This gesture was done when we were extracting very high-concentration perfume, old perfume. Now it’s not really true – now we have sprays, [before] there was no spray, you took the cap off the bottle and applied it [directly]. Now it’s a spray, the dilution is much lighter, so really it doesn’t matter.
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The friction created by rubbing, he continues, “heats up the skin, which produces natural enzymes that change the course of the scent.” Most impacted are the top and middle notes, along with the dry-down, or the last and longest period of your fragrance’s unfolding.
— Top quote from perfumer Nathalie Lorson, in From scenting your clothes to avoiding garlic: 7 things a perfumer wants you to know about fragrance at Xposé. Bottom quote from Francis Kurkdjian, in You're Probably Applying, Storing And Wearing Your Perfume Wrong at Vogue UK.
“Most impacted are the top and middle notes, along with the dry down.” Lol.
I’m going to assume that’s Vogue and not FK.
I’m sure you’re right; it just made me chuckle a little when I read it.
That was what struck me, too. “You mean….the entire scent?”
But I’m not buying it. Rubbing a scent is going to warm it up a little and drive off the top notes more quickly, but the idea that it will completely change the fragrance is not credible. Not to me, anyway.
The idea that anybody cares so much either way is mostly what puzzles me. If you *really* don’t want the scent to change, spray it on your clothing or carry around a blotter.
But somebody must care, it comes up so frequently.
(Also object in general to this constant harping from fashion and beauty magazines about whatever thing you are doing wrong.)
If they didn’t have these articles about what we’re doing wrong, they’d run out of articles…. I’m often amused by how they run the same stories year in and year out. Just slight tweaks.
I always love the ones that say not to spray your hair….the alcohol! So ridiculous.
Plus, that has allowed the fragrance companies to sell a gajillion hair perfumes.
Seriously. Every one of these articles features the same Greatest Hits of Wearing Perfume for Idiots:
“Spray Your Pulse Points”
“Don’t Rub the Scent (You’ll Damage The Molecules)”
“Change Your Scent With the Seasons”
“Don’t Spray Your Hair or Clothes (Drying Alcohol and Oil Stain Remix)”
“Ooh de Par-foom is stonger than Ooh-day-Twah-Leh”
“Body Chemistry (feat. This Synthetic Haze Smells Better on Me Because I’m Special)”
“Florals are for Spring, Spices are for Winter (And Never the Twain Shall Meet)”
Do people really still listen to these tunes? Just put on the damn perfume you like, any way you like to. It’s not rocket science.
I’m more concerned about the fact that I’ve always got lotion or sunscreen on my skin, and how the fragrances (including ones designed to counteract the scent of some of the ingredients of the lotion that don’t smell very good), preservatives, and other elements may be altering the scent.
I use little cocktail straws as pipettes to withdraw perfume from stoppered bottles in order not to contaminate the perfume, which takes some of the fun out of stoppered bottles. That seems OCD even to me, but I have some expensive and rare perfumes.
BTW, I read that connoisseurs of expensive ouds will use the dauber of the oud bottle to put a drop of oud on the outside of the bottle, and then apply that to skin, rather than risk contaminating the bottle. Or the use disposable plastic tooth picks (I’ve seen photos with those disposable flossers) to dip into the bottle. So I feel I’m not in bad company. ????