets up my nose.
If the containers were uniform, it could be a robot production line and small runs wouldn't be an issue given the inputs are somewhat universal.
It's paint blending for the nose.
"War paint" (2003) by Liny Woodhead about Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden is a fascinating read. It was a book before a stage production.
every single comment on that website is amazing.
2) I hate perfume. I met an avant garde perfumist called Christopher Brosius (label: "I hate perfume") and waited 20 years to buy his samples. They are AMAZING. So approachable. Everyone who has let me dab with his fragrances has been blown away. "In the library" smells like old books. "Wild hunt" has rotten leaves as an ingredient. "Walking on air" smells like fresh cut grass. I hate perfume but I am obsessed with his smells: https://www.cbihateperfume.com/
Instead, get something from a good clone house. They have special equipment to analyse the ingredients of the branded perfumes and end up making exactly the same thing.
Stay away from lower quality copies that aren't made by clone houses (i.e random "inspired by" stuff from Amazon).
At least I've noticed this with listening to music, personally speaking.
hhh•5h ago
tpm•4h ago