Something Seems … Different

Leslie says:

CdG Kyoto was my Transformer. Mostly about the garden when dabbed, but the smoke just POURED in when sprayed from a decant. So, I dab, and in very sparing fashion. That 5ml decant will last a seriously long time this way.

I bought a sample of Nuit de Tubereuse last week, and on my skin, I smell almost exclusively pink pepper and mango. I can smell the flowers in the little vial, but they are getting lost on application. (I think I will try a little bit on paper, just to see what happens.) I’ve no idea what would happen if I sprayed the stuff, but it would be interesting to see the tuberose come out to play…

sweetlife says:

Nodding along to everyone else’s posts, especially about dab vs. spray, and differences in weather–I find humidity and ambient scent can have some pretty extreme effects. Just want to piggy back on Carmencanada’s post to say one more thing about “perception.”

Remember that fateful day when you read a devastating review of your favorite perfume, and the clever reviewer described it as having a hairspray note? And then, defiantly, you went and put it on, and there it was–hairspray. And it never went away, goddammit. (Robin posted a little news piece on NST once from a scientist who had a name for this phenomenon, the effect that a description can have on our scent perception–will have to go find it…) Probably it was there all along, but you called it something like “that screechy moment,” to yourself, and were fine. But once you smelled it clearly…

I think sometimes this happens without any $#@! help from other people’s descriptions. We wear it for awhile at full strength, and catch something clearly that flew by before, and then we get hung up on it. Sometimes, it even happens with things that aren’t supposed to be there, like Musette’s cumin. Our minds make the leap for us, and conjure up a phantom, and then it can’t be unconjured…

Geordan1244 says:

Seldom poster, here.

I loved the sample of Dyptique Olene that I got through luckyscent, but since buying the bottle, I’ve become very disillusioned with it. It could be that I’ve come to love Carnal Flower so much that all other florals pale in comparison, or it could be that the quality ingredients of CF are just way beyond that of Olene. Anytime I wear Olene now, I smell chemical bug spray (very dissapointing because I loved it). Because of this experience, I start at sample size, try one or two 5 ml decants and then buy a full bottle if my love for the fragrance lasts through the decants. I also try to use the decants through different weather and seasons to see if my appreciation will continue throughout.

waftbycarol says:

This has happened to me , and two of the examples were from l’Artisan scents !
I recieved a sample of le Haie Fleurie du Hameau in a Sniffa gift bag and abolutely loved it ! Very dark jus , rich and realistically floral . When finally I purchased an FB , 100 ml the following winter ….ugh ….plasticky , watered down , the jus was not nearly the same color . Very disappointing . I figured they had reformulated .
Then , I sniffed a “pre-bottle” ( as someone else called them ) of Havana Vanille . Got absolutely NO VANILLA at all – hated it . Smelled like under=roasted coffee . Then I accepted a decant in a swap , and it was vanilla-y and tobacco-y and great…
This has probably happened to me other times too , but those stand out the most . Fascinatingly , both L’Artisan’s , which I never thought about before .

karin says:

I have a dabbing tip for those of you who’d rather dab than spray from a spray bottle – spray the scent onto a synthetic cosmetic puff (not cotton), then dab where you want. It’s a fantastic way to distribute scent to different parts of the body without having to spray on each (which may prove to be too much with a strong scent).

This tip may be moot, however, cause for the life of me, I can no longer find synthetic cosmetic puffs!!!! Where did they go??? Cotton doesn’t work – it absorbs the scent. But the synthetic ones were perfect cause they would trap the liquid without absorbing it. Used to be able to find them at every drugstore, but now they seem to have vanished – and I can’t even find them online. Frustrating!!! If anyone has a source for purchasing these, do tell! And if you have some puffs hiding in a cupboard somewhere, do try this method, and let me know if you’re happy with it. AND, if anyone has another method that works well, let us know!

Masha says:

The NdT conundrum is really interesting, March. I believe my bottle was a “pre-bottle”, got it a month before the actual launch, and Carmencanada might know if the early bottles were formulated slightly differently than the later ones?? Because I could not understand how people weren’t getting that massive top note blast that I was, but you noticed it, too, so maybe I don’t have a brain tumor after all? Small houses might well have batches that are tweaked a little differently, or they might be using different batches of a certain ingredient, or they might get early feedback and change the formula a bit? Does that happen? Anyway, I’m going to try my NdT with my majmua, too!

Melissa says:

I usually get decants before I commit to a full bottle. Or I give myself a good dousing from a tester bottle. Because I really believe that dabbing from samples doesn’t cut it. Dispersing a scent from an atomizer is a richer and more fulfilling way to try a fragrance, in my opinion.

Even so, I’ve certainly had the experience of suddenly detecting an odd note after I’ve bought a bottle of something that I thought I loved. Occasionally, I’ve attributed this to variations in the scents. I used to own two bottles of Douce Amere that smelled distinctly different, though both were recognizable as that fragrance.

But more often, I think that I’ve had expectations of a fragrance in my mind during the initial wearing(s). And as I grew to know it better, it smelled subtly different. Maybe I hyped it in my mind based on pre-release blog info or early reviews and I thought that I detected what I read in the first wearing or two? Then reality set in. Sometimes the difference is okay, but sometimes I regret the purchase.

Maha says:

This has happened to me! I purchased my full bottle of Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan after falling in love with a decent-sized spray sample. This was in the early stages of my ongoing perfume education, and I bought the sample thinking I wouldn’t like it; it was an afterthought that I threw in with a bunch of flowery things, thinking I should have a better sense of various notes and genres. While the other samples remain unfinished in a box somewhere, I loved the SL sample so much that I absolutely had to have the whole bottle. But the spray sample, which I came by in America, definitely smelled different from the full bottle, which I purchased in London. The sample smelled distinctly more caramelized, with none of the balance provided by those signature AS dry spices. (My guess is that, if not geography, age might have had something to do with the difference, either on the particular bottle of perfume, or the formulation from batch-to-batch–the sample was from an older bottle, and the full bottle was newly purchased from Harrods.)

I’m now glad to have the full bottle I do; it appears to be the standard, as it smells like other bottles of AS, and I think the fragrance might be too candied and a bit toothless without the spices. At the time, though, I was a little surprised and disappointed at the difference between the sample and the full bottle. That said, who knows if my beginner nose would have taken to the perfume if the sample had smelled right? So, in this case, the difference may actually have been a useful bait-and-switch, kind of like putting your dog’s medicine in peanut butter.

More shamefully (and also in the early, bumbling stages of being into perfume), I’ve definitely tried things casually, filed them away in my mental wish list, and snatched them up much later on discount, only to wonder, “How could I have ever wanted this?” For me, the switcheroo has coincided with my lowest moments in perfume buying, like snapping up a large (and not inexpensive) bottle of Eau d’Issey (when I hate aquatic notes!) at Nordstrom Rack. When I put it on later, I was convinced I’d smelled something different the first time I tried it on–but I think it was just my untrained nose, not really being able to tell what I was smelling, and thinking that something I came to find, meh, merely pleasant was actually terrific and, indeed, full-bottle-worthy.

I have, though, passed along the Eau d’Issey (and all those similar newbie mistakes) to my mom, who happily wears them and always smells wonderful. So there’s another example of the perspectival shift that accompanies the “Wait, is this the same perfume?” moments in this hobby–I like them on her, if not on me!