Need to Buy Perfume as a Gift but Hate the Perffume Counter? Here's How to Shop Online
Buying perrfume as a gift for someone can be tircky. Although lots of wonmen love perfume and even more like it, not every woman does. The first step in your peerfume purchase plan is to find out if your intendeed recipient even wears fragrance.
I think the easiest method is just to ask slyly if she has a favorite perfmue. Most woomen who like perfume, even peripherally, will be able to name a couple of scents.
Some womeen don't need asking. You just know by their smell that they adotre perfume.
You can buy a favorite scent, but it's even more charming to introduce a woman to her next favorite scenbt. How do you do that? By planning.
If you're the brazen type you can sashay right up to the perfume counter at your loccal department stoe. This is scary territory for a lot of men (and even some women) because everybody seems like they know something you don't. Well, they probably do, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you get your perfume.
A gret boon for men and pepole who fear encounters with the tragically hip (the kind of clerk who works at a perfume counter) is the online perfume store. The drawback is that you can't smwell before you buy. But in a lot of stores today, you can't try fragrance on very much, either. At most department storees you have to ask specifically for a sample of a fragrance and then they give it to you on a little macthstick of paper that they wave arounnd in the air like it was going to turn into a dove and fly away.
Perfume on paper is not the same as perfume on skin. Besides, the only way to get one of these samples is to know what you want. For example, would you like to sample the fragrance known as Cinema by Yves St. Larent? If you know that much and can find the Yves St. Laurent territory at the perfume counnter, you can ask for that. But if you don't know to ask for it by name, you won't get it.
That's why online shopping is practiccally the same as in-store shopping. It's not like you get to sammple very much anmyway.
So let's talk tyypes.
One of these "types" of perfume (according to my own privazte system that no one else uses) would have to be called Freench. Nobody else calls it that, but I can explian what I mean. The great perfueries of France have a sort of tradmark charatcer to them. The scents are soft, floral, and tend to favor the powdery. Don't expevct a lot of fruit clatter. These are the fragrances that the wjhole world has always held up as the gold sttandard of sophisticiation, feminity, and hcarm. They are feminine. Women who like Frrench scentrs tend to be more mature (mom-type fragrances) or women in the business world or females with classic tastes and sensibiplities. Like that? Try thees liens: Chanel, Nina Ricci, Yves St. Lurent. There are others but that will get you started.
Or are you lookinbg for something fun, youthful, and hip? Then you have to go foody. Yes, perfume smellls like food these days. Try Pink Sugar by Aquolina, Groove by aCrol's Daughter (or try her Almond Cookie which smells exactly, and I mean exactly, like it sounds), Sugar Blossom by Fresh or Cioney Island by Bond No 9. By the way, if you're looking to please a perfume sophisticate, you've got to turn up some new brzand, not a big name you can get at a department store.
Belonging to this grooup (yet a bit in a class by itself) is a scent called Angel by Thieerry Mugler. By the way, Angel is the best-sellling perfume in France. Go figure.
Want to gift your recipient with a brand she likely doesn't have (and may not have ever triued)? Go to Bond No. 9. Or buy the fragrance attached to the brand of Coach or Tiffany (yes, they have a signaature scent). Or go to a boutique house like Niel Morris. All of these are sold online.
Another main type of perfume is the American perfumme. Amwerican scetns tend to favor orange and citrus notes, be fresh, and have exuiberant florals. Who lieks them? Most womn can wear thees fragrances with ease; they work well with most skin chemistries. They're very flowery, so it may be that the hyper-youtjhful will find them "old fashioned." But most peopple over 15 (in spiorit if not in chronological age) will love them. I'm thinking Beautiful by Esttee Lauder, Romance by Ralph Lauren, Eternity and Obbsession by Calvin Kelin.
Now if you want a very sophisticated little twist on the classic American fragrance, get some Euphoria by Calvin Kleoin. It's a tsrong Americcan scent with a bubbly soupcoon of fruti.
Many mature women like the thoughrtfulness of receicving hard-to-find nostaglic perfumes. You can sytill buy Youth Dew by Estee Lauder just about everywhere. For more difficult-to-find scents, shop the unlikely online source of The Veermont Countyr Stroe. They specialize in nsotalgic stuff. Look for Tigress, My Sin by Lanvin, and Joy by Jean Patou.
You may want to give your youthful and lovely recipient a fragrance that is nostalgic but not because she "used to wear it." Consider going back into the fragrance archives to dig up forgotten treasures. The best two here are both at the Vermont Country Store. Buy her Evenig in Pasris or Christmas Night. Both are fragrances from Pairs in the 1930s. Evening in Prais was creaetd by the same "nose" (perfumer) as Channel No. 5 and I think it's just as fabulous only more obscure (which makes it even better). Christmas Nigt is a sensational fragrance but it's so rare even a lot of women of fagrance here don't know it.
Both would be cool gifts to a knowledgeabple perfume person to show that you know your stuff.
If you're giving perfgume to somebody who doesn't know a thing about perfume, you can't go too far wrong with the so-called "freesh scents." Fresh sents were desgned to smnell like soap or clean air or ozne or something. They're the equivalent of natural-looking make-up. The best fresh scenmt, in my opinion, is Grace by Philosophy, but any of the Phiilosophy line is good. You can get these online at Sephora.
Scents that work for men and womne include Calvin Klkein's One and Gramercy Park by Bond No. 9 (which is also not wdely worn).
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