Making your Perfume Last and Project: Different Strategies

Longevity and Sillage are the two words on every scent lover's lips these days. Even if you have not yet trained to recognize notes, even if you are very new to the perfume obsession, you at least can detect how long a perfume lasts on your skin or clothes (longevity) and how far the scent can be smelled (sillage or projection). Of course, we should not mistake the longevity and sillage of a fragrance for its quality - there are weaker scents that are considered "great" and smell very good indeed - but let's not get into that controversy today. I'm sure that every one of us has had an experience with a perfume that they loved, but simply couldn't smell enough of, or lost the scent of after only a few hours. I've seen a few different strategies to make spray perfume last longer and smell stronger. Let's talk about them.

1. Overspraying or reapplying . This is the simplest and most obvious strategy. If you spray more of the perfume, you will get more of the volatile aromachemicals onto your skin and clothes, where they will enter the air and you can smell them. Also, you’re not going to change the makeup of your scent this way unlike if you layer - so this may be what you want to do if you just want your pure, unadulterated scent.

However, you need to take care with this strategy: You might be going anosmic or "nose blind" to your fragrance, and what smells like nothing to you might be a scent bomb to the people around you. Of course, cultures are different. The level of scent that works in the UAE will not work in Japan. Think about the culture of the place you are in before applying/reapplying and ask someone you trust if you smell too strong.

2. Change where you are spraying. Alcohol, along with all liquids, evaporates faster in heat. So, spraying on your pulse points may help diffuse the scent, but it will be gone quicker. People find that perfume lasts longer on fabric than on skin. Therefore, you want your perfume to last longer, consider spraying perfume on your clothes as well as your skin. For me, one spray of original Obsession Eau de Parfum lasts 6 hours and projects intimately on my skin but it lasts for a week with the same projection on my clothes.

3. Moisturize to prime your skin for perfume.
Many people report that perfume projects stronger and lasts longer on moisturized skin, and there are a number of different strategies they use. People report dozens of different “systems” of moisturizing to prime their skin, including:
- Simply applying unscented lotion, then applying fragrance.
- Applying unscented lotion under, then over, the fragrance.
- Applying a matching scented lotion under, then over the fragrance.
- Applying petroleum jelly to the skin, then a layer of perfume on top. Some even apply another layer of the jelly on top of the perfume (though this will make the fragrance last longer but mute the scent).
- Moisturizing, then applying a layer of pure Vitamin E Oil under fragrance.
- Using a perfume primer like the ones from Future Society or House of Bo under the fragrance.
- Having a hot shower, then applying moisturizer and fragrance to still-damp skin
- Drinking plenty of water, then moisturizing to make sure that their skin has the ultimate hydration before applying fragrance.
Needless to say, this gets a little bit involved. Though I personally don’t make sure to drink water just for the purpose of wearing perfume, I do follow some of these strategies. I find that wearing perfume on both my clothes and skin, and spraying about 4 times, works for most of my scents that aren't super weak or atomic bombs. If I want more longevity, I apply a layer of Vitamin E oil or the Future Society primer before spraying perfume. I feel that I get more longevity and nuance of my perfume when I use primers. For example, I think I can smell more subtle powdery aspects to my Gardenia, and I think I get more sillage out of my Féminité du bois when I use the Vitamin E oil. Of course, this may be a placebo effect in both cases, so I would not rush to buy anything.

4. Layering similar fragrances: the cheaper way to overspray. What if you have an expensive perfume that just isn’t strong enough, but you don’t want to overspray all that money away? What do you do then?

Some people recommend layering a dupe under your more expensive perfume. Whether or not you like dupes, I think the logic makes sense. Middle Eastern dupe houses especially have a reputation for producing strong, but sometimes not exact (and sometimes unlovely) replicas of the perfumes they want to copy. Therefore, if you want a stronger impression of something closer to the real thing, you could layer the dupe underneath. You could also do this with a non-dupe perfume that has a similar profile.

Examples of such combinations would be:
- Ambery Saffron by Dossier layered under Baccarat Rouge 540 Eau de Parfum
- The Oil Perfumery impression of BR540 layered under the BR540 EdP (This oil+spray method is a combination of the moisturizing and the layering method, which is quite interesting and in theory could work quite well.)
- Berlinetta by Maison Alhambra layered under Bibliothèque Eau de Parfum
- Méharées layered under Musc Ravageur Eau de Parfum
- 401 Cèdre Prune Confite Vanille layered under Féminité du bois - which is one of my personal favorites. 401 is not a dupe of FdB, but I find that 401's similar profile with deeper base notes complements FdB and helps it to last longer.
If by using this strategy, you find a perfume that you like better, you might find yourself with a replacement for your old favorite, completely by accident.

5. Layering -The More Expensive Way. If money isn’t an object for you and you just want a longer-lasting scent, you could try layering a different concentration of your fragrance with the version that you already have. Extraits have a higher concentration of aromachemicals compared to EdPs, while EdPs have more aromachemicals than EdTs, but higher concentration does not necessarily mean more projection - you will have to test and see. Fragrances do, however, usually have better longevity the higher their concentration. Just make sure to test first before you try this trick, because you are layering two different scents. Just because something is the "same perfume" doesn't mean that the Extrait and EdP have the same notes.

Here is an example of this idea in action.
- You have the Baccarat 540 EdP already, but want it to last longer, so you buy the extrait and layer it on under your EdP.
- You have the L'Iris de Fath Extrait de Parfum already, and you love the bready iris scent, but you want it to project more. You also don’t mind it smelling a bit different (they have completely different notes). So you buy the L'Iris de Fath Eau de Parfum and spray it on top of your dab of the extrait. You rejoice in your iris cloud.

6. Just Changing It Up. If you’ve tried everything and you’re at your wit’s end - you can’t smell your perfume, - say you’ve sprayed over twenty times and gotten into a small space like a car and you still can’t smell it - then you may need to switch it up. It’s possible that you’ve gone long-term anosmic to the notes, or something else is going on. Here’s a list of things it could be.
- The Weather. Smells project less in cold dry air, and more in warmer humid air. You might need to wait until the weather changes to truly enjoy your fragrance.
- You’ve gone anosmic to this particular scent profile. You might need to switch fragrances for a while until your sense for this particular scent comes back. (This happens to me periodically with Feminite du Bois, and I have to take a rest.)
- You’ve gone anosmic because of overwhelming your nose: you may have been spraying too much perfume, period. You might need to take a break from perfume for a while. A week, a few weeks, a few months scent-free will probably set you right.
- You may have a cold or some other respiratory ailment. Quiet recovery and resting from scents will only do you good in this case.

As you’ve seen, there are volumes of ways to increase the strength of your sprayed perfume. Just remember, none of these methods will turn a perfume everlasting. We smell perfume because the base evaporates and the aromachemicals drift free into our noses. Therefore, the very nature of perfume is something that cannot last forever. Though we perfume lovers may try to prolong a beautiful scent, we have to remember that it is no less beautiful for being transient.