This time of year tends to get chilly and dim early, and the house feels noticeably cozier with a candle burning. A warm light and a familiar scent make the season easier to enjoy. So, today’s question fits the moment well.

Saturday Question #285:

What Is Your Favorite Scented Candle?

Do you repeat-purchase any scent, or do you explore new ones every time you choose the next candle?

My Answer

A flickering light that immediately makes any room warmer. A scent that gradually fills all the available space and lingers long after a candle is put out. Candles are festive, calming, relaxing and romantic…

Theoretically, I love candles – and not only scented ones. And at any time, I have at least 2-3 of them at home. But many years with Rusty, who mercilessly hunted any burning wick from a Hanukkah shamash to a birthday candle, taught me never to leave them unattended. As a result, a candle that is burned for half an hour during dinner and then safely retired to the cupboard will serve me for at least a couple of years. And even if I don’t love them, I can’t bring myself to throw them away.

I rarely buy candles; I use those that I get as gifts from friends or as a GWP. So, I can’t say that I have any real favorites. I do love my Ormonde Jayne Ta’if candle that I received as part of a gift set. But since that perfume is one of my all-time favorites, I don’t want to use it as an ambiance scent. Everything else was fine while it lasted, but I never wanted to repeat any of the candles I finished.

This year, I discovered something I wish I had found much earlier – a candle warmer. I’m sure I was the last one to learn about it, but just in case anyone else managed to miss this trend: it is a lamp that melts a candle placed under it without actually burning it. I love the idea, and it has become part of my daily evening ritual. You can choose the intensity of the light and use the timer. Some models (not the one I got) also allow you to change the distance from the candle to the light. And now I am on a quest to find the best winter candle to enjoy with my candle warmer.

How about you?

What Is Your Favorite Scented Candle?

It feels like this question needs a bit of context. When we encounter new perfumes, we try them, sometimes like them (though more often not), may revisit later or test them in different settings, and eventually either warm up to them or decide they’re not for us. That’s the “organic” path. But have you ever read a wonderful story about a perfume, fallen for the bottle, thought the notes were exactly up your alley, or even gone for a blind buy – and then, unwilling to be fully disappointed after the first sniff, kept returning to it, trying to talk yourself into thinking you probably… sort of… maybe like it?

Saturday Question #284:

Have You Ever Tried to Talk Yourself into Liking a Perfume?

Did you succeed?

My Answer

Yes, I have done it so many times. I realized that recently when, after wearing several perfumes, I got the feeling that I wasn’t really enjoying them — and that made me think back to how they got into my collection. At least several of them were the result of my insistent work on liking them. Today I probably wouldn’t have bought them. But since they are in my collection, I won’t be naming those full-bottle half-regrets. Instead, I’ll mention just several of the significantly less costly results of mental experiments on myself (believe me, there were many more).

Iris Rebelle by Atelier Cologne. I read a compelling review by who back then was my “scent twin.” I like iris as a note in perfumes. I liked the brand. I tried it and kind of liked it. Bought a travel spray. I featured it in the Scent Semantics #7: BRILLIANCE post several years ago, wore it once since then – and never even think about it.

Cuir de Lancome. It was one of everybody’s darlings 12-15 years ago. I liked it, but I liked it abstractly, from a swapped sample and later from a small decant a perfumista friend shared with me. It was still not too expensive to buy back then, but I kept telling myself that I needed to finish the decant first… And whenever it was mentioned on a blog, and commenters would all agree what a great perfume it was, I would again feel a pang of regret for not owning a bottle and try it again, telling myself that I liked it… I never bought it, and once my decant got empty (I’m not sure whether from me wearing it or from evaporation), I stopped thinking about it.

Dom Rosa by Les Liquides Imaginaires. I tried it when I visited one of the local perfumeries and liked it enough to buy it as one of five samples from that visit. But trying it again at home, I could never recreate the same feeling I experienced at the store. Still, it kept popping up for sale at a very reasonable price, so each time I would go back to my sample, hoping to recapture that initial infatuation. I remember my insistence. Luckily for me, I finished the sample and entered a verdict in my database: “Nice but nothing special.”

How about you?

Have You Ever Tried to Talk Yourself into Liking a Perfume?

As we explore perfumes over the years, we tend to collect not just bottles but also fascinating details about them. Whether it’s something about ingredients, chemistry or history, those little bits of trivia add even more charm to our hobby.

Saturday Question #283:

What’s the Most Interesting Perfume Fact You’ve Learned?

It doesn’t have to be an obscure or groundbreaking fact – just something that surprised or intrigued you when you first learned it. Maybe it’s something many perfumistas learn sooner or later, but most people outside our hobby wouldn’t know.

My Answer

I recently came across something called “olfactory training” or “smell training,” which involves regularly smelling some distinct scents (e.g., rose, lemon, clove and eucalyptus) and consciously trying to identify them. Research shows that these simple exercises act like a workout for the brain, helping to keep memory and thinking skills sharper over time. Clinical trials with older participants and patients with early Alzheimer’s suggest that this kind of mental engagement can have measurable benefits.

For example, in one recent study, participants aged 60–85 in an “enriched” group were exposed to seven different pleasant scents each week, one per night, for two hours using diffusers, while a control group received only tiny amounts of the scents. After six months, the enriched group showed significantly greater improvement on a word‑list recall test, and brain scans revealed changes in a neural pathway known to decline with age.

It’s not a treatment for dementia, of course, but at least our perfume habit has an excuse for being indulgent: it’s brain exercise! Time for round two: let’s see if I can finally pick out a few notes in the latest batch of samples.

What’s the Most Interesting Perfume Fact You’ve Learned?

With Halloween just behind us, it feels fitting to bring up something genuinely scary for any perfume lover: discovering that a bottle of a favorite perfume has gone off. It doesn’t happen often with bottles, and mostly we deal with evaporating decants and spoiled samples, but when it does, we’re left deciding what to do with it.

Saturday Question #282:

What Do You Do with a Perfume Bottle That’s Gone Off?

Do you throw it away? Save somewhere? Keep on your shelf?

A bonus question: what was the last perfume that you discovered spoiled in your collection?

My Answer

After our discussion about Italian perfumes in our collections two weeks ago, I felt an urge to wear Prada‘s Infusion d’Iris (EdP), which I hadn’t reached for yet this year. I took the bottle out of its box, did a “control spray” into the sink (sometimes it helps to “clean out” some aged juice from the spraying mechanism), and then carelessly aimed the next portion at my wrist… Luckily for me, it hadn’t become rancid or really unpleasant. But it completely lost the opening citrus, I’m not sure I smell any iris, and even galbanum seems quite muted. My sink was treated to a couple more sprays, after which I applied more perfume to different parts of my body. With the same result. It gets more recognizable two hours into development, but overall, it is not the perfume I fell in love with many years ago.

The bottle still has about 20% of its volume. I do not think I will ever want to wear it in its current state again (as I said, it’s not unpleasant, but it’s not pleasant enough for me to want to put it on my skin). As I calculated from my 2012 post (Alien wears Prada Infusion d’Iris), I bought it the same year it was released – 2007. So, it was a good run. And I cannot make myself throw it away. So most likely it’ll go into my “retirement” box, where I store perfumes that I stopped wearing either because they spoiled or I had a change of heart and didn’t want to finish the remaining perfume, but couldn’t bring myself to part with them. And since that box contains some bottles I got 25 years ago (or even earlier), my old favorite Infusion d’Iris doesn’t have to worry about its fate. Well, at least until the rest of my collection decides to follow suit – and this is a horrifying thought.

How about you?

What Do You Do with a Perfume Bottle That’s Gone Off?

I negotiated with myself for a while whether it’s an appropriate question for a perfume blog visited only by “hardcore” perfumistas. But my curiosity won.

Saturday Question #280:

Do You Wear Perfumes Every Day?

Let’s not count special circumstances, such as being sick, visiting someone at a hospital or being stranded on a desert island. But in your regular life, do you still apply perfumes every day?

My Answer

For at least a couple of decades, I wore perfume daily, sometimes changing scents more than once during the day. Had I asked myself this question 2–3 years ago, the answer would have been an emphatic yes – I couldn’t even imagine staying scentless. These days, though… sometimes I go several days in a row without wearing or even testing anything. I don’t fully understand why. I still like perfume in general; I still love at least twenty (but probably more) scents in my collection. And when I do put them on, I enjoy smelling them on me. But more often than not, I experience choice paralysis when it comes to deciding what to wear.

I’ve tried using a predefined list of perfumes for a week or a month, and I know that works. But then I’d miss creating the next list – and end up back where I started.

It wouldn’t be a problem if I simply didn’t want to wear perfume anymore. But I do! And I feel bad when I can’t get organized enough to enjoy all the beautiful scents I’ve accumulated. Each day I skip wearing one feels like a missed opportunity, and it upsets me.

I think I need to reorganize my collection. Sometimes, even when I know exactly what I want to wear, I can’t find it quickly before my workday starts. Maybe I just need to go back to my old habit of choosing a perfume at night, while falling asleep – the way some women plan their outfits for the next day.

How about you?

Do You Wear Perfumes Every Day?

Smelling perfumes at a store and then getting a sample to decide if we want more, or ordering a sample of a perfume we got curious about, is the regular route new perfumes take to join our collections. But sometimes perfume or beauty orders come with samples we didn’t choose ourselves. This week’s question is about those samples.

Saturday Question #279:

Have You Ever Bought a Perfume from a Surprise Sample?

Would you have tried it if it hadn’t been sent to you? Do you still have that perfume?

My Answer

I came up with this question earlier this week while unpacking a package from Sephora.

The main reason I order online instead of going to the store just a 10-minutes drive from where I live is that I can choose a couple of samples with any order and get another larger sample with a minimum purchase. Had they made it easy to do the same in store, I would have saved them money on delivery and gone to the mall. But since they don’t, I order online. The samples that I choose are always skincare or makeup. I haven’t done an exact count, but it feels like in one out of two orders they substitute the requested sample with a perfume sample. And I don’t like when that happens: I just don’t know what to do with those mass-market perfumes. I try them when they arrive even though I know that I won’t like them. I don’t. And after that, they just sit in my drawer. Unlike a lotion that I can use on my hands or feet if I don’t want to apply it to my face or a makeup sample that is a one-use packet that I’ll try and forget, there’s no use for perfumes I don’t like. But it’s hard to throw away a full sample.

Mentally going through all the years and samples, I can think of a single perfume that fits that question – a long-discontinued Tiempe Passate by Antonia’s Flowers. As I described in the post My First Niche Perfume: Tiempe Passate by Antonia’s Flowers, I got a sample of this perfume with another purchase at a store that didn’t even carry it. So if it weren’t for that random sample, I might never have tried it. I still have that bottle and wear this perfume from time to time.

How about you?

Have You Ever Bought a Perfume from a Surprise Sample?

I planned to ask this question last week, but since I was traveling for the said occasion, my schedule got too hectic, and I didn’t even open my laptop to publish this SQ. But now I know the answer to my question without any hypothetical guessing.

Saturday Question #278:

What Perfume Would You Wear As A Wedding Guest Today?

Consider your current weather, what you would wear and any other imaginary circumstances of attending a wedding tomorrow and choose one of your favorites to scent that joyful event.

My Answer

Until the day I started packing for the trip, I was sure that I would be wearing one of my top 3 all-time favorites, Ormonde Jayne Ta’if. But at the last moment, I went with Armani Prive La Femme Bleue – a choice that felt as elegant as my navy-black gown and just as appropriate for the occasion.

I didn’t abandon my beloved Ta’if, though, and wore it to the rehearsal dinner, together with the brick rose/red silk blouse.

Perhaps it wasn’t me choosing perfumes at all, but my outfits whispering their own picks.

View from the wedding venue

How about you?

What Perfume Would You Wear As A Wedding Guest Today?

Both languages I grew up with were inflected and had a three-way noun-class system – or, simply put, gendered. When I started learning English, it took me a while to get used to calling all inanimate objects “it,” unless, of course, we were talking about ships, other vehicles or abstract concepts like Fortune or Justice.

Over the decades, it became second nature, and I stopped even thinking about a pen being “she” or a pencil being “he.” That is, until recently, when I noticed a trend on YouTube beauty channels: more and more often, creators refer to products with “she,” as in “She is gorgeous!” or “Just look how glowy she is!” while talking about lipsticks, eyeshadows or blushes. It still sounds unnatural to me, but what do I know?

Saturday Question #277:

What Are Your Perfumes’ Pronouns?

When you think about perfumes, what pronoun do you use?

My Answer

In my native language, the situation was slightly illogical. The word духи (dukhi), a native Slavic word with deep etymology that referred to women’s perfume, existed only in the plural – and therefore had no grammatical gender. That didn’t stop everyone from understanding that the product was strictly feminine.

The masculine counterpart, одеколон (odekolon), meaning cologne, was grammatically masculine and, unsurprisingly, intended for men. Interestingly, that word was a loan from French (eau de Cologne), adapted phonetically.

Years of talking, writing, and thinking about perfume in English have taught me that fragrances are genderless usage-wise and definitely inanimate grammatically. So for me, even my absolute favorites, the ones I adore and never want to be without, will always be “it” (in every sense of the word).

How about you?

What Are Your Perfumes’ Pronouns?

Recently, I eased up on my “low-buy” mode and bought a number of perfume samples. I’m still in the process of testing them, and we’ll see if it turns into a post at some point. But as I was adding them to my database, I realized that some of those classified as “woody” didn’t smell woody to me. Neither did many others in my collection formally labeled as “Woody” or “Woody Musk,” according to Fragrantica. So, take this question in any way you like.

Saturday Question #276:

What Are Your Top 5 Woody Perfumes?

You can name perfumes that officially fall under the classification, whether or not you think they smell woody. Or you can go with what your nose tells you, regardless of classification. Or even pick based on the name of your favorite perfumes.

My Answer

I tried to combine two conditions – classification and how I perceive them. And all I could come up with from my fragrance wardrobe were the following three:

• Escentric Molecules Molecule 01
• Sarah Jessica Parker Stash
• Serge Lutens Santal Majuscule (though I almost finished this decant, so it’s down to two)
  

So it seems I am not the biggest fan of wood-smelling perfumes. But then I realized my vSO’s collection is much more wood-oriented. And since I chose most of those for him, it means that I do love these scents – just not on myself. So I easily chose my top 5 favorite woody perfumes for my vSO:

• Hermès Rocabar & Terre d’Hermès
• Diptyque Tam Dao
• Puredistance BLACK
• Tom Ford Oud Wood (this one checks all three “wood” boxes!)

Now it’s your turn.

What Are Your Top 5 Woody Perfumes?