What's the fragrance that got you into this hobby?

Mine was Kerosene -  Unknown Pleasures, which I will always thank for getting me into this mess! I very rarely reach for it these days, but I remember it was during a hard time for me, I was sort of mindlessly watching Moulin Rouge, I decided to try the 2ml a friend had left at my place even though I had zero interest in perfume at the time. She had me try about 4-5 earlier in the week and I hated all of them. Then I tried Unknown Pleasures and it was like a new part of my brain turned on.  It was even hard for me to sleep because it smelled so good. 

Shortly after that I tried  Diptyque - L'Eau Papier which just completely rewrote my understanding of what perfume was, and then after that I got into suedes with Dries van Noten - Fleur du Mal and by that point I was completely hooked.

ysl la nuit de l'homme le parfum is the first fragrance I put effort into selecting. While deployed to Iraq I asked ten women to rate like ten paper strips that came from magazines and that was their favorite so I bought it although I didn't start collecting until a decade later.

La Nuit de L'Homme Le Parfum

My brother was just getting into fragrances at the time, and we were walking through duty-free at the airport. He wanted to smell some niche fragrances, and I randomly picked up a bottle — it happened to be Hacivat by Nishane. He told me it was a pineapple-fresh scent, and I instantly thought, holy shit, there’s so much more to fragrances than the mass-appealing stuff you find at beauty stores. That moment got me into my decant addiction.

Hot Water Eau de Toilette

Something about this triggered a response in me that made me so much more curious about what the world of fragrance had to offer (which is kind of ironic, since this fragrance is largely regarded as "generic" lol) but I think it was the underlying spicy yet fresh elements that really hit a nerve with me that made me hungry for more.

Choco Musk Eau de Parfum. It was not my first or even second or fifth scent, but it's the one that piqued my interest in perfumes and gourmand fragrances. Beforehand I hadn't really cared much about fragrances and barely wore them outside of special occasions, but choco musk made me want to wear perfume everyday and to find other scents that would make me smell delicious or nice.

For me it was Ôud Bouquet. I smelt it at Barcelona airport and was immediately intoxicated. It smelled so different from any of the (designer) fragrances I had tried before and so well-blended. It made me realise that there's much more interesting perfume out there than what I knew about till then.

What I like about perfume is that for me it's a way to express myself and feel pretty with relatively little effort. Doing that with clothes makes me much more frustrated because you don't just need to find an item that you like, but then it also needs to fit well (which it hardly ever does!). Finding perfumes that I like and that also wear well on skin is much easier it seems

Chypre rouge

Didn't like it, per se, but i didn't like it in a way that was interesting and pissed me off and intrigued me. I got a sample and spent a week smelling it and googling and finding Basenotes and reading about the world of niche perfumes.

Bleu de Chanel Eau de Parfum

Good Fortune Elixir Intense

Got a sample of it with an Ulta order. I had stuff from like, Bath & Body Works beforehand- but prior to this I was mostly just a Soliflore enjoyer. I still am but also this was the one that got me into hunting online and learning more about scents and not just. "Oh I like rose I'll get a Rose perfume!"

Yuzu I subscribed to Scentbird just to find what I liked before purchasing (crazy to me now, given the million ways there are to sample), and despite not liking this initially, the more I used it the more I could unravel the intricacies and appreciate the different facets it had.

It was my first blind buy - I clicked with it so much - Magnetism. This started an avalanche. Before that I was a one perfume kind of person and that perfume had been #Sì by Giorgio Armani.

I had been wearing some since middle school. I wore a lot of B&BW and did so going into highschool, Cucumber Melon Fragrance Mist, especially, but at the time I wasn't really into exploring a lot of fragrances beyond that.

The first time I went in a department store's fragrance section, my boyfriend at the time wanted to buy me a perfume as a gift and the sales associate had me test Angel Eau de Parfum and while I had barely tested it, the SA was very assertive about the gift set being what I should get. I was so ignorant about fragrances and didn't understand what I liked, so I was easily swayed into choosing it. 😅 I didn't hate and don't now, but it was so "out there" for me at the time and it didn't get me into fragrances. I still have that same bottle (it's the one with the mirrored finish for anyone who might remember), but I don't wear it and just keep it for the memories. It was my first designer fragrance.

The fragrance that got me exploring more was "Poppy | Coach" of all things. It was from a tester strip in the mall and I couldn't stop thinking about how much I liked it. I eventually got a full bottle and went online to look up the notes and that opened up a big world to me after discovering forums and so much information.

Hmm so I use to buy fragrances when I was younger and then bought more for the first time a few years back which started my collecting and they were this 2 that’s I used to wear when I was younger and bought again in recent years.

Le Mâle Eau de Toilette

&

CK One Eau de Toilette

there are some I bought again from my youth like Blue Jeans and Boss Man Eau de Toilette but it was the first 2 mentioned that got me thinking hmm what else is out there in the 2020s that I may like.

While I always liked fragrances, I was stopped in my tracks by Bal d'Afrique Eau de Parfum in a boutique here in Chicago. I never knew a fragrance could turn my world upside down like that and I have been obsessed ever since.

As a child I was always obsessed with fragrance. My mom told the story at my wedding of finding me at 7 years old, locked in the bathroom, absolutely COVERED from head to toe in different lotions and oils. The story goes that even my hair was drenched and oily and my clothes were ruined, but there I was sitting on the bathroom floor smilingly as wide as can be. She says that was when I proudly announced, "Mommy! Come smell me! I smell beautiful!"

So I've never been a stranger to fragrance. But my very first perfume that whet my appetite for fragrance research and collecting was the now discontinued, Light Blue Italian Zest. I was around 15 and at a Macy's with my best friend and her mom. Her mom was talking to the lady behind the counter and we were bored so we went and smelled every single perfume and cologne on the shelves. Light Blue Italian Zest was the only one that truly caught my attention. It was fresh, clean, and bright, nothing like the perfumes my peers were wearing at the time and it excited me. However, it was around $80 which was certainly not going to happen at the time. My friend's mom, however, did buy her a bottle of it that day and I vowed that I would buy my own when I could afford it. Well, by the time that I could, it was 2020 and I was 21 years old and the fragrance had been discontinued. Still determined, I tracked down an old bottle on Ebay and bought it for myself. My tastes have changed quite a bit since then, but I keep that old bottle despite the fact that it has less than a centimeter of liquid left and I never wear it. It's a testament to keeping a promise to my teenage self, and occasionally splurging on those things that she wanted but could never afford.

Soap aqnd not stinking

Not a perfume, but my first ever long-term affair with scented goods was when I first bleached my hair orange and had to get some hair products at Lush. It was in early 2021, and Super Milk Perfume (hair primer) had just released, and my 19-year old self couldn’t resist the gourmand goodness! A wavy-curly orange hair paired with the sweetest, most divine scent I’d ever know? I’ll be the most popular and kickass punk ultrafemme goddess in my college! Spoiler alert…it didn’t go as planned, but you’d still be a punk, at the very least. And isn’t that what matters the most, right?

It became a staple of my routine for almost 4 years, wore it everyday everywhere (and choked everyone in the room with the scent trail with just how potent it was…) before my taste shifted greatly from anything edible and sweet to something crisp, dry, non-sweet and subtle. I still associate the scent with my awkward late teenage self, experimenting with styles. I wouldn’t wear it now, but many people seem to still associate it with me. It was my first signature scent.

Drakkar Noir Eau de Toilette

on my dad since I was a kid, I'd sneak some sprays on myself before leaving for school.

I think *FOR ME* the whole journey to go study, how to get and finally using the scent started with Far Away Eau de Parfum and Jasmin Noir Eau de Parfum. The only problem sometimes it's the expensive and changing price and the hardness to buy a bottle. But, "I still standing" on the whole journey of perfumes! Lol.

The first fragrance I remember smelling as a young kid that made an impact on me and the love I have for fragrances and brings me such nostalgia is Calvin Klein Eternity. It was my cousins favorite fragrance and the only fragrance I ever smelt when around my family due to him being a fragrance lover and no one else in my family being really true lovers of fragrances. My mom and dad would have a random bottle from time to time but never really a big part of their life. My mom was more in to home scents and always had our house smelling so good with plug in scents and oil burners etc so that is another major influence I had that made me become someone who loved fragrances, scents, and anything that smelt good. 

i got into the hobby very recently. i was partially anosmic my entire life due to a deviated septum, and after contracting covid, i became entirely anosmic. after a nose surgery and some time (5 years 😑) i've found that i can SMELL things and it's AMAZING. i started shopping at lush and i decided to buy Lord of Misrule Perfume and it just started something within me. since then i've really decided to expand my horizons, i want to get into more niche brands. ive actually been doing pet portrait commissions just to afford additional fragrances, but i feel like i've unlocked an entirely new form of art that i was never privy to!!

Creed Aventus for sure. That was the first time I realized perfumes could have layers and evolution, not just “smell good.”

YSL Y EDP. Clean, modern, but it opened the door to exploring different styles and note profiles.

Club de Nuit Intense Man. Batch differences and drydown discussions pulled me deep into the hobby.

At first I was more interested in the idea of fragrances than in fragrances themselves, and I would try creating my own when I was as little as 8 years of age.

If I have to think of the first bottle that really wow'd me I'd say Acqua di Sale, but the first sort of introduction to perfumery was with (a cheap copy of) Terre d'Hermès Eau de Toilette.

I love them both to this day, only it's difficult to pick just one 😊.

Acqua di Giò pour Homme Eau de Toilette off course. I cannot count how many bottles I got as present from auntys. At that time it was so common that every time someone was walking into a parfume shop asking "a good male fragrance for man, I need to make a christmas\birthday present" a wild Acqua di Giò pour Homme Eau de Toilette appears! So at some point I decided that i needed something different.

Original Vetiver

I only really knew Polo Eau de Toilette and when I smelled Original Vetiver I thought “I didn’t know someone could smell like this.”

I bought It straight from Creed as I didn’t know about discounters yet. And that’s when things took off.