(Part 2) Top 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.

Hi guys!

It's me Zoran (zoka) from Fragrantica. Well as you know with 11 million visits globally on 17 Fragrantica language websites understand that fragrance enthusiasts get a lot of input from community. Mainly they would love us to stock all discontinued, rare and hard to find fragrances, allow easy sampling of fragrances and many want us to run retail business and be 'the cheapest of all'.

As you can see people want 'impossible things'. Most of discontinued fragrances do not exist and because of changes in regulations are not eve allowed to sell legally. Rare-hard-to-find fragrances are another bone not so easy to crack basically it is expensive and most of brand owners would not love to see their fragrances decanted so you could expect bunch of trademark violation lawsuits for selling your vial with their trademark name.

And lastly let's say what about service for "common fragrances" like mainstream and niche. If you plan to do what Scentbird did... buy some higher volume of atomizers from Alibaba or some direct deal from China (aka Silicon Valley for production) and let's be clear quality of merchandise can be high no negative illusions there and Scentbird stuff is very good quality. I am subscriber myself mostly to test and experience the service. OK let's say you do not have to spend 5-7 USD on good atomizer you got it in volume for less then US $2. Still you have shipping cost of something like US $5. It alone gets you to $7 plus fragrance plus filling etc.

How to calculate filling for 30,000 subscribers list. First they need warehouse to store boxes with vials for each fragrance they stock. Somebody has to do it manually at first because each subscriber has different preference even if you streamline it it is a lot of labor. Once I had to put 500 winners vials on cards into bubbly mailer, close it, stick shipping labels and we had about 4-5 hours of labor that is extremely boring. In nutshell if you are not going to automate it and do not plan to use prisoners or illegal immigrants to do your filling (This is irony of course but unfortunately many companies do use it) and if you have to comply to all state regulations like dangerous goods warehousing, insurance, etc you are in deep trouble and not much profit is left out of your $15 subscription.

There are some good things many people do not customize their orders but simply get 'fragrance of the month' so they can use that as a marketing channel where brands would give them fragrance for free and even pay to be in that spot and get their samples out quickly and get people talk about them. There is less risk of lawsuits regarding trademark violations if brands want to be there and for that they need volume to dictate rules of the game.

I see Scentbird now as is more like Napster and they have long way but they are moving to become Spotify of fragrance. Yes they are facing competition and their subscription service does not make much money but bottom line is how subscribers are happy how fast they can grow and how long people stay on their list. They have fair shot we will see are they going to make it.

If somebody thinks that they can compete starting from their living room or bathroom with few hundreds of vials that makes little hobby that makes few thousands just because they do not count their labor as expense and they would be much better off renting that room on airbnb then filling it with boxes... but people do not have perspective. They think it is business and they have no capacity to double it and they do not even have idea how it would look like if they would have to fulfill 100,000 orders or 1M of orders.

Every here or there I get email from somebody who offers 'perfume sampling service white-lable for Fragrantica'. They say something like this... you just need to put sample this fragrance button and payment sales funnel and we will send samples to customers you pay us once per month in batch etc. Sounds good? Yes but when I was doing diligence it was exactly what I described above. Somebody's wife/sister/brother/kids is splitting/decanting making vials and selling them on our forum and now they want to take business to the next level.

Well for all of them I would recommend reading the book http://amzn.to/1V1NE3t Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials)

So glad you asked this question as I've been looking for books in the topic for a long time - just recently I came across a book I could not recommend strongly enough: https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Search-Your-Signature-Scent/dp/1784882437


It's a new book released just in April this year in which both mainstream and niche fragrances are listed 'note by note' in clearly divided categories - extremely enjoyable read! It's also beautifully design, imho every fragrance enthusiast would love a copy of this book

Star wars Dark or star wars light. Both on Amazon, less than 13 dollars a bottle if you fall in love. I, myself, love the dark. It's got citrus, Cloves, and Dark Chocolate, but the light side is decent as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Limited-Light-Boxes-Travel/dp/B07WN8GDVY/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=star+wars+dark+perfume&qid=1567124758&s=gateway&sr=8-4

This link if for both, plus some travel sized stuff. I love dark, like Light, Droid is okay, Galaxy is horrid., but since you get those in the travel size, it's not a bad way to try them out.

Dark lasts a long time on clothes, and has mild projection

I've seen this as cheap as $6 on Amazon:

The packaging is cheap as hell, and it doesn't last super long, but it's a nice fresh clean lavender scent. Rumored to be the go-to aftershave of Frank Sinatra. It has a shower gel flanker that's also nice.

Just a note the the H&R set was updated in 1995 to be three volumes. The two "male" and "female" books were combined into one volume, though the rest of the set remained unchanged. Complete sets can be a little difficult to come by in good condition since the books have been out of print for 15 years, but it's worth the effort.

One other than I'd like to add: "Essence and Alchemy" by Mandy Aftel of Aftelier Perfume. It focuses solely on natural perfumery, but she's very knowledgeable.

I think you're not getting any takers because you're pricing it a little high for a 'used' bottle. One can get a new-in-wrapped-box 4.2oz bottle on Amazon for $34.50 and free shipping. If you priced it a little lower, or had extras to add in, you'd probably see more activity.

That said, it's a quality frag, and if I didn't have 75% of my canister plus a sealed backup bottle, I'd probably try to negotiate with you. As for anyone else reading, I'd recommend it. A nice barbershop-style masculine.

Thallium is nice, about $15.

Quorum is under $15 usually.

It's $27, but Euphoria Men Intense is a really nice frag.

/u/acleverpseudonym has his own perfume line. Although sometimes he is a little shy about calling himself a perfumer! You can check out his line here

In terms of making your own, if you are looking for some legitimate formulas to begin with you can check out this site.

If you are looking for a book on how to get started then you can check out Mandy Aftel's book Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume. Although her book is about natural fragrances the same idea can be extended to aroma chemicals.

We also have a fragrance DIY subreddit on here /r/DIYfragrance/.

If you have specific questions do not hesitate to ask, either on here on in the DIY forum, there are more than a few people around that will reply

In my local kmarts and drugstores they sell since I was a little kid these b*ttplug-looking perfumes that were called “Samba”. They came in a bunch of iterations and they were popular xmas gifts for those kids you didn’t know what to give / didn’t really cared that much. Between me and my two siblings we came to own 5.

Samba Natural on Amazon

Another type of perfume I used to use were Avon perfumes. Even thought it is my belief that all the male fragrances smelled the same, they didn’t smelled bad.

Wild Country by Avon

Oh gotcha. I have this which is really good
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Opium-Saint-Laurent-Toilette-Ounces/dp/B000E7YKI2&ved=2ahUKEwiG6MCMxqbiAhVDtZ4KHWasCl0QFjACegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw16I6tJnhJxvxvcC4YmagLi

What is your price range? You'll be hard pressed to find something as nice or even remotely similar.

Check out this on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/JAdore-Christian-Dior-Women-Parfum/dp/B0009OAGQK/ref=sr_1_5?s=beauty&ie=UTF8&qid=1416148033&sr=1-5&keywords=Dior+J+adore

Strange. Most of the reviews I just saw don't specify that they bought the bottle shipped and sold from Amazon. When I view this page all the sizes besides the one that says "6.7 Fluid Ounce" are sold by third parties and fulfilled by Amazon, which I wouldn't necessarily trust.

Cool Water may be an exception, but I can vouch for their stock of Tom Ford Noir (EDT), Hanae Mori HiM, Givenchy Pi, Mont Blanc Individuel, 4711, Terre d'Hermes, and La Nuit De L'Homme all being authentic.

Perry Ellis 360 Red Eau de Toilette for Men 100 ml https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000C1W38O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Fv9yzbVN6HTR6

Dirt by Demeter

If this doesn't do it for you, I don't know what will. Seems to last decently too.

I don’t know if this might be it? https://www.amazon.com/Tudor-Odours-Smelly-Old-History/dp/0199100969

Videomancy - None of you guys are making any sense. It is not "ignorant" to note that the trend in perfumery has shifted dramatically toward "gender neutral" fragrances. This is a fact. It is openly acknowledged by perfumers. Given only three-tenths of a second, Google search will amply demonstrate that.

Nor is it "ignorant" to hope for a re-balance, so to speak, or to prefer...what's the word I'm looking for?...more smouldering scents. Not all of us want to smell like our babysitters used to, or like a nice, happy air freshener.

Now as it happens, I've never had the opportunity to try Slumberhouse Norne, so thank you for the tip. That might be another one to add to the list of hold-outs in a perfumerie world awash with "unisex niceness".

Lastly, I seemed to have touched a big nerve with my comments not only on colognes, but on the surprisingly large percentage of males these days under, say, 32, who seem...underdeveloped. A surprising proportion have very little amibition, very little real world skill (how many can even change a tire?), and not much to offer a young woman. (This again is actually a demographic fact: just as one example, male enrollments in universities are declining, while female enrollments are rising. For more info, see, e.g., "Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys" by Kate Hymowitz http://www.amazon.ca/Manning-Up-Rise-Women-Turned/dp/0465028365).

Do all males need to be macho? No. Is there only "one true way to be a man"? Not at all. Is there something wrong with a man taking up professional nursing (Gaylord Fokker-style), or becoming an interior decorator or a lipstick consultant? No. Couldn't care less.

But I think there is something wrong with a culture which essentially mocks or devalues more traditionally masculine pursuits, customs, outlooks, and skills - and, yes, scents - and I feel inclined to stick up for that sort of thing.