How To Buy Perfume

(Eye makeup demos still coming! Still in the works! Mostly because I've gotten a ton of volunteers and exactly zero actual submissions. So...uh...get cracking, slackers! We want your eyeballs!)

Well, first and firstly and foremost, DON'T spritz yourself with the samplers. Spritz the testing papers instead. I don't know if the handy-dandy little paper strips that Sephora offers are some kind of big post-KISS development in fragrance shopping, but any store that's worthy of your fragrance dollar should offer them.

As does Amazon.com, oddly enough, and if you want to be all fancy and seem like an experience perfume shopper, you can call them mouillettes (moo-yets) like the French. Breadsticks! Which is sort of what they look like. I geddit.

So basically, go to the store, spritz some perfume on the strip, let it dry and then sniff. If you like it, label the strip and set it aside. If you don't like it, toss it.

To reset your sense of smell in between all that sniffing, look around the store for a bowl of coffee beans. Sniff them, then wait a couple minutes before trying another perfume. (Your nose will hit perfume overload after about three scents otherwise, and that includes sniffing the tester bottle pre-spritz.) I suppose, if you're really serious about fragrance shopping, you could bring your own baggie of coffee beans.

I've also heard eating a cracker will help, kind of like it does at a wine tasting.

Once you've identified (via the strips) a couple perfumes you like, narrow them down to two. Spritz the inside of each wrist with one fragrance (don't rub!). If you absolutely must try more than two, you can also spritz the inside of your elbows, but I think the scents can still interfere with each other. Also: Aunt Gertrude City. Now smell the coffee beans one last time and LEAVE THE STORE.

You never, ever want to buy perfume during your testing session. Not only is your sense of smell guaranteed to be at least a little whacked out by the end, you need to test how the perfumes react with your body chemistry. Is it undetectable after 20 minutes? Is it too strong? Does it smell completely different than it does on the strip? Does it give you a headache? Does it make your significant other gag or...ahem...boom chicka bow?

You should be able to answer these questions after about three hours. You should still smell the fragrance, but it shouldn't be wafting off your body in waves. So now you can go back to the store and buy with confidence, or go back to the breadsticks and sample a few more.

One final thingie: if you have any leftover perfume from your Van Halen groupie days, I hope you...uh...have thrown that out. Perfume is not wine and does not age well. Two years is about as long as you should hang onto it, since it will start to smell all alcohol-y after awhile. You can extend the shelf life by keeping in a dark place like a drawer, or even in the original box. Light is not perfume's friend, no matter how pretty the bottle looks sitting on your dresser.