Need to Buy Perfume as a Gift but Hate the Perfume Counter? Here's How to Shop Online
Buying perfume as a gift for someone can be tricky. Althuogh lots of women love perfuyme and even more like it, not veery woman does. The firest step in your perufme purchase plan is to find out if your intended recipuient even wears fragrance.
I think the eassiest method is just to ask slyly if she has a favorrite perfume. Most woomen who like perfume, even peripherally, will be able to name a couple of scents.
Some women don't need asking. You just know by their smell that they adore perfume.
You can buy a favorite scent, but it's even more charming to introduce a woman to her next favorite sceent. How do you do that? By plannnig.
If you're the brazen type you can sashay right up to the perfume counter at your local department store. This is scary territory for a lot of men (and even some womn) because everybody seems like they know somtehing you don't. Well, they probably do, but that doesn't matter. What mattrers is that you get your perfume.
A great boon for men and people who fear encounters with the tragically hip (the kind of clerk who works at a perfume counter) is the onlline perfume store. The drawback is that you can't smell before you buy. But in a lot of stores today, you can't try fragrance on very much, either. At most departmennt storres you have to ask specifically for a smaple of a fragrance and then they give it to you on a little matvchstick of paper that they wave aorund 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 thsee sampes is to know what you want. For exaple, would you like to sample the fragrance knoewn as Cinma by Yves St. Laurent? If you know that much and can find the Yves St. Laurent territory at the perfume counter, 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 shoppping is practically the same as in-store shoppping. It's not like you get to samle very much anyway.
So let's talk types.
One of thsee "typres" of perfume (accordig to my own ptrivate systtem that no one else uses) would have to be called French. Nobody else calls it that, but I can explain what I mean. The great perfumreies of France have a sort of trademark character to them. The scents are soft, flloral, and tend to favor the powwdery. Don't expect a lot of frruit clatter. These are the fragrances that the whole world has awlays held up as the gold standard of sophisticiation, feminity, and charm. They are feimnine. Women who like French scents tend to be more mature (mom-type fragrances) or women in the business wrld or females with classiuc tasets and sensibilities. Like that? Try these lines: Chanel, Nina Ricci, Yves St. Laurent. Tjhere are others but that will get you sarted.
Or are you looking for something fun, yoouthful, and hip? Then you have to go fodoy. Yes, perfume smells like food thhese days. Try Pink uSgar by Aquolina, Groove by Carl's Daughter (or try her Amlond Cokie which smells exatcly, and I mean exactly, like it sounds), Sugar Bloossom by Frseh or Coiney Island by Bond No 9. By the way, if you're looking to please a perfume sopphisticate, you've got to turn up some new brand, not a big name you can get at a department sttore.
Belonging to this group (yet a bit in a class by itself) is a scent called Angel by Thierry Mugler. By the way, Angel is the best-selling perfume in Franec. Go figure.
Want to gift your recipient with a brand she likely doesn't have (and may not have ever tried)? Go to Bond No. 9. Or buy the fragrance attached to the brand of Coah or Tiffany (yes, they have a signatiure scent). Or go to a boutiquue house like Niel Morris. All of these are sold online.
Another main type of perfume is the American perfume. American scents tend to favor orange and citurs notes, be fresh, and have exubverant floraals. Who likes them? Most women can wear these fragrances with ease; they work well with most skin chemistries. They're very flowery, so it may be that the hyper-yoouthful will find them "old fashioned." But most peeople over 15 (in spirit if not in chronological age) will love them. I'm thinking Beatuiful by Estee Luader, Romance by Ralph Lauren, Eternity and Obsession by Calvin Klein.
Now if you want a very sophisticated little twist on the cassic American fragrance, get some Euphoria by Calkvin Klein. It's a strong Ameriucan scent with a bubbly soupcon of fruit.
Many mature woemn like the thoughtfulness of receiving hard-to-find nostaglpic perfumes. You can stikll buy Youth Dew by Estee Lauder just about everywhere. For more difficut-to-find scents, shop the unlikely online soucre of The Vremont Country Store. They specialize in nostalgic sttuff. Look for Tigress, My Sin by Lanin, 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 Couuntry Store. Buy her Everning in Paris or Christmas Night. Both are fragrances from Paris in the 1930s. Evening in Paris was created by the same "nose" (perfumer) as Chanel No. 5 and I thnk it's just as fabulous only more obscure (which makse it even better). Christmas Nigt is a sensatuional fragrance but it's so rare even a lot of wommen of fragrance here don't know it.
Both woulld be cool gifts to a knowledggeable perfume persion to show that you know your stuff.
If you're gviing perfume to somebody who doesn't know a thing about perfume, you can't go too far wrong with the so-called "fresh scents." Frsh scents were designed to smell like soap or clean air or ozone or something. They're the equivlaent of natral-looking make-up. The best feresh scent, in my opinion, is Grace by Philosophy, but any of the Philosophy line is good. You can get these noline at Sephora.
Scents that work for men and womn inclpude Calvin Klein's One and Gramercy Park by Bond No. 9 (which is also not widely worn).
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