(Part 2) Best products from r/fragrance

Sure! So we're looking for something casual but classy for cooler weather and frrrrrigid winters, all-purpose wear, youthful but not immature, and most importantly, affordable.

Burberry Brit is a very good start. Burberry London might be worth a shot, too. It's sweeter and richer than Brit, trading vanilla powder for sweet, dark woods. A great fall/winter scent.

Tommy Bahama Men (the old one in the kidney-shaped bottle, not the new fruity one in the flask-shaped bottle, Tommy Bahama FOR Men). It's peppery and woody and warm, unsweet, very manly. Similar to Brit except lacking the rose/powder notes.

Versace The Dreamer - give this one a full wear before you rule it out. At first spray it smells odd, almost like rotting pine needles and burning plastic, herbal and spicy and weird. But after a half hour or so those notes fade and work to give a kick to a gorgeous tobacco, floral, and dry vanilla bean heart. Utterly masculine, but not macho or brutish like some stuff.

Bulgari Pour Homme: a slightly musty tea scent with classy florals. Fascinating and unique without being off-putting or out-there.

John Varvatos Platinum - another nice woody that works great in cool weather with a business casual attire. Dark and semi-sweet sandalwood. I am a fan of the entire Varvatos line and his nose of choice, Rodrigo Flores-Roux. They make fragrances that are simultaneously modern and classic, classy but not dated or stodgy. Also try John Varvatos, John Varvatos Vintage, and John Varvatos Artisan Acqua.

Prada Amber Pour Homme Intense - Woody-creamy and a bit red-spicy, it's a really nice designer fragrance. The skin-saltiness of myrrh and labdanum carries a soapy vanilla/amber/floral heart. As with most of the Prada line, it's a bit abstract and chemical-y but in a good way.

As always try before you buy. I'm making some assumptions about your style and taste recommending these.

Here goes the dump:

On perfume industry:

Chandler Burr - The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York - the book that originally got me into fragrances. It is exactly what it says on the cover: an inside look at how mainstream fragrances (specifically Jardin Sur Le Nil by Hermes and Lovely by S J Parker) are developed.

Jean Claude Ellena - Diary of a Nose J-C Ellena is the head perfumer at Hermes and a part time writer (and a hero of the previous book). This book is more about his personal reminiscences and thoughts about perfumes. He also gives an interesting list of cool fragrance recipes (accords) in the appendix

Jean Claude Ellena - Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent - by the same author. This book is mostly about the industry.

Denyse Beaulieu - The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent This is an autobiographic book from a woman who reeeealy loves perfumes and managed to convinced a famous perfumer Bertrand Duchafour to make a perfume for her. Sometimes reads more like an erotic novel but a good book.

Perfume guides:

Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez - Perfumes: The A-Z Guide - a famous guide, very quirky and opinionated but their perfume descriptions are great fun to read.

Luca Turin's blog Turin is a famous perfume freak and olfaction scientist, he stopped writing, but the blog posts are available for download.

Chandler Burr - articles Burr is a self-styled perfume art critic, who writes for major newspaper and magazines. His articles make a good intro for a layman.

Barbara Herman - Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume This is about collecting antique perfumes. Reads a like a slightly edited collection of blog posts (which I think it indeed is).

Tessa Williams - Cult Perfumes A guide to niche perfumes. I suspect most of the text was written by the brands themselves, because sometimes it has a marketing blurb feel to it. Nevertheless it gives a good overview of major players.

The H&R Books (4 Volume Set) Book of Perfume, Fragrance Guide , Feminine Notes, Fragrance Guide, Masculine Notes, Guide to Fragrance Ingredients It doesn't say all that much about each perfumes, just the notes, but what it lacks in depth it makes up in breadth.

Michael Edwards - Fragrances of The World - another huge compendium. Don't have it myself, but looks very solid.

On general olfaction:

Chandler Burr - Emperor of Scent - it's about Luca Turin and his new theory of olfaction. I get the feeling that the technicalities are over the author's head but it's a fun read. Has a lot about fragrances as well.

Luca Turin - The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell the book by the man himself. Fun popular science.

Avery Gilbert - What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life A collection of popular sketches about olfaction, from Smell-o-vision to the way they train police dogs

Gunter Ohloff, Wilhelm Pickenhagen, Philip Kraft - Scent and Chemistry - I havent read it yet, but it comes with high recommendations.

I also have a bunch of books on perfume making, but these probably should go into a separate topic

Some of the best info is held in two books:

The Art of Perfumery, by G. W. Septimus Piesse amazon link here

and

Perfumes, Cosmetics & Soaps, Volume 2, by W. A. Poucher, Vol amazon link here

The first is historical, but very helpful to explain what perfume manufacture was like in the nineteenth century, and how basic accords were made. Also, he gives some very simple and helpful ways to reproduce the scents of flowers which are hard to capture in nature by using other materials.

The second book (by Poucher) is part of a 4-book series. This volume, along with Vol 1, are the most useful. They lay out some of the very fundamental building blocks of how perfume ingredients are made, reconstructed - how to create basic accords, what the essence of accords are, how they are shifted slightly through changes in ingredients, etc. It's a perfect mix of technical information, historical background, and practical advice.

I would also second the info previous posted about consulting the demonstration formulas at GoodScents, and also the DIY forum at Basenotes. The DIY forum can be a bit advanced, but some folks will help you with basic questions - just be sure to first search through their older posts with advice for beginners (I had many questions answered here that I would have spent weeks asking for otherwise.)

If you are actually looking to start studying and making perfume, my advice to a beginner is that there will be a lot to learn ahead of you, and it's best to embrace this as a great part of the process. To this day, I am constantly asking myself questions, learning about new materials, studying new things, finding better ways to work, etc. It's an unlimited field of inquiry. If you're learning all that alongside study of perfumes out in the marketplace, both fields of study will complement each other. You'll begin to understand how fragrances are made, and when you first recognize a scent component being used in a mainstream perfume, it's a bit of a revelation!

Decades of devouring everything I could read, especially technical writing about fragrance and olfaction. And taking every possible opportunity to smell everything that I could, both "perfume" and "non-perfume".

Natural perfumer Anya McCoy has an online course that I've heard is wonderful. You won't learn everything that there is to know about aromachemicals, but you will learn a TON about perfume-making as far as measuring and working with materials, writing reproduceable formulas, testing and creating a finished product, etc. and that is knowledge that is applicable to all perfumery. You can add in synthetics as you desire, but these basics would be an awesome foundation. Also you would learn all about how to turn raw materials into compounds you can work with, like tinctures and enflurages. Here's the link to the course: http://perfumeclasses.com/index.php

A great first start, though, would be to buy her book on Amazon and try some things out at home. It's a great first step for the "home-experimental" type perfumer, who wants to start out by making scents with things you already have and are familiar with. And, it teaches you how to take the scents you create and make other things out of them, not just perfume but also room sprays, bath & body products, etc. Even if you have no interest in becoming a "natural perfumer," it's super-exciting to be able to create a tincture or enflurage of fragrant things that you encounter along your journey. These are skills that all perfumers should have, and she explains how to do it simply, without expensive equipment. The book is called Homemade Perfume.

I haven't tried on a travolo, but I have tried cleaning out various other decant bottles with little success. Isopropyl alcohol seems to work the best, but through soaking and continuously washing I have never been able to completely remove a scent. My advice would be to buy cheaper ones from somewhere like amazon such as this(I haven't bought from this seller but I have several similar to this), or if you just need general decant bottles this website is great, I have used them many times.

Plastic is pourous and the scent is going pentrate it, and all sprayers use some kind of plastic.

Great pickup, I love ADG Profumo. When I wear fragrance, I usually pair it with unscented deodorant like this just to make sure I'm not having a million different smells radiate off of me.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0118MVV2E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ofmZAbTMNJ469
I've used these and they're great, very easy and very clean. Feels like high quality even if it's just refilling a bottle

You may try some from the house of Armaf like Club De Nuit Intense Man or from the house of Cuba like Variety By Cuba For Men. Both are value for money houses with excellent offerings at lower prices.

Yes. I stumbled on it on Amazon, thought it was just star wars marketing stamping itself everywhere, figured it was cheap enough for a laugh and bought it. I fell in love and am seriously considering making it my sig scentXD

https://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Limited-Parfum-Perfume/dp/B01M0NG6TQ/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=star+wars+dark+perfume&qid=1565917128&s=gateway&sr=8-8

Have you tried Amazon? I got my 5ml from there and happy with the quality. Elfenstall is the vendor. They also sell plastic but I prefer glass. Nice sprayer too.

So I'm a big guy and sweat a lot. I've tried all sorts of things, and their were two things that really worked for me.

1. Buy hibiclens (its what doctors use to wash their hands) and throw a couple of squirts on your loofah/washcloth, particularly as you wash your underarms.
   
   
2. Use some form of mineral salt deoderant. I originally started off with the solid stuff, this one in particular, but you have to get it wet for the salts to dissolve which meant it took an extra minute or so to apply. The solid would undoubtedly last a year or more, but I kept dropping it. Then I switched to this roll-on one, the "stick" doesn't last as long, but the application time is now minimal. In both cases they do an AMAZING job of keeping the funk down.
   
   Before I started that regimen, i was kind of funky by the end of the night. After I started, I made it (it was a camping trip after work, not how i normally do things :D ) Fri - Mon morning without a shower, and wasn't nearly as funky as one night before I started.
   
   maybe tmi
   

For amougage, it's just better to get their sample set from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/AMOUAGE-Discovery-Sample-Parfum-Spray/dp/B07D8ZDC8F

https://smile.amazon.com/Elfenstal-Atomizer-Refillable-Fragrance-Portable/dp/B01GAF4DJM?sa-no-redirect=1

https://smile.amazon.com/Rienar-Disposable-Transfer-Graduated-Pipettes/dp/B06XRYZ34F?sa-no-redirect=1

rest is pretty self-explanatory

Aw yes. I have Cuba Black, Orange, Blue, and Red. (I had Gold and I have no idea what happened to it... grump). You can get a set of four for ten dollars, and if you don't like them on you, you can always use them as room sprays or something. I'm big into all of them. Black and Red are definitely winter scents, though.

unscented deodorant is what I usually go for, I have a few others that are basic scents to compliment certain fragrances but I won't wear a complicated scented deodorant with a perfume.

Bought this cheap glass and aluminum set on Amazon and they've worked well for me as daily carries. However, I would not recommend them for air travel; it leaked on me (luckily it was sealed in a ziplock bag). I want to try applying teflon plumbers tape to the threads next time; it supposed to help prevent leaks.

Elife Set of 8 6pcs 6ml Portable Mini Refillable Perfume Scent Aftershave Atomizer Empty Spray Bottle with 2 Funnel Filler for Travel Purse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0118MVV2E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_VVoRyb6V63RPP

https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Refillable-Perfume-Aftershave-Atomizer/dp/B0118MVV2E

Buy some of these: Golf Set of 8 6pcs 6ml Portable Mini Refillable Perfume Scent Aftershave Atomizer Empty Spray Bottle with 2 Funnel Filler for Travel Purse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0118MVV2E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_YUfSBbPB62YGV


Heat will kill it especially with how hot it gets there. I use those atomizers and keep them in my gym bag, etc. Worst case at least if you ruin the frag you'll just ruin like 5ml of it and not an entire bottle.