Category: Information

If you’re like me you have about 20 of these little perfume sampler bottle laying on top of your shelf. I don’t ever generally use these more than once or twice right after I get them.

One thing you can do is if you go to the gym regularly and carry a gym bag, a great thing to do is throw those extra samples you got at the department store in your gym bag and then use them after you workout or shower.

Give them to your kids. They always seem to get pretty excited about a new sample.

Other than that you can just wear them. This is a shorter article than I hoped, I thought I could think of some more uses. If you have any good ideas please leave a comment!

If I’m going to an outside event I want something with very high projection or something that can be smelled far away that might be too much in close quarters. I’ve found two that are absolutely the most potent scents.

Ultra Male, is a fruity almost bubble gum smell, but people will really smell it if you walk into a room. It’s a cologne you need to be careful of because it’s strong, but that is the very reason it’s a perfect outdoor cologne. Summertime, outside at concerts, playing sports, a night out South Beach are all perfect times for this.

Pear, vanilla, lavender, cinnamon are strong components of this.

Joop which I’ve probably gotten the most compliments on from strangers out of anything is another very powerful cologne. Vanilla, cinnamon, orange blossom. This is something every man should have in their collection for it’s uniqueness and for outdoor events.

It’s interesting how they both contain vanilla and cinnamon, but they are very distinct from each other.

One of the great things about having a good collection is you can choose the appropriate scent for the proper situation.

Christian Dior Sauavage

This one is a smooth, smokey, sophisticated scent. Great for dates, or almost any occasion. It smells like you spent more money on it than you did.

Polo

The original Polo from Ralph Lauren in the green bottle. This is a leathery, woody, piney scent, which is one of the most masculine smells on the market. It’s got good projection and a very unique smell.

Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male

This is a smooth, magical fragrance, very unique, it has a lot of tonka bean in it along with vanilla and some other notes that really creates a beautiful fragrance. This is perfect for a date, and outdoor summer activities.

The three I’ve picked are some of my favorite designer colognes, and also give a lot of diversity to the scents you can wear. I like to wear something different every day, except on the occasions when I get a brand new cologne I usually wear it every day for a week or two. But normally I just decide on what I’m doing, what the weather is like, what kind of mood I’m in. I love the idea of picking out a specific scent for the day.

I’ve have around 20 bottles in my collection but if you wanted to start with any of these and work your way in slowly that would be a good idea.

Sometimes I buy something without testing it out first or long enough, or for some reason I just begin to dislike something I originally liked.

I was in Miami and bought some vetiver scent that I loved, but then when I came back to Seattle, very different weather, for some reason it didn’t smell as good. It’s surprising how much can affect the scent of a cologne.

If you have a collection of cologne or perfume and you haven’t worn something in months, I suggesting listing it on Ebay, selling it, and trying to buy something new on there. There are a ton of pre-owned bottles on ebay with 3/4 of the bottle left that you can get at very good deals. As always you need to be careful, make sure the seller has a good rating, but I’ve almost never had problems.

The one issue is most places wont ship alcohol (Which is liquid and flammable and fragile, pretty much every question they ask you when shipping something gets checked) air, so you have to rely on ground shipping, so make sure you make note in a listing that you will not ship it overseas.

I have sold a very large portion of my collection over the years, and I have about 16 colognes, and I love all of them.

I was at a Fedex the other day and I noticed the perfume of the woman helping me. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it didn’t blow me away either. It was just a generic semi-pleasant smell. I thought back to when a girl got into my Uber a while ago. I don’t know what she was wearing but it was amazing. It immediately knocked her up a couple of points on the attractive scale.

When you buy a scent, remember this is what you smell like to people, it becomes part of who you are. There is something very intimate about the sense of smell, so it’s important to really spend some time choosing a scent. Smells trigger emotions and memories more than any other sense.

I remember when I was watching Return of the Jedi in the theater, someone was wearing some perfume, what it was I have no idea, but to this day, every few years, I’ll catch a whiff of whatever it was and be taken right back to when I was a little boy in that theater.

Whether you’re just buying one, or you have a large collection, make sure you take the time to decide on each scent. Try it on first, wear it around for a few days, make sure when you put it on you’re looking forward to it, and when you get that first whiff you love it.

Niche is better.

Ok, I’ll write more.

A niche fragrance is generally from a company that specializes in fragrances, while designer fragrances are generally a clothing or fashion companies version of a cologne. Niche tend to be higher quality and use better oils, but also higher in price.

There is a bit of a fuzzy area, specifically with Tom Ford which is a fashion company that has a line of very high quality fragrances that I would consider comparable to a lot of niche lines.

If you’re going to invest in a scent, I think it’s worth it to try to go niche. A high end scent from a designer is going to be around 60-90 dollars, but if you can throw in an extra 40 dollars, you really open up yourself to a lot of options.

Not only are niche fragrances more natural smelling, there are going to be a lot more diversity of types of scents.

That’s not to say that there are no good from designer scents, there are plenty of great ones, but niche really opens up a lot of new options. Generally you can get them from specialty perfume stores, or if you have a large Nordstrom or Lord + Taylor or higher end places, they will offer a large selection of niche perfumes.

Very synthetic smelling. I feel like there are a lot of colognes in this category that smell like air fresheners.

It’s hard for me to write a lot about this, because it’s so similar to so many other scents. I have been into cologne for more than 20 years, and I don’t remember a time where you could go to the counter of a department store and smell so many bottles that smell almost the same. Niche perfumes are doing more interesting things than ever but I feel like we are in a low point for designer perfumes.

There still are some real originals like Ultra Male that stand out as unique, but I think I’m going to just post some generic review like See Gucci Guilty Black for my thoughts on these kinds of colognes.

I wanted to write about the fact that there are some perfumes that have a very different scent when smelled from 1 inch away than from 4 feet away. The first time I became aware of this was when I created a scent of my own. It was one of the first things I had ever made and I wasn’t expecting much out of it because I was still learning (and still am).

After creating something I thought might be nice, I put it on and it smelled pretty unremarkable. Not bad exactly, but just a random scent that didn’t smell like someone would have wanted to make it. I let one of my room mates smell it and put my wrist out and she smelled it and tried to say in the nicest way she could that it wasn’t great. But then when I back up and had a conversation she now that she was smelling it from farther away said she really liked it.

I wore it again outside and I kept getting whiffs of a very nice smell that I didn’t think was my cologne at first but it kept following me around.

I’ve since realized that is sometimes the case with some designer and niche perfumes as well. Sometimes when you smell it right off your wrist you’re not getting an accurate representation of what it smells like to others. This is why it is so important to try on a cologne and walk around with it for a day before purchasing it no matter how much you like or dislike at when you first try it on. It’s also why it’s a good idea to get other people’s opinions. Especially if you have a significant other who is going to have to live with your decision as much as you do.

I have tried many different types colognes.  There are a few that were 10 bucks at a drug store, and others that were over 500 dollars in a nice perfumeries or high end department store.  One thing I’ve learned is that there isn’t a direct correlation between how expensive the scent is and how good it smells.

Having said that, some of my favorite colognes are very expensive.  But I have to try on about 30 samples of expensive or less expensive bottle before I find something I like.

This brings up another point, you have wear it before you buy it.  Everyone has different body chemistry and what might smell great on one person may not smell great on someone else.  Another problem is certain parts of the smell may wear off before others, so for the first 30 minutes it may smell great but after an hour the leftover scents don’t work well together.

I usually go in and try the two scents that smell the best on paper and try one out on each arm.  This is a slow process, unless you’re trying cologne everyday it’s going to take weeks or months before you find something that really works for you.  It’s worth it though. It is very often the case that I walk in and try something on that I thought smelled good sprayed on a paper tester and an hour later I’m embarrassed to be walking around smelling like that.

Even expensive colognes/perfumes can smell cheap, especially ones made with a lot of synthetics.  I have nothing against synthetics in general, but some of them smell like you sprayed insect repellent on you.  This isn’t a metaphor, there is a specific scent that smells just like insect repellent.

One problem the more expensive stuff has as well is just because one has lots of money doesn’t necessarily mean they also have good taste.  A lot of the expensive stuff will leave you smelling like an old lady, even it was aimed at men.  I’ve heard it said that because the sense of smell can decrease with age, older people like stronger smells.  They also still may be accustomed to scents from their youth.

So remember, just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it smells good.  It’s very important to try everything on before you buy it.  After you try a few on and smell them in 10 minutes, in an hour, 3 hours, you’ll realize the cologne sprayed on a paper tester might as well be a whole different smell.  The frustrating part isn’t that something great on paper isn’t that good on you, it’s something that doesn’t smell too interesting on paper smell amazing once your wearing it.

There does come a time after all this where I find myself smelling my wrist over and over, and I know I’ve found something very special.