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.
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