Having the right perfume scent on is, quite simply, intoxicating. It can draw people in and bring out the best in your own personal scent. People have been using perfume to entice and engage for thousands of years. But what works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you. Spritzing on the wrong perfume can just as easily repel those same people. Is there anything as embarrassing as being the person in the room with the smelly perfume?
But what’s really going on here? That perfume you smelled on paper in the store or obsessed over when your friend wore it takes on a completely different profile when it hits your body, and not in a good way. Why? The answer is body chemistry. We all have a particular odor that we emit. What makes perfume so exciting is how it behaves when mixed in with your own personal scent.
Your scent is a unique part of your identity. That’s because a lot goes into it. First, there’s bacteria. The human body is a home for billions of bacteria, and it’s an invisible yet powerful determinant for our scent.
As humans, we produce a lot of fluids, like sweat. Bacteria interact with the fluid we produce and that creates a unique odor which is not always pleasant. Because we all have different bacteria and we sweat in different amounts, the scent changes from person to person. In fact, this can fluctuate by our stress level as well. And depending on how often you bathe, that odor can stick around.
But that’s not the only determining factor. The food you chow down on also influences your scent. When we say that, we’re not just talking about the obvious pungent foods like onions and garlic. Different foods can actually make your sweat smell stronger. Having a plant-forward diet has been found to reduce the odor of body sweat, whereas taking in a lot of carbs or meat makes sweat smell more intense.
Of course, there are ways to change your body scent. Reworking some personal habits like how much of a certain food group you eat or how often you bathe can have a direct effect on the way you smell. But you don’t necessarily need to change yourself – it’s more about picking the right scent that works for you. There is no secret formula for this. The key is simply awareness and a willingness to try things out.
But there are smart ways to whittle down which perfumes will work for you. It starts with testing. If you can find one scent that works well on you, you can then begin with a process of elimination.
Spray some of the perfume on a neutral area, such as a piece of paper. What are the key elements of the fragrance? For instance, if the fragrance has musky base notes, try other scents with a similar base note. If they don’t work as well on you, find the other notes from the fragrance and try fragrances that carry those notes. As time goes on and you find more perfumes that pair well with your scent, you’ll find it easier to identify new fragrances to add to your collection.
Finding a fragrance that you vibe with can seem intimidating. There must be hundreds of perfumes out there! But it’s not as hard as it might seem. And trust us when we say that there is nothing quite as satisfying as finding that fragrance that seems to have been uniquely made just for you. Start your journey by perusing the shelves with us and see what you can find!
