Motivation: Mood, Season, Weather or...?

Someone posed a question I find interesting. What is your motivation for choosing a fragrance? Do you use a rotation method? Choose according to the weather/season? Or pick according to your mood?

I tend to pick depending on weather and mood. Our annual temperatures range from 100°F/37°C in the summer to 0°F/-17°C, with humidity wildly varying in spring & fall.

So, I choose whatever will work in the type of weather we're having *and* which will best suit my mood. I have noticed a lot of fragrances most people wear in winter or fall need a bit of heat and humidity to work for me. Examples: Crystal Noir Eau de Parfum and Belle d'Opium Eau de Parfum. Same in obverse. It needs to be cold for me to wear Kenzo Jungle.

definitely I am not thinking of the weather that would bring the best result to the perfume. I think my mind works with the wrong images when i get to that. For example, if it is scorching out there I think of forests with fir or pine trees that much high the sun cannot pierce through their dark foliage. This ima ge would get me to an autumn and winter perfume, woodsy, resinous aromatic or spicy woodsy.

A better image to think when it is very hot is probably the forest of a jungle, this one also carries crops, berries,exotic flowers like ylang ylang etc.

I love strong perfumery anyway ,therefore I choose by taste and not by reason.

I think that it has to do with the character of fragrances I loved when I was younger. Eg I never liked Cool water Davidoff and absolutely loved The Tsar Van Cleef & Arpels

I'm jealous!  Tropical flowers become cloying on me in hot weather.  I like the way you envisage fragrances though.  It's cool.

I’m a fragrance anarchist. I’m different than 99% of people here and I really don’t care. I just wear what feels authentic. I only have 6 fragrances and it’s gonna stay that way or maybe like 20-50 max , because most fragrances are SHITTT these days and so not unique, like me. I have a profound tendency to only wear cold-weather fragrances at all times.

Lately I’ve been addicted to 2# Nota di Viaggio (Shukran…) even though the performance is admittedly terrible, it’s perfectly blended to my skin on me, and my mom thought she was smelling a tree flower when she was out in a forest with me and I was wearing it. High compliment.

As for deciding day to day, I’m pretty impulsive and will wear the same fragrance for months in a row till it makes me vomit from overexposure.

Other recent favs have been Fucking Fabulous Eau de Parfum, "Musc Ravageur | Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle", Stercus

thanks for reading!!!

Gotta love an anarchist!

Me too

Let's see... I don't wear Shalimar Millésime Tonka in the summer, it's suffocating and I only associate it with cold weather when it smells cosy; I used to wear Rouge Hermès Eau de Toilette in winter only as I thought it's too strong for the summer... but to my surprise, on my skin it develops much better in heat! I love 31 Rue Cambon Eau de Parfum in the summer, and find it a bit flat in the cold when I replace it with Coromandel Eau de Parfum . I love V Eau de Parfum ! but again, not in summer, it does not match the high temperature. I guess I wear perfumes depending on the season, with some exceptions

I'm always interested in what people wear and why they chose it, and I'm low key obsessed with weather and fragrance. As such, I love to hear about how fragrances designed for one season or one kind of weather perform on folks outside of that seseason. We seem to choose in a similar manner. 🙂

I love this question! It sounds like you and I both pick our scents very similarly.

My fragrances are primarily organized by season and/or category:
- spring/summer
- autumn
- winter/holidays
- year-round staples (some soapy/fresh "palette cleansers")
- a few one-off categories ("romantic", "Halloween", etc.)
- some bedtime-specific scents that I find cozy/relaxing for a nightly unwind

So I usually pick a scent based on my mood, but still within a specific seasonal category and/or time of day (such as the bedtime scents).

One exception: I do not always pick based on temps, since where I live the seasons are a bit skewed. Example: our autumns are often very warm, but I still wear fall-specific scents during the fall seasonal timeframe.

If I waited until cold weather, I'd be wearing fall scents in the winter - and I prefer keeping my scents specific to the season I'm in, regardless of temp.

For me, the occasion is the most important criterium. I spend most of my day in business meetings or semi-formal settings, so typically I go for a low-key scent. On other occasions like dinner out or social get-togethers, I take out the more dramatic fragrances. On Parfumo I created a few custom shelves that help me select a perfume per occasion.

Umm, I tend to choose my fragrance according to the occasion. Weather here in Beirut is somehow acceptable all year long (thank you global warming!) but very hot & humid in the summer. I personally have a few signature scents that I wear regardless. But it's always great to read a multitude of opinions here☺️

@Gourmandgrl We do have a similar style, except I emphasize temperature and humidity over season. Our autumn can be very warm, making some fall fragrances too cloying for my taste. Safari Eau de Parfum is my favorite for late summer and hot fall days. Spring can also be decidedly unpredictable, and I tend to be all over the place with my picks.

Totally agree @KathrynA66 - our autumn is hot/warm too, but I still bust out the fall fragrances! And just make sure I'm wearing short sleeves, so I don't feel smothered lol.

I know what you mean about spring being unpredictable - I find that my picks are often mixed between winter/spring/summer scents in this season, since there's such a variety of weather in the transition!

@Kurai I tended to pick more by occasion when I was working in an office environment.  I still like a low-key "office scent" because they are good for other occasions.  Once I started working from home, the delineation between work, informal fun, more formal occasions and fragrances I wear at home broke down quite a bit.  I still organize according to those categories though.  

As I said to Kurai, I used to pay more attention to occasion than I do now, but how and why people choose what they choose.  The summers here in Southern Illinois, near St Louis, are very hot and humid too.

@Gourmandgrl Exactly!  We can have summer, winter and spring weather in the same day from March to May.  The crazy weather is a regional joke.  As @Salahharake pointed out, global warming makes the unpredictability more extreme.

Mood. I try to do seasonal rotation but never am able to stick to it. Mood overrules every time. 

Same here.  I'd like to be organized enough to use a seasonal rotation, but mood always wins out.

I have a large wardrobe so for me as a patient with neurological memory problems I find creating monthly or weekly trays extremely helpful. I create my trays based on my current cravings. Many times I have themes like "beachy fragrances" or "citrus fragrances". From my tray I choose my SOTD based on my current mood and weather too as  weather affects my mood.

That sounds like a sensible method!

I tend to stick to weather first and mood second. If the mood is overpowering it overrides the weather in some cases. It can be matching my mood (I'm enjoying some quiet melancholy today) or altering it a little if I do not feel like it (I've got stuff to do! Bring my MANLY and FRESH smell now!).

I've recently started to bring forward fragrances that are associated with current season for convenience sake.

It's summer but not in full bloom. Today's rather windy, under 20 degrees C and drizzling - it would be more typical polish August with thunderstorms on top of it all. My choice was BlackSoul Imperial Eau de Toilette that would technically be an overkill in summer weather.

It's weather first and outfit second for me.

I own a number of fragrances which simply wouldn't work well in some seasons, like Acqua di Sale in the dead of winter or Majd al Sultan in mid July, so I can exclude some right away, and then I choose based on outfit, mood and occasion, all of which are generally correlated, which means if I'm going to a formal event and wearing a tuxedo I'll go for a cleaner and less "funky" scent than if I go to a lake-side bar dressed in linen.

I've met quite a few people saying they go by mood more than anything though, so it's interesting to see the differences in how everybody chooses what to wear every day!

I try not to apply too much structure to what I wear and when. I wear whatever is calling to me, but this is definitely influenced by the weather and my planned activities.  (Also by what is shiny and new in my collection or has been mentioned recently by someone in a forum or on socials.)

For me it's a combination of the weather, the occasion and my mood. I do sort of rotate my collection, but it's more that I have perfumes for all seasons, perfumes for warmer seasons and perfumes for colder seasons. During warmer seasons, I put the perfumes for the colder seasons away and vice versa. I do this so I can see all of the perfumes that I would consider wearing this time of year in one glance, without the perfumes that I wouldn't wear at the moment blocking my view. I find that this is also a nice ritual where I get to say bye to the old season and welcome the new season. Leading up to this I tend to wear the perfumes that belong to the old season more, just so we can spend some quality time together before we're "apart" for about six months (but not really apart, they're just hibernating in a different drawer in the same closet). 

While seasons do have an influence, the weather here doesn't fluctuate more than 30 degrees most of the year, so seasonal is less important. It's more just whatever strikes my fancy that morning when I peek into the cabinet.