Take a Sniff Test

According to fragrance experts, there's good reason why young women favour the light nuances of colognes and toilet waters and why older women stay with the more penetrating, heavier perfumes.

It seems that the younger you are, the stronger a perfume will smell to you. The ability to judge the intensity of smells changes radically with age. Older women require a higher concentration of fragrance to appreciate intensity. Young people quickly recognize lighter intensities.

Also, did you know noise dulls the sense of smell? Perfume could be wasted in a foundry, at that rate. Fortunately, testing rooms in perfume laboratories are always soundproof.

Perfume to Cologne, What is the Difference?

Perfume is the strongest, most concentrated, long lasting form of fragrance. A single perfume can contain anywhere from 50 to 300 ingredients gathered from around the world.

Toilet water is second in strength to perfume. It contains the same essence, but it is expanded with alcohol to make a lighter, more subtle fragrance.

Cologne is the lightest form of fragrance to be used lavishly without fear of overdoing. Most modern colognes are diluted versions of perfumes, less high compounded with perfume oils than toilet water. The first cologne, created in Cologne, Germany, in the seventeenth century, was a citrus type.

Sachet is concentrated fragrance, longlasting and convenient to use. Available in powder, liquid, cream and tablet forms, it is applied directly to skin like perfume. Perspirations will not wash it away. Since sachets are usually spill proof, they are ideal to tuck in purses and pockets.

Sense about your Skin Scents

Fragrance and skin are perfect companions. They both belong together. In fact, they need one another. Separated, each can get along, but united, they're nothing short of eloquent. Perfume applied directly to the skin, particularly after a bath or shower, can heighten your mood, make you feel sexier, more feminine, more confident.

What part of the body reacts best to perfume? It's still the pulse spots, those famous areas where perfumes meets up with natural body warmth behind the ears, the inside of the wrists, in the crook of the arms at the temples, at the base of the throat, behind the knees. Wherever your pulse throbs, there the heat of your body will help accentuate the fragrance you wear.

Certain skins and certain types of fragrance get along famously. An oily skin behaves superbly with fragrance. Invariably, it heightens the scent, shelters it, helps it last far longer than you might expect.

A dry skin doesn't hold on to fragrance as well; it needs a perfume with cling power, such as a concentrated bath oil. The oil stays on the skin and helps the fragrance last. If you have dry skin and prefer fragrance forms other than bath oil, make up your mind to use more and re apply more often.

Give perfume a few minutes to "bloom" on your skin once you've applied it. After a while, the alcohol evaporates and the scent blends with your own skin oils. Which is a very good reason you should never use one perfume on top of another. You'll get some strange results.

Give some thought to the season when you're applying a scent. Use more in winter because fragrance doesn't have the staying power it has on a hot summer's day. Heat always brings out a scent. Thus, if you're going to be in a warm room crowded with people, be sparing, especially if you've chosen a heady, heavy scent. If you'll be outdoors, you can use lots more. The breeze is bound to carry off some of it.

Bath time is a good time for skin scenting. Silky bath oils, after bath lotions and sprays all cling to warm damp skin and perform their best. If you take showers rather than baths, try the perfume oil concentrates made to spray on the body before and after showering.

Perfumes today are thinking more than ever of long lasting qualities. The new scents usually have complex undernotes to give a longer lasting body to the top note, however light it may be. This means you can revise your thinking about certain fragrances. Florals, once thought of as light and airy, not as lasting as fruit or Oriental scents, are still light and airy but they last and last.

Here's a skin scent timetable: The experts say perfume applied to skin lasts five to six hours before you need to re apply; toilet water, three to four hours; cologne, two to three hours; splash cologne, two hours; cream perfume, three to four hours; perfumed bath oil, five to six hours.

Seven Categories of Fragrance

Choosing a perfume is a complicated process that is more than merely sniffing the contents of a pretty crystal bottle. You have to consider chemistry—your own and the perfume tester's. All perfumes can be classified into certain basic categories, according to their chemical compositions. Some types will react beautifully with your skin oils, others may not. It's this unique relationship that makes you decide on one scent and not another.

It will save you a lot of time at the perfume counter, and helping someone asks you about perfume—if you know the fragrance types and which one is best for the request.

Traditionally, perfumes categorized into seven main divisions. These divisions still hold true but, the late of, leather and tobacco scents have been making a comeback. They were popular as long ago as the 1700s, then lost their standing. You should also know that the world of perfume is so complex today that categories often overlap and blend one into the other. You can have a mossy spicy fragrance, for example, or a floral mossy. But. the basic types are still these:

Single Floral:
Captures the scent of a single flower, such as rose, gardenia, jasmine, or lily of the valley, as the dominant fragrance note. Many women who feel strongly about a particular flower choose this fragrance type. It's easy to wear and to identify.

Floral Bouquet: An intricately blended bouquet of individual flower scents with no one flower predominating. This group includes some of the leading "name" perfumes.

Woodsy Mossy: Sometimes referred to as a "forest blend," a perfume of this type is a mixture of sandalwood, rosewood, cedarwood and balsam, combined with oak moss, fern and herbs, and resulting in a fragrance reminiscent of the forest. If you like fresh, outdoorsy aromas, you'll like this type.

Fruity: Conjure up the smell of orange, lemon, lime or a mellow hint of apricot or peach, and you're on to this fragrance type. Fruity scents are usually blended with a citrus base. Their impact is clean and refreshing.

Spicy: These fragrances have pungent spice ingredients like cinnamon, clove, ginger and vanilla, or spicy flower aromas like carnation. The long lasting results can be haunting.

Oriental: Oriental blends are a mixture of musk, civet, ambergris and other exotic ingredients that provide warm, sophisticated over tones. They can smell sultry and exotic or "heady," according to your body chemistry.

Modern Blend: Perfumes in this category combine aldehydes or synthetic compounds with natural ingredients. The result may be floral woodsy, spicy or fruity, but an indefinable top note always predominates with brilliance. Some of the most costly of currently popular perfumes are classified among the modern blends.

Do you chose different scents for different moods?

Do you thought of fragrance as something just for special occasions? Or do you don’t care about perfume – and just received when somebody gave it as a gift? And then treasured of it for months, using it sparingly until it finally evaporated? Or do you stick to just one scent and call it your "signature fragrance"?

Or do you the type of one whose crowded your dressing table tops with assorted bottles of perfume, colognes, plus potpourris, sachets and solid perfumes? And none of them have a chance to evaporate. And they are all being used, lavishly and constantly.
Today's women are sticking on perfume, spraying on cologne, bolstering up their fragrance aura with perfumed soap, bath oil and body lotion, among other scented beauty aids, every day, all day.

They are no longer confines to one or two scents. They like many different frangrances and no one can convince them to stay with a pet signature scent. They may wear a bright floral in the morning, a sensuous Oriental blend at night. For tennis, they choose one of the crisp sport fragrances. And when off to a class reunion, they may opted for a pungent, spicy aroma. When in blue, they use a perfume that will lifting spirits. And in a romantic mood, they know the scents that impart that message.

Another radical difference in the profile of today's fragrance user: they don't wait for Christmas or birthdays for gifts of perfume. they went out and buy the fragrances they want for themself. they'd familiar with the grand old classics, keeps up with the constant introduction of new designer fragrances, checks all the trends from unisex to the make it yourself naturals. They understand the differences among basic fragrance categories and often can identify them with professional savvy. They may still need and appreciate guidance about choosing and using the fragrance types best for them, but give their credit. They had taken the elite mystique out of fragrance, made it a joyous, necessary part of life and demonstrated how much it can contribute to individual charm and beauty.