How to choose your perfume?
Coralie Frébourg
More than 1,500 new perfumes come out every year. Enough to make your head spin. So how do you find THE perfume that's truly you among all these standardized scents? Here's our quick, no-fuss guide.
1. Identify the smells you (really) love
Start with what you crave day to day: the smell of coffee in the morning, a freshly squeezed lemon, a brioche straight out of the oven, a forest after the rain… Your memories and tastes are the best starting point.
To put words to what you smell, our Instit Topics guides break down perfumery's main families and facets: floral, woody, citrus, musky… A good foundation for understanding what you like.
2. Don't box yourself in
At Versatile, we don't label our perfumes by olfactory family, so as not to sway your preferences. And we definitely don't sort them by gender: a perfume is neither feminine nor masculine, it's either good or it isn't. Find out more in No more clichés in perfumery.
We'd rather talk about life moments: breakfast (Croissant Café), the date (Rital Date), happy hour (Sea, Sud & Sun), the lazy day (Dimanche Flemme)… Choose according to your mood, not a label.
3. Test on your skin, not on a blotter
A paper blotter gives you a first idea, but a perfume develops differently on every skin. Apply it to your wrist, wait at least 30 minutes, and smell it again a few hours later: it's the base of the perfume that will stay with you all day.
Tip: don't test more than three perfumes at a time, your nose gets saturated quickly. We explain why in Why can't I smell my perfume anymore?
4. Choose the right concentration
- Eau de Cologne and Eau de Toilette: light, they last a few hours.
- Eau de Parfum: more concentrated, it lasts a good part of the day.
- Extrait de parfum: the most concentrated form (20 to 40%), for great longevity. It's our specialty.
5. Pick your way to wear it: roll-on or spray
The roll-on, alcohol-free and oil-based, goes straight onto the skin: an intimate, soft bubble that lasts. The spray diffuses the perfume around you: a sillage people notice. Two ways to wear it, not two sizes. And nothing stops you from layering them!
6. Test at home, no pressure
Choosing means giving something up. So we came up with our Discovery Boxes: you try our perfumes in sample size, at your own pace, over several days, and the price of the box is refunded as a voucher toward your future perfume (in France). Testing costs you nothing.
FAQ
How many perfumes can you test at once?
Three, max. Beyond that, your nose gets saturated and you can no longer tell the difference.
Do you have to stick to just one perfume?
No! You can build yourself an olfactory wardrobe: one perfume per moment, per mood, per season. That's the whole versatile spirit.
Why doesn't my perfume smell the same on me as on my friend?
Because every skin is different (pH, hydration, diet…). That's why you should always test on your own skin.
