What Perfume Are You Wearing?

Why now? Why the sudden urge to wear perfume?

Anne had no idea what was calling her to seek a fragrance captured in a bottle. She wasn’t put off by the scents infused in her shampoo, body wash or skin lotion. And it had been decades since she was gifted with exotic perfumes with names she couldn’t pronounce and fragrance released only on special occasions.     

Anne gave up trying to figure out the catalyst for this urge and launched into the galaxy of perfume. Her goal was to discover three or four star perfumes to spritz on pulse spots (she recalled how to apply from her exotic perfume days) and let her nose be the judge.   

The adjectives risk-taker, spontaneous or frivolous didn’t describe Anne. So, true to her character she devised a research plan that began with a string of search words to uncover information on perfume for women. The search engine delivered an avalanche of information that would have buried a less determined researcher, but the call to seek a perfume was greater.

Using her organization skills, she filtered through the avalanche of information and discovered her first task was to select a category of fragrance that appealed to her nose. Did she like the fragrance of a flower garden, cut citrus fruit, a pastry glazed with vanilla icing, or that earthy smell that followed a rain?

It was no surprise that Anne selected the floral fragrance category. She grew up surrounded by the beauty and fragrance of flowers her Dad and his brother raised in glass greenhouses and sold to local floral shops. This was a family business started by her great-grandfather and flowers played an important role in her family’s history. 

Her research revealed that creating a perfume wasn’t as simple as squishing some flower petals into a juicy pulp and pouring the fragrant juice into a uniquely designed bottle to distinguish it from its competitors. There was more. Yes, more to this process. There was something about notes.

Huh?

Yes, notes. A perfume contained top, middle and base notes. The top note was the note that opened the act for the perfume. It was a quick introduction designed to make a powerful, appealing first impression. The top note would soon give way to the middle note. The middle note is the “heart” of a perfume and the fragrance released has a long lingering depth that can last for hours and then bows out to give way to the last notes in perfume creation—the base notes. It’s the base notes that allow the fragrance to linger on the skin or clothes for hours. It’s the base notes that are faithful to the expectations of the woman wearing it.

Anne understood a perfume responds to a woman’s body chemistry and the released fragrance is unique for each woman. So, now it was time to sample perfumes.  

Because of the almost infinite selection of perfumes, she narrowed her search to two designers with a history of creating elegant perfume for women. From these designers she selected samples, spritzed her wrist, and let her nose decide.   

There were some with a top note that she found too sharp and some with a middle note that was not what she imagined the floral to be and there were some where the base note just didn’t want to stay grounded on her skin and abandoned her to dissipate into wherever fragrances go.  

But then there was the one. The one with top notes of orange, mandarin orange, bergamot that transitioned to release middle notes of Turkish rose and jasmine that gracefully gave way to base notes of patchouli, white musk, vanilla, tonka bean and vetiver. Its fragrance lingered on her skin and never sought to abandon her. This was the perfume for Anne.

One question remained, When will you wear this perfume?

Anne learned there were two categories of perfume wearing women. There were those with a collection of perfumes they spritzed to suit their mood and women who owned one perfume, a signature perfume. A signature perfume was worn by a woman daily. It’s fragrance became part of her identity. It’s fragrance defined her.

Anne knew her selected perfume would be her signature perfume.  

Why now? Why the sudden urge to wear perfume?

Anne still couldn’t answer that question. She responded to the call to seek a fragrance that would please her but found others drawn to it.

She knew this because they’d ask, What perfume are you wearing?

And that was a question she could answer…