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The most frequent question I’m asked about perfume is: what’s your favourite? (Answer: I genuinely do not have one, and even picking 10 is a process so agonising, I can almost see it turning my hair grey before my eyes). But perhaps the most interesting question I’m asked about perfume is why I wear it. Even though it’s come up a few times over the years, I feel I’ve never given it a satisfactory response. Sometimes, the context hasn’t been quite right (a noisy event where it isn’t possible to exchange anything more than pithy soundbites). At other times, I have the suspicion the person asking isn’t actually prepared for a full answer (and as you know, I don’t do brief). And then there are the days when I simply don’t think I’m capable of articulating all the emotions and sensations that would need to be part of an honest and comprehensive reply. But today is the day when I try to address the issue once and for all: an attempt to express, in as much detail as possible, precisely what it is that has made me reach for my bottles of scented magic, day after day, for several decades. And what it is that keeps making me reach for them.
To read the rest of this post, please click on this link to my Substack: Why I Wear Perfume – Top 10 Reasons.
Persolaise
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Absolutely love this! I can relate to most of your reasons, although I struggle a bit with the relation to past or future. I might wear a scent that helps me remember the past because I want to stay connected to a part of myself that was left there, but usually I find perfume is very effective at helping me be in the present. It’s part of what I bring to my surroundings and part of what I take in from them through my nose that I can control.
Thanks very much for reading. And yes — you’re absolutely right. Perfume can help us focus on the present as well. Thanks for reminding me of that.
This is the most beautiful well thought out piece and says so much about you and your passion for perfume . Indeed it’s thanks to you that my own deep love for fragrance have grown and you have introduced me to many fragrance’s . I am particularly enamoured with Habit Rouge and LeLion and indeed I feel that you have given me them to love . I myself wear perfume because I couldn’t not .
Thank you so much, Angela. You can’t do much better than Habit Rouge, really.
I love this blog post. It’s interesting your point regarding the future and making memories with scents you’ve never worn before. I’ve a couple that transport me to detailed, distinct memories I have of wearing them, where I knew I smelled great!
Thanks for reading, Ryan. The memory-making potential is huge.
Great post! Perfume allows me to pick who I want to be and how I want to feel, how I want others to perceive me, on any given day. It’s part of my outfit just like the clothes, jewelry and shoes I select.
Wonderful, Tara. Thanks very much for taking the time to write.
When I’m going through the routine of life (work, chores and errands) perfume reminds me there is also joy – it reminds me to stop and smell the flowers.
Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.
What a beautiful post. You capture so much of what I feel about perfume. Fragrance somehow brings me out of myself, and into myself – simultaneously. I’ve never been able to articulate that sensation. You do exactly that here – thank you. Congrats on the 10,000, and continued success!
That’s such a great way of putting it, Daniel. Thank you.
What a wonderful post. So enjoyed reading it. These days I find myself almost paralysed by the associative strength of my many perfumes. They’re all so strongly associated with events and times and feelings in the past that this limits when I can wear them now. And the new ones, well, I have to be very careful what they’re going to be associated with, so they sometimes don’t get worn for fear of creating the wrong association. So I have a fantastic olfactory archive of my life, but I lack the ability to wear them in the present in a carefree way!
How fascinating. I guess, in a way, this is the flip side of our love of perfume. We have to be careful how we wear it. Thanks for writing.
In a time like this, when hyperproduction is flourishing, it feels good to be reminded of so many reasons to love and wear good perfume. Thank you for this thoughtful post.
A good point!
Thanks for reading.
Can relate to all of your reasons, for me it’s also simply an addiction, one I don’t want to get rid of. I even dream about perfumes, and in those dreams they take me to other times and worlds, personas. Some that I already know, others completely made up by my weird sleeping brain. And when I’m lucky, when I wake up, sometimes I can still remember those fragrant voyages. Thank U for this post, I will show it to everyone that shakes his or head when I tell them about my love of (addiction to!) perfume.
Ah, the sweetest addiction.
Many thanks for writing.
Perfume is a mirror, a mirror of my thoughts, of feelings, a mirror of childhood memories and love, lost and lived. At its best it is a mirror that reflects utmost beauty into a world which at that same moment is in despair.
Wonderful point — the invisible mirror.
Thanks for writing, Heinke.
This piece of writing is exhaustive and extensive, those To smell what I mean sections are brilliant. I expect this text will be listed on top of one or the other list of awards for fragrance journalism.
Why do I wear perfume? And that is day in and day out, alone at home with remote work or in the office or on a night out. I like the challenge to decide which of my personality’s facets I wish to emphasise. And I love the ongoing dialogue in my head of both analysing and feeling the scent.
Thank you so much. Prizes are funny things… but writing this piece and reading all your comments is reward enough in itself.
I love that internal dialogue too.
I think one of the things that makes it so hard to articulate why we do a thing like wear perfume (at least in a forum where you don’t have time to consider all the factors properly) is that, like any good love, there is a busy, evolving pantheon of reasons that converse and overlap and fight and cavort with each other. Not only can they sometimes be difficult to isolate and describe without a bit of effort, therefore, but any one or two of them might be winning your attention on any particular day, which reasons may not be the same ones that capture your imagination on any other day – and you’ll know that no matter how strong your feelings one way or another in that moment, they are only part of a shifting and interconnected whole. I think.
Anyway. One reason I wear fragrances that is not explicitly mentioned in your excellent post is the furtiveness of the experience. It is one of the only hobbies I can fully enjoy – engaging several or all of the items on your list above – even while at work; a little haven of private contemplation and recomposition into which I can dip in and out, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.
Yes, totally right, Edmund. Pretty much no matter what we’re doing, we can enjoy the fragrance we’re wearing. Excellent point, thank you.
Why do I wear perfumes? Basically I have to thank Covid. I have to thank life and the fact that I am having a well paid job. Back in the days I wore perfumes but basically they were gifts, they were nice, you smelled them on someone and they were fine etc. But I never actually put too much thoughts into my scents. And then my husband approached his 5th decade. He turning 40 and me trying to find a meaningful present in a world of capitalism and in a life, where we can actually say, we have got everything we need. So I thought, let’s find him, his signature scent for the next decade. A scent the children will remember, the scent which will accompany us on all adventures to come. So I digged into perfume and came across those so called Niche fragrances. Never heard of it before. Covid made it possible to spend hourse on the web, watching reviews, ordering samples and getting addicted to the exeptional. So my present to him, was a huge box, filled with Samples from all kind of niche houses. But ok, once you order sample sets you are getting interested for your own skin as well, so this is how it started. I am not super rich, so I can not effort a collection of hundreds of bottles, but I learned a lot about fragrances the past 2 years. I fell in love with Rose fragrances, with creativity and I learnt to see perfumes as art and the noses as artists. I still have so much to learn but I found fragrances which I truly love. Some which I appricate and all the history behind the classic fragrances. I wear perfumes because they take me on a journey. They bring me back in time, to different places, they extend my mindset and my understanding. They make me focussed on myself, on art and the meaning of life (in a poetic way) and my nose has never taken the lead till 2 years ago. I treated this sense very poorly. except during my 3 pregnancies and the breastfeeding time after. In those times I couldn’t stand any perfume, and my nose was so sensitive. I remember walking pregnant throught Toulouse and the whole city smelled urin. it was horrible, and while having my babies in my arms, I barely could take deodorant, since I could have anything disturb the sensation of me smellng my child and my child smelling me (if this makes sense) even today I can only sample when the kids are sleeping or after school drop off, since some creations are too strong and experimental. Most of this might be not really related to your question, but I find it hard to answer
anyway, it is always a pleasure reading your views, seeing you youtube work and learning while experiencing. Thank you or this Darius!!
This is such a wonderful comment to read — thank you so much, Virginie. I’m sure my mum told me that she too struggled with smells when she was pregnant with me.
Thank you for this charming and stimulating piece of writing. The “to smell what I mean” sections in particular are splendid. I will seek out some of those examples and make the experiment.
Although I must say that none of your reasons is one of my reasons, except for number 8 and maybe number 6, which I would express in a more pedestrian way as an appreciation of good handicraft. I admire your good intentions in number 4, but if I were sitting that exam, you’d be as likely to put me off as not. I’d just say I want to make a good impression. Or sometimes, to surprise people!
Anyway, I wear perfume mostly because I am fascinated with the endless variety of them. It’s more or less incidental that I have to wear them, just because they are designed to display their full potential only on skin. That being said, perfume has a way of being able to enhance or counter a mood, giving me some sort of improved emotional control over my day, being similar in that way to a good breakfast. In those cases when my mood is contradictory – think of the familiar case of feeling exhilarated and dead tired at once – a particular perfume may either help me choose sides or enjoy the tension.
I have in fact worn a certain perfume for the first time at an important occasion in my life. I admit, however, that the perfume the other person wore has had a much stronger and more lasting effect on my mind. The only perfume that really exerts that irresistible power of pulling me back into the past is Varanasi by Meo Fusciuni. That is a bit of bad luck, because as a perfume it is horrible.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and feelings. You have prompted me to examine my own.
Thanks for taking the time to write, Sebastian.
I’m intrigued by Varanasi, not just because of its name, but also because of your description.
This is a beautiful post!
I don’t think I can articulate the reasons why I wear perfume in the evocative way you did, but I can relate with most of the reasons you present here. Fragrances are an essential part of my wardrobe, but not only this. I wear them to express myself to the world, to boost my mood when I am sad, to calm me down, to remember the past, to feel warm and cozy during the winter, and so forth. Perhaps the main reason is to add some beauty to my daily routine. For example, I love to smell the scents I am wearing when walking to work or running errands. I guess perfumes help me to daydream!
Adding beauty to our daily routines. Yes! Long live beauty, in any form.
Perfume nourishes my soul.