A season in 5 ml
How to know a scent before you buy the bottle
A paper strip tells you how a perfume opens. It cannot tell you how it smells on your skin at four in the afternoon, in the rain, under a wool coat. That is what a decant is for: a few weeks of real life with a scent, before you commit to a whole bottle.
How long it lasts
A 5 ml atomizer gives about seventy sprays. At two sprays a day, that is around five weeks: long enough for a change of weather, a few evenings out and the ordinary days in between. A 10 ml is for a scent you already know you love.
Three days, three moments
Wear it on three different days before you decide. Once in the morning, to see how it sits at work. Once in the evening, close to someone. Once on a day you forget about it, to find out whether you notice it at all. The scent you keep reaching for on the fourth day is the answer.
The scent you keep reaching for on the fourth day is the answer
Where to spray
On the pulse points, where the skin is warm: the neck, behind the ears, the inside of the wrists. Let it dry on its own; rubbing the wrists together breaks the lightest notes. On a scarf or a coat collar it lasts longer, and stays truer to the opening.
A first three
If you do not know where to begin, take three that are very different from one another, and let your skin choose.