i can’t be the first to say this but the sudden widespread intereset in perfumes in the last couple of years feels like an inevitable, obvious result of the pandemic.
Jan 27, 2023·edited Jan 27, 2023Liked by sympathetic opposition
I am always amused to find that something I thought I was doing on my own is actually part of a larger trend! I briefly got really Into Fragrance in mid-2022 and bought at least a dozen samples from a handful of different parfumeries (which for me is a lot!), and sniffed a bunch more on those little slips of paper at Ulta and Sephora. I was constantly reading about the different aroma chemicals and absolutes.
I do agree that there's something about fragrance--invisible, silent, but very physical and immediate--that's the antithesis of disembodied digital existence. In retrospect I'm not surprised that I was unknowingly tapping into some zeitgeist.
I am always amused to find that something I thought I was doing on my own is actually part of a larger trend! I briefly got really Into Fragrance in mid-2022 and bought at least a dozen samples from a handful of different parfumeries (which for me is a lot!), and sniffed a bunch more on those little slips of paper at Ulta and Sephora. I was constantly reading about the different aroma chemicals and absolutes.
I do agree that there's something about fragrance--invisible, silent, but very physical and immediate--that's the antithesis of disembodied digital existence. In retrospect I'm not surprised that I was unknowingly tapping into some zeitgeist.
here are my two guesses on the lack of sample availability
-it seems to track the decline of department store quality generally
-now that we’ve learned about Good Scents, the same quantity of samples is much less impressive, because we can dismiss most of them immediately