Ongoing pet peeves, part N of X

[serinde]

Today's peeve is: people who load on the perfume/hairspray/stinky stuff so that when they exit the elevator and you enter it, you are trapped in a small room of over-sweet fug until you reach your floor.

Jesus H. Christ, people, you're supposed to be enhancing your own scent, not blowing out the noses of the hounds tracking you.

Comments

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

You know, that's something which I find deeply problematic about shopping for perfume. You can't tell what it's really going to be like until you've worn it for a few hours, so you spritz it on and then, what, go away and come back to the store tomorrow? Feh.

Other problem being, you can only really try on max. 2 flavors at a time (one on each wrist), because otherwise they start getting mixed up.

There must be a better way.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

I try to go with "no scent". If you're gonna try to mask the body's natural odors (which is a worthy endeavor, as anyone who has experienced Game Store Funk can tell you), there's plenty of ways these days to replace it with the smell of nothing at all. Be as clean as you can reasonably manage, use "unscented" deodorants, etc. And Febreze the dog.

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

Someone I used to know is/was a perfume model at Saks Fifth Ave. (Yes, one of those "would you like to try..." people, but he knew what he was doing.)

The way he works it is like this: He asks you what scents you normally like (in general), and what you think you would like on you. Using that information (and he takes a good 15+ minutes to get all that information together), he selects a few scents. Each arm gets a spritz and then you're told to go walking for 20 minutes, so your body chemistry can mingle. Then come back and let him know which one you liked better, and he goes from there. With me, he ended up recommending Angel by Theirry Mugler, and Le Male by Jean-Paul Gauthier. Both scents are really good on me, but my fave by far is Angel. (A chocolate/vanilla/spice concoction made of food-grade essential oils rather than parfum-grade.)

Anywho--if you didn't like what he put on, he'd use an alcohol wipe to remove the scents from your arms. Then, he'd say to come back in 20 minutes again, he'd make sure the scents were gone, before applying the next round--but he was good enough at it that generally the first two he'd have you try, you'd like.