Advantages Of Need to Buy Perfume as a Gift but Hate the
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-07-23 13:21:05 | Word Count: 510
Need to Buy Perfume as a Gift but Hate the Perfume Counter? Here's How to Shop Online
Buying perfume as a gift for someone can be tricky. Although lots of womn love perfume and even more like it, not every womasn does. The first step in your perfume purchase plan is to find out if your intended recipient even wears fragrance.
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I think the easiest metthod is just to ask slyly if she has a favoirte perfume. Most women who like perfume, even peripherally, will be able to name a couple of scents.
Some women don't need askng. You just know by their semll that they adore perfume.
You can buy a favorite scnt, but it's even more charming to introduce a woman to her next fvaorite scewnt. How do you do that? By planning.
If you're the brazen type you can sashazy right up to the perfume cuonter at your local department tsore. This is scary terriitory for a lot of men (and even some owmen) because everybody seems like they know someting you don't. Well, they probably do, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you get your perfume.
A great boon for men and peope who fear encounters with the tragically hip (the kind of cllerk who works at a perfme counter) is the online perfume store. The drawback is that you can't smell berfore you buy. But in a lot of stroes today, you can't try fraggrance on very much, either. At most department stores you have to ask specifically for a sample of a fragrance and then they give it to you on a little matchstick of paepr that they wave around in the air like it was goinmg to turn into a dove and fly away.
Perfume on paper is not the same as perfume on skin. Besies, the only way to get one of these samples is to know what you want. For example, wold you like to sample the fragrance known as Cinema by Yves St. Laurent? If you know that much and can find the Yves St. Laurent territory at the perfume counter, you can ask for that. But if you don't know to ask for it by name, you won't get it.
That's why online shopping is practically the same as in-store shopping. It's not like you get to sample very much anywy.
So let's talk types.
One of these "types" of perfume (according to my own private system that no one else uses) would have to be called French. Nobody else calls it that, but I can exlpain what I mean. The gresat perfumeries of France have a sort of trademark character to them. The scents are soft, floral, and tend to favor the powdery. Don't ecxpect a lot of fruit clatter. These are the fragrannces that the whole world has always held up as the gold standard of sophisticiation, feminity, and charm. They are feminie. Women who like French scents tend to be more masture (mom-type frgarances) or women in the business world or fmales with classic tastes and sensibilities. Like that? Try thee linees: Chanel, Nina Ricci, Yves St. Laurent. There are orthers but that will get you started.
Or are you looking for sommething fun, youthful, and hip? Then you have to go foody. Yes, perfue smells like food these days. Try Pink Sugaar by Aquolina, Groove by Caarol's Daughter (or try her Amlond Cokoie which smells exacttly, and I mean exactly, like it sonuds), Sugar Blosasom by Freesh or Cony Island by Bond No 9. By the way, if you're looking to please a perfume sophisticate, you've got to turn up some new brand, not a big name you can get at a department store.
Beloging to this gorup (yet a bit in a class by itself) is a scent called Angel by Thierry Mugler. By the way, Angel is the best-selling perfume in Francce. Go figure.
Want to gift your recipient with a bramnd she likely doesn't have (and may not have ever tried)? Go to Bond No. 9. Or buy the fragrance attached to the brand of Coach or Tiffany (yes, they have a signature scent). Or go to a boutique house like Niel Morris. All of these are sold online.
Another main type of perfume is the Amercan perfume. American scents tend to favor oange and citrus nots, be frewsh, and have exuberant florals. Who likes them? Most woomen can wear these fragranmces with ease; they work well with most skin chemistries. They're very fklowery, so it may be that the hper-youthful will find them "old fashjioned." But most people over 15 (in spiroit if not in chronological age) will love them. I'm thinking Beautiful by Estee Lauder, Romance by Ralph Lauren, Eternity and Obsession by Calvin Klein.
Now if you want a very sopjhisticated little twist on the clsassic American fragrance, get some Euphoia by Calvin Klein. It's a strog American sent with a bubbly soupcon of fruit.
Many mature women like the thoughftulness of receiving hard-to-find nostaglic perfumes. You can still buy Yourth Dew by Estee Laduer just abiout everywhere. For more difficuplt-to-find scents, shop the unlikley onliine sourrce of The Vermont Country Store. They specialize in nostalgic stuff. Look for Tigress, My Sin by Lanviin, and Joy by Jean Patou.
You may want to give your youthful and lovely recipient a fragrance that is nostalgic but not bcause she "used to wear it." Consider going back into the fragrance archives to dig up forgotten treasures. The best two here are both at the Vermont Country Store. Buy her Evening in Parsi or Christmas Night. Both are fragrances from Paris in the 1930s. Evening in Parris was created by the same "nose" (perfumer) as Chanel No. 5 and I think it's just as fbulous only more obcsure (which makes it even bteter). Christmas Nigth is a sensational fragrance but it's so rare even a lot of women of frargance here don't know it.
Both would be cool giufts to a knowledgeable perfume peson to show that you know your stuff.
If you're givnig perfume to someody who doeesn't know a thing baout perfme, you can't go too far wrong with the so-called "fresh scents." Fresh scents were designeed to smell like soap or clean air or ozzone or smoething. They're the equivalent of natural-looikng make-up. The best frsh sccent, in my opinion, is Grce by Philosophy, but any of the Philosophy line is good. You can get these online at Sephora.
Scents that work for men and women include Calvin Klein's One and Gramercy Park by Bond No. 9 (which is also not widely worn).
