Last week when I suggested a virtual experiment with a signature scent to my readers, I decided to go further and actually wear Nature by Yves Rocher – the perfume I selected as my Imaginary Signature Scent for a week.
When I’m at home, I usually do not have a problem choosing what I want to wear. But whenever I travel and have to take perfumes with me I noticed I would be having some type of anxiety attack: I might have 10+ decants with me and still feel like “I have absolutely nothing to wear!”
Since I was still at home I didn’t feel the pressure: there was nobody else to keep me to my perfume choice and I could end the experiment at any point.
I wore Nature as my main perfume for four days. It was still pleasant and not overbearing but I realized that Nature was too simple to satisfy my current tastes, I would want something more complex and multidimensional if I had to wear it for a while. Day five was my work from home day when I usually do not wear any perfumes but test several instead. So I interrupted the experiment. When I resumed it on the sixth day I enjoyed Nature more than for a couple of days before then. I’m not sure why: either because I felt slightly guilty for interrupting the experiment or just because I gave my senses some rest but it smelled much better. Day seven didn’t bring any more discoveries and I was glad that the experiment came to the end. I haven’t changed my opinion of Nature and will be revisiting it once in a while (not the least to handle that beautiful bottle) but I do not think I’m ready to settle down with any perfume.
What about you? Did you play the game?
Image: my own
Undina's Looking Glass 
I didn’t expressly try the experiment but I have semi-signature fragrances in any given season. I usually wear them four days in a row and then take a break for a few days and then go back to them. This summer it has been Sarah Horowitz’s Perfect Coconut Milk. I need to try a few others over the next couple days for reviews but just typing it makes me wish I was wearing it now.
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Four days? It resembles my spontaneous pattern this last week. Maybe that’s a secret for the successful relationship with the selected perfume?
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Interesting to me for 2 reasons: 1) I don’t know this perfume at all – is Nature normally a men’s perfume? I seem to see flankers available but not this one; 2) this is the way I often wear perfumes. Every day for a few days, then a break, then back to it, then moving away for months on end. As I think I’ve mentioned here, when I feel like I know what it smells like, I tend to stop wearing it. Though then there are things I’ll go back to repeatedly for how they made me FEEL as much as for how they smell. I already know how they smell, in other words, and the smell makes me very happy. (Or soothed, or relaxed, or powerful, or calm, or what have you.)
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Nature EdP is definitely a feminine perfume, I wouldn’t even describe it as a unisex one. It’s discontinued now. It was still available in Europe last year but now there is only an EdT version on the U.K. website – I haven’t tried it and the bottle is not as cute as the one I have.
Since I mostly wear perfumes that I own (a bottle or a decant) I usually know how they smell and what to expect from them but I don’t know now how I’d feel wearing them repeatedly.
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I feel better knowing how rarely you repeat-wear perfumes – it would explain how much more testing you do in a month than I do!
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Well it was very theretical game for me. I did think of my ISS and spritzed others in the first 2 days. ISS Trayee also held down 4 days in total over the week.
Back in Feb I wore Autoportrait happily for a month but now I think that having a wider selection means enjoying a wider selection.
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“Four days” sounds like a magic number.
With the selection I currently have I would be able to go for months without repeating my SOTD.
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I played the game, Undina, and “mentally” put on Amouage Epic Woman everyday. My conclusion was that I don’t want a signature scent, but I’m still in an Epic kind of mood. Last night I went to a minor league baseball game at a beautiful ball park in our town, and it was one of those perfect end-of-summer nights where the sky was clear and it got a little chilly when the sun went down, and Epic had such a lovely waft in the cool air.
This morning I smelled it on my sweater and thought it would be lovely to wear it again. But I had an equal desire to put on some Parfum d’Empire Equistrius, which I’d been wearing a couple days before, and the Equistrius won out. So, no signature for me, but I’d say that my very favorite perfumes do get worn frequently.
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After reading your choice I tested Epic as a summer wear: it’s a little overpowering in the opening but then for hours it was extremely pleasant.
Once I was done with my experiment, I went to opposites: complex Amouages. Yesterdayit was Opus I (thank you :) ) and today it was Lyric. All three are much more complex than Nature but I’m not sure I could go with either of them for a week.
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I also went a step further and actually wore my choice for a few days (On one of the days I did wear Marni also on one hand for variety..:)). Then took a break for a couple of days so that I wouldn’t lose my love for Shalimar. Today I wore a bit of the vintage PDT for comparison..I think the reason I dared to choose Shalimar was that I knew I was going to be working from home, so I wouldn’t need to worry too much about the weather, or other people smelling it and hating it. Plus, I wanted something comforting as I was a bit sick.
I agree- I actually need a perfume that is complex enough to be interesting, if I have to wear it for a while. Interestingly though, on my break days I wore Un Lys and CDG champaca which are very easy going comparatively..
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So maybe the perfect pattern is: something complex for several days, then something simpler to recharge and back to the more complex one.
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I can’t imagine sticking to just one fragrance, even for a week, so kudos to your being moderately successful on your experiment!
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I’m happily back to my “new perfume every day” pattern: I have so many perfumes I actually like that I have no difficulties to do switching between only perfumes that I enjoy wearing.
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So great you conducted that experiment. It seems like wearing different perfumes in the meantime makes us like the other perfume a little bit more when we go back to it. Like a break made us miss the smell a little bit!
I didn’t join the experiment. After returning home I needed to hug each of my bottles after 10 days of not seing them.
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I can’t imaging staying without perfumes for 10 (ten!) days :)
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As you can see this is not a problem for me, at least not yet
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I love that you did it Undina but sadly I forgot to because there were a few newbies that I wanted on my skin so I was distracted. The memory of a goldfish here. Sorry.
Amoureuse got a few spritzes in between though.
Portia xx
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It’s OK, dear Portia. It was supposed to be a fun experiment, not a hard work :)
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Yeah I know but it was a great idea. I may come back and do it at a later date.
Portia x
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Let me know if you need any moral support ;)
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Sorry my dear, I didn’t play along…but I did wear Miss Dior in the evening for 3 nights in a row. That’s different for me. Does that count?
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It does! But only because it was Miss Dior ;)
I’ll wear it tomorrow – thank you for the inspiration.
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I meant to wear my choosen scent for the week but failed from Day One. Turns out although I love the beachy feel of Prodigieux, I can only wear when the weather is 25 degrees or higher. I know that sounds nuts. Anyway, should have picked something more flexible like the Dita Von Teese maybe.
I hate that “nothing to wear” anxiety when you don’t have your full collection to choose from.
Well done for wearing Nature as much as you did.
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You see? It’s hard to choose the right one! It’s always something – the wrong weather, the wrong place, the wrong mood :)
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I have a confession: I totally failed. :) I just didn’t want to wear the perfume I had selected (I actually didn’t want to wear any perfume). So I guess for me this was harder than I expected. I’ll have to do another trial and see if there is a magic four-day effect.
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The part “didn’t want to wear any perfume” is a completely novel concept for me ;)
As to the four-day pattern I’m now curious to try it with some other, maybe a more complex, perfume.
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Ha! Well, and today I applied perfume and thought “Now that is so much better. Why haven’t I been wearing perfume?” Sometimes life just seems so complicated that I don’t want to add the potential of becoming annoyed by my perfume. But when the perfume is the right perfume (today it was Orris Noir), then of course it is a totally different story.
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I did it! I literally wore Violet Blond for a week straight and I still love it. In fact, I’ll probably wear it again throughout the week. I think part of the reason I didn’t fall out of love is because I don’t purchase perfume on a whim. I have to be head-over-heels for it to become part of my FB collection, so I could probably wear most of my scents for at least a week straight. Maybe I’ll try doing this experiment with each of my babies, I mean perfumes, and see if any of them eventually get on my nerves.
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My collection is also well thought-through (mostly). But the problem is that I have many “statement” perfumes. At some point it felt wrong to keep buying quiet, day-to-day perfumes so to earn its place in my FB collection a perfume should really stand out (for me, of course). But those are the same perfumes that are kind of harder to wear every day.
I’ll need to wear Violet Blond again (after I wear Miss Dior which I now crave after reading Steve’s comment above) but I’m not sure I could do it for a week – even though I like it.
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I did not do this challenge as I knew it would drive me crazy. I hardly ever crave the same scent for two consecutive days, before I had kids I never even cooked the same dish twice unless someone especially requested it (all my cookbooks are full of notes of more of less successful ways I’ve tweaked recipes). I thrive on variety and I fully acknowledge that fact :)
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I wouldn’t want to cook the same thing twice in a row but I have no problems eating the same dish for 2-3 days. With perfumes it is different and I do prefer to change them every day but I was just curious to do the experiment – and now I’m glad it’s over :)
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Hello dear Undina…mine was a forgone conclusion since my 7-day duration was still within vacation and I had mentioned packing only one perfume (Atelier Cologne Sous le toit de Paris) … but would you believe, I forgot – FORGOT – to wear it the one day I took a day trip to Paris! How ironic was that???
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Well… I purposefully didn’t wear any perfume during my 2 days in Paris since I planned to do as much testing as I could.
What did you end up buying? ;)
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What hajusuuri did in Paris may have to remain secret :-) but I can tell you that one begins with G and the other begins with S. I’ll email you after torturing you for a day or two more :-)
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G-string? G-spot? I’m lost guessing ;-P
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I attempted to play this mental game. And the first few days, my initial choice was “fine”. But, then it seemed wrong as the weather has gotten rainier and cooler. I found myself wanting to wear heavy Orientals! Maybe it could have worked if the weather didn’t mess it all up ;)
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It’s still the same weather here (read “cool summer”) but I’ve also started craving havier perfumes. I want my ambers!
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I was able to wear my Jour Ensolielle for about 3 days. But technically, I wore it more. Sometimes I spritzed it later in the day, over Eau Soleil. I also had some various activities over the weekend that really called for different scents, so I respected that. Jour Ensolielle is not my femme fatale Girl’s Night Out scent, for example.
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I know exactly what you mean! One night during that week when I wore Nature we went to a dinner party and I thought about just re-applying Nature – and then it didn’t feel right for the occasion so I went with another perfume.
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I started out playing this game quite solidly just wearing La Perla EDP -which I had already worn quite a lot recently – then on about Day 3 my bottle of Dita Von Teese arrived and I wore that for the rest of the week, except for the addition of a test spraying of a sample of La Perla Creation that also arrived in the mail – I was very curious to try that one as my friend wore it on her wedding day. Oh and a test dab of Musc by Bruno Acampora that also came last week. So two main scents over the duration, which could just have been one if the postman hadn’t intervened…;-)
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Oh, I forgot…on Thursday I assembled a collection of some 30 perfume samples for a Swedish friend who was visting, a good half of which were auditioned on my skin before making the cut. I was absolutely *covered* in stuff. But that wouldn’t have happened either if she hadn’t expressly asked for them. Could we just pick another week, maybe? ;-)
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You could try another week but maybe if you decide to do it you should test the latest hypothesis: if you wear a perfume 4 days consequently then pause for a day and come back to it then on day 6 (fifth wear) you’ll like the perfume more than on day 3 and 4. ;)
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Of course, it clearly was an evil postman’s fault! ;)
Testing part wasn’t covered by this experiment, only real “wearing” part.
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Dearest U
I didn’t quite play the game… but I did wear the same scent to bed for a week (I sleep with the radio, perfume and a low light on, so I guess it’s questionable whether I sleep at all).
It was perhaps an unusual choice Bensimon Cologne 1993, a patchouli, leather and amber affair.
I’ve always liked it rather a lot, I find the petitgrain in it strangely attractive and out of place, but over the course of the week I found that I found greater complexities in the composition than I have before and, something I hadn’t expected, I started to read and chose other perfumes in relation to it…’wouldn’t it be nice to have a Diorama’s lighter Patchouli this morning’… ‘I’d like something citrus to give the barn a clean out’.
Overall an interesting and worthwhile experiment, though whether I’d be up to repeating it fully awake… well that might just take a little building up to!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
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The same sleep scent wouldn’t bother me (in winter I used SSS’s Fig Tree cream as my night time hand cream so it was with me most nights for months) but light and/or noise would have driven me crazy.
Before today I’ve never heard of Bensimon brand but notes sound interesting and I like at least two perfumes done by Pierre Bourdon.
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I played the game in PHI all week and will continue to play the game this week in Isabel.
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I think a GREATER challenge would be to wear the same perfume for a whole month :)
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I don’t think I’ve ever been that monogamous: even when I had the only (“signature”) perfume in my wardrobe, I couldn’t afford to wear it every day. So I wouldn’t probably date even to attempt that (unless I’m stranded somewhere with just one perfume – but even then I might be inclined to save it for special occasion ;) ).
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I might try to repeat this experiment once again one week, but with my usual pattern of changing perfumes every day it’s a challenge :)
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If you choose to repeat this experiment I will join you…I am all for wearing the same fragrance for one week !
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I am up for this challenge if you ever decide to do it again :)
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You’ll have an unfair advantage: you constantly train for this challenge! ;)
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LOL!!! This is SO true!!!
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