Your signature scent.

Always L"Ocitaine Verbena, just love it.

Quite a selection -

I think that Halveti is my favourite . It is exquisite and expensive .
I also like Shalimar - smells of baby powder and lavender .
First -a favourite scent of a friend .
Organza .
Diorissimo .
I used to wear White Linen and then it seemed to smell musty on my skin .
I've loved Rive Gauche . I found it durable for travelling .
At one stage , Arpege and another time Anais Anais .
I like Knowing if the weather is autumnal .

I also wear cheaper scents ie :
Cashmere by Next , L'Aimant , M and S and Yardley florals and mock ouds from the Middle East sometimes in oil form .

My mam liked Vanderbilt, I think it was called that.

I also liked a one from body shop but it was discontinued. Think it was called ?? Fig? Also rain flowers by Boots many years ago. Can anyone remember a scent called Manhattan?

yes,,Manhattan was from the 1960...my best friend had that and the talc too..it was in a black box with skyscrapers on it lovely perfume

pably15 I'd forgotten Red Door, that was lovely. My parents bought me Youth Dew one Christmas. I'm sure I wore it, but don't remember liking it much. My husband loved me to wear Opium, I hated it but wore it sometimes just to please him. I eventually confessed I hated it, far too strong, and he stopped buying it for me

Funny but I would never buy perfume. Don’t know why. It seems an old fashioned thing really.

I always wore Pomegranate Noir but for my last birthday DD took me to Harrods for a meeting with a Dior consultant. At the end of the session my DD bought me a perfume from the private collection Ambre Nuit, it is gorgeous and lasts ages.

Skydancer

Funny but I would never buy perfume. Don’t know why. It seems an old fashioned thing really.

Old fashioned to want to smell nice? I don't understand that but appreciate that not everybody wants to smell other than 'au naturel' Do you avoid all perfumed products? I have a cousin who reacts badly to scented personal care products, it makes shopping extremely difficult for her.

Remember Je Reviens? Used to love that one.

I used to wear that one Clawdy, when DH and I were “courting”.

I also wore Aqua Manda and Youth Dew- in my late teens.

Re Le Labo, I have a small bottle of No. 13. They do very little ones - probably only 15ml.
I had a discovery/tester set and this was the nicest on me. That said, it's not one I pick out very often - and until Tenko mentioned it I'd forgotten about it.

Crossstitchfan - I know at the menopause my skin changed - one of my fragrances just doesn't last on me anymore so I spray it on my cuff or scarf where it "sits" much longer. Some fragrances I used to like don't smell quite the same either.

Also, I know that when I started taking a particular medication (not a hormonal one) my skin also changed and that affected which perfume I could wear. It was a subtle change and I spoke to the clinical pharmacist at my surgery about it but they weren't as interested as I was!
I believe our bodies natural chemistry changes over our lifetime (and according to what we eat and state of health) and and that we all have a natural skin "base note". I would guess a hysterectomy will inevitably cause sudden and dramatic changes. Annoying for you at the time Crossstitchfan but it might open up a whole new world of perfumes you had earlier dismissed!

I've just been looking up personal body smell re perfumes and found this:

www.lelior.com/blogs/main/make-sense-of-scents-why-does-my-fragrance-smell-different-on-my-friend#:~:text=Natural%20Skin%20Odor%3A%20A%20Personal%20Base%20Note&text=For%20example%2C%20someone%20who%20consumes,also%20affect%20how%20perfume%20smells.

Very interesting - I thought I'd share it.

I always used to wear Jo Malone Basil Mandarin and loved it. Then suddenly a few years back the perfume just didnt seem to last on my skin. I queried this with the company and eventually they confirmed they had had to change a constituent to be in line with EU regulations and that few people had noticed the change! No one in their shop said there had been a change!!

I am now using an Aldi dupe of it for a fraction of Jo Malone price. No it doesnt last long either but I dont mind at that price.
I used to like Rive Gauche. Miss Dior. Femme by Rochas (I think) and often borrowed Dior
Eau Sauvage from a boyfriend years back. Loved the bottle. Epitome of Frenchness to me then.

Coty L 'Aimant reminds me of my Mum. Aqua Manda of my teens.
I am using a soap from the French Soap Company which smells of the seaside..in a nice way.

Perfumes like Shalimar, Chanel’s No. 5, Dior’s Eau Sauvage and Poison, Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium and Cacharel’s Anais Anais are only a shadow of their original, olfactory selves, according to industry experts.

“Eau Sauvage was a real chef d’oeuvre in its original form,” retired perfume-maker Pierre Bourdon, who created Dior’s Dolce Vita and Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros, said of the 1966 scent. “It used to be very green and fresh. Today, it has been replaced by something softer and duller.”

He contends the scent has been stripped of furocoumarins, a class of organic chemical compounds produced by plants like bergamot that can cause dark spots on the skin when exposed to the sun.

I've just read that some of these changes came from within the industry (2008) and there was a lot written in 2010 to 2013 about it when more changes were made. In 2020 there was a further conversation about allergens and further changes were made.
Perfumes are not "cosmetics" so were regulated differently even though they go directly onto our skin. Some are saying that they should be.

The IFRA Standards ban, limit or set criteria for the use of certain ingredients, based on scientific evidence and consumer insights some perfumes have been reformulated many many times. Indeed more old perfumes seem to have been reformulated than not.

I hadn't really thought about how fragrances are regulated before - though like others, I'm aware of changes in formulations over time.

HelterSkelter1 a lady on the perfume counter said the same thing to me - I think it was a product from whales that 'sets' a perfume (so it lasts on your skin) is now banned. A chemical is now used instead, and this has changed the fragrance of perfumes somewhat.

Thank you NotSpaghetti. That confirms what I thought and heard.

I expect I would be disappointed with Eau Sauvage now....and I expect with the boyfriend as well!!

A good thread Doodledog...lots of new names of perfumes to try.

Just looked it up, it's called ambergris; however not all countries have banned it, but it is so very expensive, that most perfumes have replaced it with synthetic chemicals, which are much cheaper.

Clawdy

Remember Je Reviens? Used to love that one.

Me too!
Wish I could find exactly the same again.

Re ambergris, not sure how 100% true this is, but I read somewhere that it’s produced in the gut of sperm whales, formed from some part (the beak?) of the giant squid, which is a favourite part of their diet.

So lumps of it are sometimes washed up, but obviously this doesn’t happen anything like every day.

HelterSkelter1

A good thread Doodledog...lots of new names of perfumes to try.

Thank you.

I am having enough difficulty choosing from my 10 samples, and now there are all these other possibilities .

Tabac Soleil is my current favourite, but I have a few more to go before I've worn them all for a day.

Slava Zaitsev Maroussia, love it and used it for years. Don't know why I like it so much but It's one of the very few I use.

I don’t have a signature scent as such but my grandson has said my “bedroom smells like grandma”
He couldn’t define whether that was a nice smell or not, just that it smells of me 🤣
Not sure how I feel about that 😉

Knowing by Estee Lauder, I have worn it for years and people often comment on how nice it it.