A youthful spirit is an experimental one, as a fragrance wardrobe forms an experimental laboratory – a creative dressing room – where one can test out their tastes and explore the variety available to them.
Now is the time to establish a relationship with the fragrances that you wear, having a go and unafraid of making mistakes while fine-tuning one’s taste in the process. It’s also the time to embrace the many different occasions one may wear a fragrance, and the different moods each entails.
Sometimes we wear a fragrance for instant appeal and attraction: gregarious scents for social occasions, and we’ve made note of the alluring scents that populate our range, replete with addictive accords and a sillage with presence. And for the moments beyond the clubs and the bars, we’ve also suggested some of the best fragrances that make up a complete fragrance wardrobe … without breaking the bank. Fragrances for work, the everyday, and everything else.
To begin this article, we’ve provided some advice as to how to find a fragrance that suits one’s tastes, including some of the best representatives of the many styles of perfume out there. Perfume can be worn for many reasons, and we believe it should make the wearer interesting, enhancing what is already interesting and authentic about ourselves.
A Good Place To Start (For the Newly Initiated)
For the freshly initiated, picking a fragrance can be a daunting experience without the appropriate guidance or parameters in place. We’re quick to endorse extensive sampling, making lists of perfumes ‘to test’ as you read about the notes, families, and the many stories connected to them.
We suggest keeping track of the notes you’ve loved most, determining whether there are identifiable patterns or connections that bring them together. Think about the smells you love in everyday life and can imagine yourself wearing: freshly cracked black pepper, lavender from the garden, the scent of the beach - many perfumes call upon ideas as much as they do ingredients.
Remain open to experience, allowing a scent to work itself on you and for your taste to respond accordingly - that’s the best measure you have available! Take the time to learn the fragrance families - it’s a rule of thumb that one’s taste in perfume belongs to one or two families.
There are 4 general categories: fresh/citrus, floral, woods/leather, and amber/spice, with many subcategories within each of these. To give you a sense of what these are, we’ve included an example of each.
Fresh: Sous Le Pont Mirabeau by Etat Libre d'Orange
Sous Le Pont Mirabeau by Etat Libre d'Orange is a fresh fragrance with dominant aquatic, citrus, clean-spicy overtones that dredge a woody base. It recalls soft and flowing water, full of energy and power. Amongst many notes, it features pink pepper, fig leaf, ozonic-aquatic effects, sandalwood, cedarwood, and clean white musk. The result is a long lasting freshness tinged with sparkling tones of green and blue.
Woody: Mon Vetiver by Essential Parfums
Mon Vetiver by Essential Parfums fronts the best aspects of the woody category with a superb quality of Haitian vetiver root, freshened with the sizzle and smack of lime, juniper berry, and lavender.
This is a woody fragrant cocktail faceted with citrusy, green, and spicy aspects, textured wonderfully. It pounds a deep sound, overlaid with sparkle and crunch. It may remind you of an effervescent gin and tonic, stirred with a length of vetiver and garnished with a citrus wheel, of course.
Floral: 1725 by Histoires de Parfums
The floral is an occasionally misunderstood category, but 1725 from Histoires de Parfums is a patent reminder that aromatic fragrances depend upon floral notes, especially lavender, to gain their charming contrast. This is a fresh burst of cool and passionate lavender wedded with spicy bursts of liquorice and grapefruit up top, with melting vanilla, cedar, almondy heliotrope, and white musk notes in the base.
Amber & Spice: L'Air du Desert Marocain by Tauer Perfumes
Tauer’s L’Air du Desert Marocain is an amber-spice fragrance for all, with an unmatched accord of coriander seed, petitgrain, cedarwood, and amber notes, which manages to maintain a dynamic sensation of freshness amongst deep resinous notes. It tells a readily recognisable story of hot sand and dry desert air, precious spices and exotic locales.
Scents to Stand Out With
For those moments when you want to stand out in the crowd, with ingredients that seem to work directly on the pleasure receptors (of yours and others too). Interest, attractive, and more than a little bold - projection and longevity are a given, too.
Bois Imperial by Essential Parfums
Bois Imperial by Essential Parfums is perfect for this purpose, and it smells at once innovative and familiar by taking a familiar woody form and calling upon powerful synthetic notes of Georgywood and Akigalawood to reinvigorate the category. The result is highly memorable, twisting impressions of cedar, patchouli, vetiver, and oud with the soaring spicy freshness of Thai basil and Timut pepper. Bois Imperial emanates to produce an atmosphere of crisp woods and unfaltering vigour.
Sadonasso by Nasomatto
Sadonasso (Nasomatto) will appeal to a sensibility oriented towards dark tones and mysteriousness. It is a scent fitting for the (sensible) debaucheries of one's twenties, combining the recognisable allure of coffee, tonka bean, and creamy milky notes with an engulf of musks all at once animalic, leathery, dirty, and sweet. Even more, it is glazed in a varnish of honey. Sadonaso is loaded with erotic shimmer and stultifying impression.
Versatile Fragrances of Enduring Appeal
Your twenties is your introduction to adult life, and for many, presents a number of professional responsibilities where how you present yourself matters. Without falling into another generation’s style and taste, there are a number of fragrances that borrow from traditional styles, timeless principles, all with modern twists. These are exciting fragrances in their own right.
Hermann a Mes Cotes by Etat Libre d'Orange
Hermann A Mes Cotes (Etat Libre d’Orange) presents a familiar feeling with some of the most unfamiliar notes, welding synthetics such as pepperwood, geosmin, ambroxan, and calypsone with natural extracts of rose, galbanum, blackcurrant, frankincense, and patchouli. Complexities aside, Hermann predominantly works dry ambery tones and earthy tones together with a beguilingly fresh rose for contrast and impact. The total effect is a long woody shadow filled with mist and moonlight. As poetic as it is, it is sturdy and well-defined, and makes for the perfect everyday scent without becoming tedious.
Orchid Man by Frapin
Orchid Man (Frapin) asserts elegance without starchiness with its considerate mix of bright citrus fruits and rousing pepper, trailing along a leathery and patchouli base. A measure of jasmine in the heart lends romance, tenderness, and a hint of sweetness. Orchid Man is charming and buoyant, grounded with aromatics. Supremely balanced, it is predicated on a contrast of sweet-and-sour, making for a scent that is unmissable on the nose.
