Would you wear the "wrong" perfume?

I use CK one occasionally but mostly daisy by Marc Jacobs. Neither smelled nice on my ex

Neither smelled nice in my ex

Well quite…

Edited 😳

Were you confessing a secret love for this emsz….

I had a good female friend who said that one of the Givenchy aftershaves / mens perfumes made her instantly wet, almost embarrassingly so.

So I never wear them.

But Global, you said

A molecule or compound that is genuinely sexually attractive.

Surely the pheromone mixes we’ve got of small fatty acids do exactly that? Even if they don’t smell that “nice”?

I occasionally carry the delightful scent of gun oil and fibreglass resin.

A heady brew only slightly ahead of proper four star petrol.

So, marketing aside, what is the difference between a perfume aimed at women and a perfume aimed at men?

What would be a “masculine” scent and what would be a “feminine” one?

Er, no bins 😆

I don think perfume has ever had that effect Moses!!

There are some D&G ones which are very very nice though

I remember when ck1 first came out in the early 90s. It seemed like everyone was wearing it (including me). You couldn’t walk more than a few hundred yards without getting a whiff of it from a girl or boy

I produce my own little love scents occasionally, usually preceded by a little love call.

I work in the perfume industry export concentrated perfume in massive tonnages to factories that make soap and other smelly products. It’s one of those jobs you hear about then you think: “Of course! How does the smell get into my shower gel or shampoo or detergent?”

We employ three chemistry graduates full time on compliance and a large amount of their time is spent in keeping up to date with the latest piece of EU legislation concerning maximum dosages of certain supposed allergens or irritants or whatever that are allowed in a product. We also emply five perfumers and most of their time is also wasted in modifying existing products to fit the latest legislation. Modifications are always done with the customer’s knowledge. As chewkw points out above, you would have to feed several litres of these raw materials to a volunteer for a couple of years before they suffered any harm but that’s EU paranoia for you.

On pheromones, if there really was one that worked we would be selling it by the shipload, believe me! The aphrodisiac effect is entirely in people’s heads, as far as we can tell!

On male vs.female, female perfumes are usually more floral in character with subtle woody and musky notes to give substantivity on the skin whereas men’s perfumes are usualy fresher and more citrussy or woody, without the floral notes – with a few notable exceptions.

Somebody mentioned Cool Water – this is technically a very interesting perfume in that the perfumer used some materials called Galbex, precylemone B, Calone 1951 and di-hydro myrcenol, which had only been used until then to give freshness in things like fabric conditioners and at tiny dosages like 0.01%. In Cool Water they were employed at unprecedentedly high dosages of up to 4%, which is what gave Cool water that amazing fresh ozonic smell. The benefit to consumers is that those materials were never sold for use in luxury perfumes so they are cheap, which is why soon after Cool water was launched the supermarket shelves were full of cheap masculine toiletries with very good copies of Cool Water in them.

I smell gorgeous in Chanel #19

I don’t wear it but, God, I’m irresistible when I squirt it on in airports 😀

allthegear – Member

No – it really doesn’t last two years. it goes off quicker than that…

You mean I need to have a bath more than every 2 years?…FFS

Old Spice Classic … I like. Got few bottles of those now.

Ya, I would do her wearing Old Spice … 😆

globalti – Member

I work in the perfume industry

So what ‘shelf life’ do they have on average?

Allergic rhinitis…most perfumes are intolerable, but especially floral ones. Walking through the front of any department store is painful.

I had an ex burd who used to ‘wear’ a mans’s one that I was racking my brains trying to remember till I read

annebr – Member

I occasionally wear Aramis

that was it. It worked quite well on her I think

I was going to say yes – I bought a bottle of Hermes Jardin sur le Toit perfume at duty free last month.

However I’ve just Googled it and it turns out its unisex anyway.

http://usa.hermes.com/perfumes/to-share/jardins-collection/jardin-sur-le-toit.html

On shelf life: perfume ages like wine as oxygen and UV get to work on it. Simple perfumes like lemon containing just a few ingredients can go off quite fast but most perfumes contain 30 to 60 ingredients and there’s nothing there in a high enough dosage that it will ruin the perfume if it oxidises. Usually after two years a significant number of consumers would be able to smell the difference between aged perfume and factory fresh. You can delay the ageing process in your alcoholic perfume by keeping it in the fridge.

If you think a department store smells strong, try walking into our heated warehouse where some of the more viscous raw materials are stored at a permanent 30 C to keep them liquid. The stink gets into your clothes and you will still smell when you get home; Mrs Gti always knows when I’ve been in the factory.

If you think a department store smells strong, try walking into our heated warehouse where some of the more viscous raw materials are stored at a permanent 30 C to keep them liquid. The stink gets into your clothes and you will still smell when you get home. Mrs Gti always know when I’ve been in the factory.

My mum used to be a nurse in a hospital which was next to an industrial perfumes plant and she says you could always tell when they’d had an accident on site as within seconds of the patient coming into A&E the whole place would stink to the point where it stang your nose and people would be rushing to open windows.

I do, I was Christmas shopping many moons ago with a friend who wanted to buy some for her dad, used me as a guinea pig, and I really liked Ultraviolet for men so now that’s my go-to fragrance. Maybe I am butch.. think I am too camp for that though!

Some of the raw materials are so strong that we use them as 5% or 2% dilutions in an odourless solvent for ease of dosing, added to a mixture at say 0.1% and then the finished perfume used in a product like shampoo at 0.5%.

We have flasks of stuff like rose absolute, which are worth $8000 a kilo and smell nothing like rose until you dilute them back down to 1 part per million, which is their original concentration in Nature.

Globalti – bounce me an email please

I think they all smell like crap

I think your nose has a problem. Too close to your arse’ole, perhaps? 😉

Gti: great info 🙂

@ Rusty, do you mean nonce or ponce? I could understand ponce but nonce?

definitely nonce

CountZero – Member

I think your nose has a problem. Too close to your arse’ole, perhaps?

Think it is all to do with all the chemicals so fake and artificial. I hate going near the cosmetic section of department stores often makes me feel sick or gives me a headache.

@ globalgti – Is it just marketing budgets that push fashion house perfume brands at us more readily than those from perfumers (even big ones like Fragonard)? Also do the likes of Fragonard and Molinard produce other branded perfumes under contract for the fashion houses?

There’s a real STW niche opportunity here – Eau de Beardy Singlespeed….

I had a perfume experience recently. While dining with work colleagues in Nando’s (yes yes I know) a group of girls asked me if I’d mind taking a group photo for them. Now, they were all asian and every one of them was hot as hell, so whilst pretending to faff around with a phone I did some comedy zooming but couldn’t bring myself to leave the poor girl with a high def zoom picture of her mates very firm cleavage.

Anyway, at that point in time and where I was standing I was overcome with what felt like the entire contents of Boots perfume counters, and for the first time in my life I couldn’t get past it enough to start some banter.

Obviously I’m getting old, but this to me is proof that the “right” perfume in subtle tones is the way to go.

You shit yourself?

Not this time, no.

Globalti, would love to ask you a techie question but not for general consumption. Could you poss email me?

@ globalgti – Is it just marketing budgets that push fashion house perfume brands at us more readily than those from perfumers (even big ones like Fragonard)? Also do the likes of Fragonard and Molinard produce other branded perfumes under contract for the fashion houses?

I’m not much involved with the couture side of it, thank God, but I did work in Paris for a couple of years. The prestigious perfume manufacturers probably make so much money from a few exclusive contracts that they don’t need to make a loud noise. We never come across them at out industrial end of the business.

The quality couture perfumes are manufactured by anonymous contractors and distributed by huge groups like LVMH who make extravagant profits despite their massive advertising budgets. It is after all the advertising that creates the dream into which consumers want to buy.

I wore the women’s version of Safari for a few years thinking it was the blokes version,…it did coincide with a particularly dry spell….

come to think of it, the bearded trucker at the Rock Cafe in Niagara falls was the only one to ever comment on it,….’Someone sure smells pretty’….. i left quick sharp!

I don’t much like perfumes. Generally they are overdone. Non-perfumed anti-perspirent is my limit.