Finally I caught up on summer. Not only because I went on an eight days Hawaii vacation but also because Northern California’s gods of Nature finally smiled upon us and allowed for a couple of weeks of warm and sunny weather in September.
Have you seen a Kindle vs. iPad commercial where it emphasizes how easy it is to read Kindle even in a direct sunlight when it’s hard to do on iPad due to reflexions? I can confirm the iPad part: you should have seen me trying to read your blogs at the beach! In my beach chair I would curl almost into a fetal position around my iPad trying to cover it by my hat and my arms to see something on the screen. Still most of the time I managed to stay updated (commenting though was slightly harder with a spotty 3G reception).
Since I decided not to do any testing during my vacation both testing and wearing favorite perfumes numbers are unusual: I wore my favorite perfumes much more often than I set as a goal in my NY resolutions but on the downside I didn’t get to test as many perfumes as I’d like.
After reading at another perfume blog about the half of the perfumes in the collection not getting ratings because of not being tested [enough] I got curious about my collection. I have roughly 100 (a hundred!) samples I haven’t tested even once. And I didn’t even dare to count those I tried once or twice and plan on testing again! Of course, some of those that I haven’t tried are samples of mainstream fragrances I wasn’t particularly looking for and might never try (unless one of you sings love to it in your blog) but still.
Quick September stats:
* Different perfumes worn/tested: 64 (-19) on 78 occasions by 34 brands from 7 countries;
* Favorite perfumes worn: 19 on 28 occasions (+9);
* Perfumes I tried for the first time: 30 (-21);
* Perfume I wore the most often – Bronze Goddess by Estee Lauder;
* Perfume house I wore/tested most often: Annick Goutal;
* Most popular notes (only from perfumes I chose to wear, not those that I tested for the first time): top – (not counting bergamot) mandarin, orange blossom and pear; middle – (since rose and jasmine keep that position unchallenged I include the next notes in the list) iris and ylang ylang; base – musk, amber and patchouli;
* Total number of different notes in all perfumes I wore/tested this month: 229 (-39).
Out of all perfumes I’ve tested for the first time during September on 10 occasions I didn’t like what I smelled, on 16 I had a positive reaction and on 7 the reaction was neutral.
Do you care for the country of origin of the perfume you try/wear?
Image: my own
Undina's Looking Glass 
I think the only time I care about the country of origin is if I am traveling somewhere and I want to find something “local”. I was surprised to see how many of yours are French, but when I looked at mine I realized there are many that I do not think of as “French which are French. Interesting!
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I didn’t realize as well there were so many French perfumes. Not untill this morning when I finished enterring information for all the brands I wore/tested in September. Now I have a goal to add that information for all brands I have by the end of the year and see combined numbers for 12 months.
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I agree with anotherperfumeblog. The only time I really think about country of origin is when on holiday. I managed to match my Sicily holiday recently with a couple of decants by Italian houses kindly sent to me by dee and Birgit. Otherwise I’d say most perfumistas’ collections are heavily biased to France.
Hope you had a wonderful time in Hawaii, it’s somewhere I’d love to go to one day, it’s just so far from the UK. You can see from your stats that you had a couple of sunny weeks in September because of the summery notes and usage of Bronze Goddess!
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When I finished my calculations I noticed that I didn’t use any of Italian perfumes in this month. Not that I have too many of those in my collection but still!
France? How about the U.K. perfumes? Don’t you feel patriotic supporting “local brands”? ;)
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Ha ha! No national loyalty when it comes to perfume, only quality! Still haven’t been to a Penhalligon’s shop. I understand Jo Malone is American owned now and I have no interest in Creed whatsoever. I do love OJ Ta’if and Champaca though and want to check out all Roja Dove’s creations when I get a chance.
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I don’t usually pay attention to matching country of origin of scents to country of wearing, though I did give a friend a sample of Carner D600 to wear on his viist to Barcelona. The carbon footprint of that little phial doesn’t bear close scrutiny…
Impressed at your dedication, trying to read blogs on your holiday and under difficult climatic circumstances!
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Carner D600 for the trip to Barcelona? Hm… It’s almost like bringing owls to Athens :)
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