Perfume Industry Secrecy, Secrets, and How to Buy the Best PerfumeThe perfume industry is a big business plagued by an old problem: people trying to steal the recipe. The perfume industry protects itself with secrecy, complex formulas, and the fact that real perfume lovers can't help but prefer the original to the copycat stuff.
What Every Mother's Day Perfume Shopper Must Know About Imitations, Fakes, and FraudsMother's Day is perfume shopping season, but unwary buyers may be surprised to find out that in the perfume world, there are genuine products, imitation (but legal) products, and counterfeits. Knowing how to shop for perfume, how to sniff out a fake, and if and when you should go with an imitation is important. This easy guide will help you figure out how to get the real thing.
Seven Strategies for Buying Perfume for Mother's DayMother's Day can be tough for people trying to find the right gift. Perfume is a traditional gift for Mother's Day for good reason: it's luxurious, it's appreciated, and most women enjoy it. However, a visit to the perfume counter can be a scary thing, particularly if you don't know much about perfume. Here are some tips from a perfume counter denizen to make your shopping a whole lot easier!
Tips for Picking Great Perfume Gifts for Special Women in Your LifeIf you're buying perfume as a gift, don't be intimidated. You don't even have to go to the perfume counter anymore! You can shop online and we can help you. This is my advice (and some of my best-loved brands and favorite websites) for making your perfume gift memorable and appreciated.
Eleven Rules for Perfume ShoppingEvery now and then circumstances and misfortune compel a person who knows nothing about perfume to walk down the perfume aisle in the department store with the heroic hope of actually purchasing a perfume for somebody else. It won't be easy, it won't be cheap, but it may be do-able. Here's how.
Are Celebrity Perfumes Good Deals or Just an Endorsement Deal?It's hard to pass a perfume counter without seeing the barrage of celebrity fragrances. Are these scents just flat-out marketing ploys to get celebrity-crazy kids to buy ordinary perfume, or are any of them worth checking out? That depends.
Secrets of Gender-Spanning Perfume: It's More Traditional Than You Think!Perfume today is usually prominently labeled men's and women's and marketed accordingly. But did you know that those dividing lines are artificial and recent, not historical and traditional? Centuries ago, men wore all kinds of perfume, even floral scents, and there was no notion that the genders should have different fragrance products. Today's new gender-spanning fragrances are returning to that
You Can't Beat the Classics When It Comes to PerfumesPerfume is a lot like fashion: styles can fluctuate wildly and fragrances may fall in and out of favor almost haphazardly. Yet some fragrances like the venerable Chanel No. 5 stay with us for decades. What makes a perfume a classic? No one knows the exact formula, but here are some musings on perfumes that have stood the test of time.
Buying Duty-Free Perfume on Cruises or Foreign TripsCruise ships offer great opportunities for old and new perfume fans to try and stock up on their favorite fragrances. While the base price of the perfume may not be discounted much onboard ship, the opportunity to try on and wear the scent before you buy it plus the duty-free option (no taxes) mean perfume lovers can nab some good deals onboard ship.
How to Avoid Imprinting Bad Memories on Good PerfumeFragrance and memory are tightly intertwined, but we do not entirely know why. In fact, we do not even understand the basic physiology of how we perceive smells at all! But the associations of fragrance and life events can give us pause. Should you give a person in the hospital a gift of her favorite fragrance? Or will it cause her to hate the scent once she recovers?
Six Cool Ways to Get a Good Buy on FragrancePerfume is pricy, no doubt about it. Many perfume lovers are not loyalists but would rather play the field and own several scents. But how can you afford to buy many different colognes? We unveil six strategies to help you stretch your fragrance dollar and tell you one thing that really won't work out well at all (but you may be tempted to try it).
Why So Many Perfumes Smell Sweeter TodaySugar and unusual tropical fruits are increasingly finding their way into the perfume bottle. Is there a link between our love of processed food, skyrocketing obesity rates, and sugar-sweet perfumes? We have no idea, but we do know that some great new perfumes are using some entirely new ingredients from the kitchen.
How to Make Sense of a Perfume ReviewPerfume reviews appear all over the place, in magazines, online, and on websites selling fragrance. While most perfume shoppers like to know more about fragrances, a perfume review should ideally be more of a description than a critique since our response to fragrance tends to be extremely personal and subjective. A good perfume review should be more like a snapshot of what the scent is like than
Summer Time Fragrance ChoicesPerfume lovers are notorious about collecting many different fragrance products. Why do we need so many? One reason is our mood but another is the weather. Summer is a great time to add to the perfume collection. Summer time fragrances should be lighter, playful, and tend toward citrus or tropical.
You Won't Believe What's In Your Perfume Bottle!Perfumes rarely list ingredients on their labels but sometimes will describe scents with all sorts of mysterious ingredients from ancient substances (like frankincense and myrrh) to more normal-sounding ingredients (that we still don't understand) like amber or musk. Perfumes frequently contain a lot of synthetic ingredients, sometimes analogs to real substances, sometimes completely artificial (l
Secrets about Perfume AllergiesAbout 1% of the population is allergic to perfume and many more find it physically irritating. Actually, there are only about eight substances that provoke most of the symptoms, but most perfumes do not list their ingredients. The problem is compounded by the fact that fragrance isn't just found in perfume--it's in soap, air fresheners, foods, and even dental cement.
