To Perfume or Not To Perfume

Haute Couturier Coco Chanel was once asked, "Where should one wear perfume?"

Chanel's answer? "Where ever you would like to be kissed...."

Jeanne Adams of Romance Bandits says: "Scent is the strongest inducement to memory. Pheremones drive us to passion, to hate, to attraction. Humans have used it for centuries to entice, allure, and decorate the body, both for our own pleasure and to attract the opposite sex." Note, a brief history of perfume HERE.

I love to wear a scent every day. Like the sun, perfume brightens up my day.

In my choices, I find that I am selective and inconstant. My likes don't fall in any family of fragrances (floral or woodsy, etc.), but more individual fragrance by individual fragrance. So instead of buying a whole expensive bottle that I'll end up tossing away, I buy 1 ml samples from The Perfumed Court. They have hundreds of manufacturers from Abdes Salaam Attar to Zadig & Voltaire. If I like what I'm wearing, then I sample their 2.5-ml-sized tubes of the same scent a couple times, and then and only then do I splurge for the big bottle.

One of The Perfumed Court's most popular sample pack is What Celebrities Wear" with over 160 scents, including what Queen Elizabeth II wears.

These are my favorites that I have never grown tired of: Plumeria Vanilla by Island Bath & Body, Tropical Colada by Bath & Body Works Temptations, Basic Instinct by Victoria's Secret, Chanel No. 5, For Her by Narciso Rodriguez, and Neroli by Laura Mercier. I also like the smell of the original Eau de Cologne.

"In 1708, Giovanni Maria Farina, an Italian living in Cologne, sat at his kitchen table mixing up a few drops of citrus oil—from lemons, tangerines, grapefruit, and oranges. He added bergamot and a few chopped orange tree leaves, then some lavender and rosemary, added a tincture of jasmine and a dash of diluted ethanol, and hey presto, he had arrived at a miracle water! He named his fragrance Eau de Cologne, (or ‘Kolnisch Wasser’ in German) in honour of the town where he was living."

Which are your favorite scents? Are there any ones you wear every day? Do you like variety or do you tend to be loyal to your favorites?