What is Fragrance Layering?
Question: What is Fragrance Layering?
Mimi: Fragrance Layering is important to get the most bang for your buck in always smelling nice. Discover your “Fragrance Personality.” Do NOT depend on somebody else. Don’t copy. What smells great on your friend may be nasty on you. Our personalities and body chemistry are different. When you pass somebody who smells delicious, don’t think that her perfume will make you smell like that.
Go to the perfume counter of a good, expensive department store. Ask the perfume counter ladies about perfume. They will spray some on little blotters for you. Those are nice to carry in your purse, but you want the perfume on YOU, on your own body. The perfume must mix with your body oils, sweat, and other excretions. Try only 4 scents in one day. Spray some on the inside of your left wrist, then the inside of the right wrist. Spray some on the inside of the left elbow and some on the inside of the right. Now walk around and shop. After about 30 minutes the perfumes will give off their scent as they smell on you. You cannot judge a perfume spraying it in the air or on a blotter.
You should be able to eliminate 3 of the scents by selecting the best. Write down the name of the one that you like. Ask the perfume lady what the fragrance “family” is. There are several: Oriental, floral, fruity, white flower, musk, ocean, water, fresh, grass, herb, and others. Oriental like Tabu are terribly heavy on me. Musk and patchouli remind me of my hippy days. So those are out. Ocean, water, fresh, grass are young and clean like my daughter. They are too young for me and don’t seem to last with my body chemistry. I have narrowed my search to White Flowers: jasmine, white rose, honeysuckle, lily of the valley, gardenia, magnolia and ylang-ylang. On you this may be overwhelming.
Go back to the perfume counter again on a different day and try 4 more and select one. As you do this, you will start noticing the differences in the various groups. You may find that you like a light perfume for summer and a woodsy, herbal or heavier one for winter.
Once you have selected your “Family” you will start seeing it all over the place. You will purchase the most expensive perfume or eau de toilet in the favorite scent. These are the strongest forms of scents. Then you will purchase other items to augment the perfume or eau de toilet from a different “house” or brand. I splurge on Dior’s Diorissimo perfume, which breaks the bank. But my eau de toilet, cologne, body spray, hand cream, and dusting powder are all less expensive brands.
As long as I stay in my white flowers family, all the products work together. I can find inexpensive gardenia lotion and spray-on jasmine. Friends can gift me with magnolia or white rose. If I am invited to a candle party, I select honeysuckle.
The layering is the process using a fragrant body wash in your selected scent family, then spritzing after your shower with a body spray in your family. . Follow with rubbing in lotion and dusting with body powder—all from the same scent family. Spray on some cologne then dab a bit of perfume. Because all the scents are in the same family, they compliment and reinforce each other. Your perfume will last much longer this way—both lasting all day and lasting in the bottle so you don’t invest in the expensive stuff as soon.
Tips that our grandma’s used: Put a drop or two of cologne in the hair rinse water. Put real perfume or eau de toilet on a cotton ball and tuck in inside your bra, between your breasts. The heat from your body will make the fragrance waft up all day. Don’t throw away the cotton ball. Use the same one day after day. When you are tired of it, put it in your underwear drawer. Keep bars of unwrapped scented soap in your underwear drawer and between the stacks of sheets in the cupboard. Apply scent to pulse points but IMPORTANT, DO NOT PUT PERFUME ON SKIN THAT IS EXPOSED TO THE SUN. It will cause skin discoloration. This means the old adage about putting perfume behind the ears is OUT!
Mimi Barre is the owner of International Day Spa, 325 Cajon St., Redlands. Send your skin care questions to her at MimiB@INTLdayspa.com. She and her estheticians are available for personal consultations. (909) 793-9080. Past columns of Ask Mimi are on the web at www.INTERNATIONALdayspa.com.
