Not long ago I was talking to the owner of a vintage clothing store. I asked her to be on the lookout for old bottles of perfume (hey, an enterprising gal is a gal with an lifetime supply of Fabergé Tigress). She told me she finds lots of perfume at estate sales, “But you wouldn’t want it. It’s old. It’s nasty,” she said and wrinkled her nose.
Yikes! How many bottles of Jean Patou Joy or vintage Worth Je Reviens had she left behind? She might have passed up some of the perfume because she’s not used to smelling a powerhouse vintage perfume, but she probably figured that anything old is likely to have spoiled. It’s time to nip these kinds of heartaches in the bud and lay out a few of the biggest misconceptions about perfume:
1. Perfume goes bad over time. Perfume can sour, but it’s usually sunlight and heat that destroy it, not time. Put a bottle of your favorite, brand new perfume on the dashboard of the car for a few weeks in summer and keep another bottle in its box in a drawer and you’ll learn this lesson firsthand. It doesn’t matter how expensive, or cheap, the perfume was…
