Hey there Posse, Do you ever look around your place an wonder at the sheer enormity of the Perfume Sample Collection you have? Mine has anything from 1ml dab vials to 10ml splits and there are HEAPS! Some of them are new, others half used, still others have dried up completely ACK!! There’s another reason for using them up.
So I’ve decided this week to wear at least one of my samples every day for a week. I have three major spritz times throughout my day: Morning: to wake me up and get me going, Work: after my bath and getting ready I usually spritz a favourite to waft around during the event, Bedtime: here is where I get most creative, something old will lull me into reveries, something new will send me on journeys and into sleep questioning.
Join me on a journey through a tiny bit of my Perfume Sample Collection.
Perfume Sample Collection OVERLOAD!
Day 1:
Morning: Oudh Lime by Montale: I love this mad bitter/sweet freaky adventure in scent. It’s big, fun and totally over the top. The screechiest citrus and the oh-so-Montale synth oud palette. I like it but could never imagine using a bottle of it up.
Bedtime: Jicky EdP by Guerlain: This lovely modern version is less animalic but the lavender is clearer and the whole fragrance feels newer. I like it a lot. When I’m finished my vintage I’m going to go buy some modern.
Day 2:
Bedtime: Leather Oud by DIOR: This is the left over of the Surrender To Chance DIOR Privee Collection Set I bought years ago. The reason there is some left in the sample is that I went straight out and bought myself a bottle. WOO HOO! Love it. Even though the leather/oud thing is becoming a bit of a fragrant trope DIOR does it so smoothly.
Day 3:
Morning: Eau Sauvage by DIOR: I think this is a pretty modern version. It’s nice. Memories of the kids at school who wore it. Not bad, not buying.
Work: Gunpowder Rose by Union: Sometimes I do like to take a chance for work. Soapy rose that turns sweetly sharp. It’s like the sci-fi rose experience, a little metallic under the sweet. Lovely lipstick waxiness and leather notes whirl around. I really like the progression and story, a cool rose with an industrial heart. £125 at Selfridge & Co, maybe next UK visit?
Bedtime: Dana Tabu EdT: If you haven’t tried Tabu then you don’t know what you’re missing: Even after all these years and reformulations it still smells incredible. No better way to fall asleep that floating on clouds of Tabu. MMMMMMM
Day 4: Didn’t wear a sample because in the morning I spritzed vintage Guerlain Vol de Nuit parfum and then decided I enjoyed it so much that I’d respritz in the afternoon and before bed. Sorry to let you all down but I smelled freaking amazing.
Day 5:
Morning: Morn to Dusk by Eau d’Italie: How do I not have a big fat bottle of this already? My sample is now officially dry because I chose to respritz at bedtime so I could drift off to sleep on a cloud of its gorgeousness. Resins both cool and warm, balmy smooth, fleshy and lightly salted. Nothing smells like this yet it is so cosy and comfortable. When I spritz Morn to Dusk I feel like I’ve come home. Just ordered an 8ml decant from Surrender To Chance that should tide me over till I’m in a place that stocks them.
Day 6:
Morning: Silk by Andrea Maack: I bought a bottle of this beauty and have left my sample languishing. So glad it came to my hand today because I love its freaky wet opening, sweetly fruity and very like cutting open a refrigerated watermelon and that first icy cold bite that cools your whole body in an instant, no matter how hot the weather. It’s interesting green and floral heart that warms only slightly in dry down. So good.
Bedtime: Musc for Her by Narciso Rodriguez: Didn’t even know I had this sample, it’s never been spritzed. Aha! It’s an oil. Fresh, clean and lightly floral, like the air of a cool country morning with the lightest hint of humanity. Nice but not really something I’ll wear.
Day 7:
Bedtime: Cepes & Tuberose by Mandy Aftel: The opening is dark & earthy, rich & sweet, like a fruit cake with a burning smoky backdrop. Capes & Tuberose is all light and shade, earth, balms and flowers. Majestic. This sample is empty now, thank goodness I have a mini bottle here.
Most of these fragrances are available to sample on Surrender To Chance
If you have enjoyed this then please pop over to Australian Perfume Junkies and continue the scented conversation. We love visitors, say HI while you’re there.
Do you have a crazy Perfume Sample Collection? What samples will you wear this week from yours?
Portia xx
I have SO many samples. I’m going to sell a bunch of them on Ebay this weekend. I find I don’t like a lot of the ones I get, many of which were freebies. I don’t want to waste them and I hate sample swaps because I always end up with stuff I have already sampled. My extra samples are going on the auction block and the few I do like and want to sample will remain. I hope that will be under 30 samples, I can dream, right??
Hi there Rickyberaco,
Excellent idea. I hope people jump at them for you.
Another great way to downsize is a RAOK on one of the frag sites on Facebook. I belong to a couple Facebook Fragrance friends, Peace Love & Perfume, MyMickers Mish
Anything that doesn’t sell you might think of paying forward.
Portia xx
Great post, dear Portia! I need to do something like you have, but with my no-fragrance job, I can’t start the day out with scent and can wear nothing until after I’m home in the early evening. I sympathize with you, having way too much of a good thing myself. Our entire formal dining room has been taken over with samples, decants, etc: the table, the sideboard/buffet, another side table, all covered. My DH keeps giving me the stink-eye and I know I need to do something with it all, but it just seems so overwhelming. How did this happen? 😉
Hey Ann,
How lucky and how greedy we all are. Being a part of the blogging world gives us license to go a little crazy. We need stuff to write about, yes?
I do like the 3 pile system idea though. Keep, Maybe and Move On. I think I’m going to try that.
Portia xx
Hello to another “Vol De Nuit” lover!! Isn’t it divine??
Love this idea and I ma shamelessly stealing it, too. 😉
Vol de Nuit. HEAVENLY! Glad to meet another fan Shelly.
You’re welcome. this is where we all come to give and get ideas. One of the reasons I still love the Perfume Posse so much. Always something new.
Portia xx
That photo of all those samples gives me the shakes, both of panic — how will you ever smell them all? and of delight — how wonderful to smell them all!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on each fragrance. Like you I enjoy scent three times a day, it is the perfect indulgence. I’m in the mood for lavender this season, so Jicky EdP just went on my list. Morn to Dusk sounds marvelous as well.
I recently spent 10 minutes moving my entire tee-tiny collection of samples and perfume bottles to a less warm room in my home. I was happy to see some old friends I’d forgotten about. And I noticed all the samples I’d ordered from one particular fragrance manufacturer had evaporated to an equal level. Boo. Almost gone! Use them or lose them.
Hey Tiffanie,
HA! I have smelt them all once already. As they come in I smell every single one. Then some get used up, written about, left, given away, kept for another day. This pic is just one drawer of a wider selection.
Maybe you need to drop round and help me get through them?
Yes, words to live by “Use it or Lose it”
Portia xx
Ooooh, fun! Thanks for taking us on a trip through your samples! I love the Cepes & Tuberose, too — it’s so wonderfully weird. The cepes is more earthy/loamy than the usual woodsy oakmoss note. And you NEVER need to apologize for spritzing on Vol de Nuit!!!
I just moved, so I’m unpacking and rediscovering samples all over again! Today, I found and spritzed myself with a teeny spray sample of Vero Profumo’s Rubj — perfect for summer.
Hey there HeidiC,
Good luck with the unpacking and in the new home.
Rubj, she’s a bit lavishly outrageous. LOVE it.
Portia xx
I have literally hundreds of samples to try. Started keeping track this year– since Jan 1st I have acquired 135 and tried 123. Gives me hope that I might eventually start lowering my backlog (Hah!)
Hi TheGoddeessRena,
WOW! That’s quite a lot that you’ve already plowed through. Are you emptying them as you go?
Portia xx
Fabulous!
Hey there sexy man,
Always great to see your avatar pop up.
Hope life mistreating you kindly.
Portia xx
I am a bit mad of late.. Brexit, death and destruction all over the place…..can’t write at all. Can’t really sing either, but this was Saturday night:
Fill the world with your song buster. LOVED it.
Portia xx
I need to mend, seriously. I am a burnt out right now! No words in sight. Still stuck on the same perfumes (but no problem with that, incha). x
I have boat loads of decant and it keeps getting bigger. So about every months or so, I go through and see what has evaporated and what I can wear once or twice more.
It’s all part of perfumistahood I think Eldarwen22,
It is a shame though when you come across a rarity that has dried up. So sad.
Portia xx
I, too, was drowning in samples. I had a pile of “get these away from me”, “no thanks”, and “keep wearing to make a decision”. My sister-in-law mentioned she was on her last bottle of her favorite perfume, now discontinued, so she’s now the proud owner of the first 2 piles and acting like a kid in a candy store! As for me, I’m starting to work my way through the Luckyscent sample pack of the By Killians. Not in love with any yet.
Excellent way to deal with the problem Tiara,
I have a couple of great loves from the by Kilian frags: Sweet Redemption and Back to Black. I quite liked the Apple Brandy one but couldn’t imagine it being something I’d pick up and spritz.
Portia xx
It’s amazing how you always manage to find another great topic that concerns all of us, Portia 🙂 Your heap is huuuuuuge.
I have, of course, a lot of samples, but I’ve started putting them away in boxes labeled for example (translated into English): “pass it on asap”, “meh” and “ok-use it up some day”. Obviously, I will only use the last box of samples and I take them with me on short trips or spritz them when I’m at home. The first two groups I offer to my girlfriends or send to other perfumistas if they want to try something out of the bunch.
If I discover something I want to own in a FB then I wear it all the time to make sure it’s FB worthy and throw the empty vial away with ease and a happy certainty that soon there’ll be more of it at hand.
Hey Neva,
Thank you.
The three pile system is a great idea. Currently I have a stay or go pile and every so often we do a sample set giveaway on APJ. I also send out extra samples with anything I’m sending so there is quite a lot leaving the house each week. Loads coming in too.
I also will fall madly in love with things but often will purchase the fb even before I finish a decant so they can sometimes sit around sadly.
Lovely to read you, as always,
Portia xxx
I have so many samples that I’ve mostly given up on cataloguing them. “Luckily,” I hardly have any FBs, so I make good use of my samples! I only use my FBs at most once a week. There are so many wonderful perfumes out there to try that I think samples are a great way to smell as much as I can without committing to giant, pricey bottles!
Hey Koyel,
A few years ago my BFF and I catalogued everything, put them in organised places and had it all ship shape. It took us 4 days, within a week everything was totally disorganised again and I’ve kept it that way ever since.
Though there are some in very sensible plastic containers, others are in a drawer and others in their arrival packets in random boxes.
It’s slightly terrifying.
Portia xx
Yup, I’m drowning in all my samples, decants and splits. To make matters worse, I’m totally disorganized and they’re all over the place. I need someone with mad organizational skills to go through and alphabetize them and then enter them in some kind of database for me. Lol.
I can kill 20 to 30 minutes looking for a sample I know I have, while finding samples I forgot I had. Dear Husband would be happy if I just chucked the whole lot. I did manage to go through and toss all the ones that had evaporated to nothing. Right now I’m trying to wear all the ones that feel like summer.
Tatiana, I hear you. Nowadays if I can’t find it in 5 minutes then I’ll use one of the 20 others that I’ve stumbled across while looking. Sometimes I even forget what I was looking for in the first place anyway.
Portia xx
I like your approach and have started doing the same. I have gone thru my samples over the weekend and discovered a whole bunch of half-used onces that I already have FBs of – whole bunch of Le Labos and others – and not quite sure what to do with them. But already started with Black Amber and it is quite nice
Hey Marrianna,
Yes, either use them up or pass them onto a newbie. Either way they’ll be getting the love they deserve instead of laying there unloved.
Portia xx
I am with you on Eau Sauvage. It is just ‘nice’ but nothing like its glorious past formulas and certainly not worth buying now.
It has changed Fazal, it’s true. Still smells good on men walking around the streets in their suits though. Perfumistas have often moved on, especially if they know and love the original.
Portia xx