How to get into perfume

My tips and advice for having fun with fragrance

People often ask me where to start if they want to get into perfume. I get it, the fragrance world can be intimidating and at times even intentionally alienating. The high prices can be a big barrier for people but you don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of fragrance or a big bank account to enjoy perfume. Although be warned it is not a cheap hobby! I thought I would gather my tips and advice for getting into fragrance—whether that means you want to become an all-out fraghead with a huge collection or just figure out a few scents you’re drawn to so you can buy a bottle or two you like wearing every day. I could have added so much more to this list but like my index of fragrance substacks, this is a resource I will continue to update and add to. So let me know if you have more questions. I hope this helps you find your perfect juice!

Say no to blind buying

My biggest piece of advice is don’t blind buy! That means buying something before you smell it. It can be tempting if you read a rave review of a perfume or hear someone talk about a scent, but fragrance smells different on everyone, and what one person loves and picks up on in a scent you may not! Perfume is so personal, while something may smell like summer in a bottle to me, to you it could smell like rotting coconuts. The best advice I ever got was to buy samples or smell in-store before you make a big splurge on a full bottle.

Ministry of Scent in SF and a shot from Scent Bar in LA

Visit a perfume shop

If you’re lucky enough to live in a city with perfume shops this is the best way to get into perfume. I’ve shared the story about my first time in Tiger Lily (now Ministry of Scent) that opened me up to the world of perfume, in large part due to how much time the owner, Antonia, spent with me that day. People who work at perfume shops are almost always friendly and eager to help you find something you’ll like. So go in curious and don’t feel dumb asking questions, they do not expect you to be an expert. It’s literally their job to guide you. If you smell one thing and tell them what you like or dislike that will help them guide you towards the right fragrance. In SF we have Ministry of Scent and ZGO which carry many niche brands. Both have incredible staff eager to help you find your perfect scent. We also have a Le Labo, Byredo, and Diptyque — all on Fillmore Street so you could hit up all three in one afternoon (I often do). If you’re in LA check out Scent Bar and Scent Room. And recently in NY I stopped by Stéle in Williamsburg Brooklyn and was totally smitten with the owners, the space, design, and lines they carried.

Fragrance is often expensive but these good stores all carry a nice range of price points. They’ll also let you smell and try on whatever you want which will help you get a sense of what family of scents you are most drawn to or which brands seem to be making fragrances you like. Don’t forget good old department stores too, which have a lot of the more main stream designer lines and some classics! You can also buy samples at stores as well. Sometimes they have a limit to how many samples you can buy and sometimes you may get a free sample of your choice with purchase - be sure to ask.

a favorite sample and an Imaginary Authors discovery set

Buy Discovery Kits

Almost every perfume brand sells some kind of discovery set. These consist of usually 2 ml bottles and usually come with 5 to 10 different scents. They are created to enable you to try all or many of the scents in a collection. These can range from $35 to over $100 but are usually around $50. I buy discovery sets all the time, it’s my favorite way to explore a brand and get a sense of what its collection is like. I am such a fan of doing this, it’s helped me figure out which scents I want full bottles of and which brands I gravitate toward. And it lets me try out brands I keep hearing about or seeing ads for without committing to an expensive full bottle. It also let’s me wear these on my skin — scent smells different on paper than it will on your skin so you should always smell it both ways, of course on your skin is most important. Many brands also give you a credit towards a full bottle with your purchase, so if you spend $45 on a discovery kit you’ll get $45 off a full bottle you purchase. A few discovery sets I recommend include Dedcool which is a good bundle of skin scents that are clean and light, Diptyque mostly because I find them to be such a solid classic brand with scents a lot of people like (and in store you can curate your own scents for the discovery sets), and Imaginary Authors because they have so many different discovery sets to chose from and they have really unique and sometimes outlandish scents that will challenge you and push you to explore a little. And their packaging is very fun.

more from Scent Bar in LA

Order samples online

Because I am an obsessive person I keep a running list of every perfume I hear about that intrigues me. I’ll refer to that list when I visit perfume shops and I’ll often buy samples of the scents I jot down from either Lucky Scent or Twisted Lily, two great resources for fragrance. You can also buy full bottles from both sites.

Listen to Perfume Podcasts

Perfume Room Pod, Smell Ya Later, and Nose Candy are three great podcasts all about fragrance. I recommend you listen to all of them and stick with the one you have the most fun listening to.

These are all in my listening rotation but Emma’s Perfume Room has been an amazing education in fragrance for me. You can check out the interview I did with her here.

Get into PerfumeTok and the IG perfume community

I started an instagram account for the DDD not only to share more casual quick things about fragrance and my collection but also to connect with perfume brands and perfume lovers aka fragheads. I’d say 98% of who I follow on DDD’s IG are perfume accounts, it’s a way for me to learn about perfume houses, new scents, old classics, perfume terminology, and perfume news. And has been a great way for me to connect with the fragrance community and make new friends. Same goes for TikTok, which I know everyone is not a fan of but I am! I started by searching ‘perfumetok’ and then just watched a ton, started following some perfume people, and now my FYP serves up a solid amount of perfume content and I love it. Again, it’s a great way for me to stay up to date about the perfume world and discover new things I might want to try. Some of my favorite people to follow include:

boiluna

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@professorperfumeovercome your fear of the perfume counter with these 4 tips 🤠 #perfumetok #perfumetiktok #perfumelover #perfume #fragrancetok #fragrancetiktok #fragrance #perfumecollection #perfume101 #fyp

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Make Lists

I have a VERY long list of rose perfumes in my notes app (it will be a post here soon). I was on a rose kick and would jot down every rose scent I saw on tiktok or read about or heard mentioned on a podcast. So now, anytime I am listening to a podcast or am on IG or Tiktok and hear about a new to me rose scent I add it to the list. I also have a list of perfume brands I want to try. And perfumes. Anytime I go into a perfume shop I ask to smell some of the things on those lists.

Smell it on paper and on your skin

Be sure to put a perfume on your skin and see how you like it before you make a purchase. Perfume will smell different from the bottle, to the paper, to your skin and a good perfume will have many phases to it. The last phase are the base notes coming through, called the dry down, and they can end up in very different place from where a fragrance starts on your skin.

Read!

I’m compiling a long list of books on fragrance to read— many suggested to me by my new friend Liz, a fellow fraghead who I recently met in LA. Here’s just a fraction of some of the books from my list. Some I have read, some are stacking up on my nightstand waiting to be read:

• A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

• Perfumes The Guide by Luca Turin

• The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin

• Atlas of Perfumed Botany by Jean-Claude Ellena

• The Museum of Scent by Mandy Aftel

• Smellosophy by A. S. Barwich

• Philosophy of Olfactory Perception by Andreas Keller 

• Revelations in Air by Jude Stewart

• In Sensorium - Tanaïs

Talk to your perfume nerd friends

Perfume is really having a moment. My guess is there’s at least one person in your friend group who has gone down the rabbit hole, or maybe a friend of a friend. Go to that friend’s house and sniff their collection. I love taking my friends through my collection when they come over. As a perfume nerd there’s nothing more fun than talking about all my different fragrances with someone who is curious and will listen and finding what my friends like best in my collection. Here’s a fun interview I did with a good friend about her perfume collection.

Read perfume Substacks

I compiled a list of all the perfume Substacks I know of and am always adding to it, these are all a great place to start too with different takes on fragrance. You can check out that resource right here.

Don’t judge your taste or anyone else’s

There can sometimes be a bit of snobbery in the fragrance world around what’s deemed good and cool and what’s not. But the deeper I have gotten into this world the more I have come to appreciate all scents for what they are. Sure not everything may be my thing but I don’t judge people for their taste. It’s perfectly OK to like the trendy scent of the season that everyone else is wearing. Things often become popular for a reason and you don’t have to like weird stuff in fragrance to prove your credibility. Santal 33 by Le Labo is often hated on big time but it’s a solid scent and while Baccarat Rouge 540 is not my cup of tea I don’t mind if other people wear it religiously. Scent is really personal. We’re drawn to different smells for a million deeply personal reasons, who am I to judge yours? Also, don’t judge yourself! Like what you like and go with it and own it like you would anything else you put on you body.

Have fun

I am so deep in this world because I am fascinated with the art and science behind the creation of fragrances and what happens when smells hit the brain and light up someone’s memory and senses. Have fun with that! It’s an art form and meant to bring pleasure. Smell weird stuff, explore, embrace florals, be basic, play around with things and pay attention to how a scent makes you feel. That’s all that matters.