If My Gigantic Collection Of Perfumes Disappeared Overnight, Here Are The 3 I’d Repurchase Immediately
If you’ve been searching for your perfect everyday scent for a lifetime, honestly just steal one of mine and you’re done.
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by Audie Metcalf
I don’t spend money on vacations. Or shoes. Or anything extravagant really.
But I do own 78 bottles of perfume.
I tell you this both to say it out loud to the world because shame thrives in the shadows and also to use it as a sort of credential to convince you that choosing my favorites from this ridiculously excessive collection is a profoundly difficult choice. And therefore, the three I am choosing must be utterly singular and special and haunting and generate no fewer than seven separate compliments from strangers upon each public outing.
And these three do just that.
So here they are. And I’d like to say they’re in no particular order, but I’m sure the order subconsciously means something. And by the way, nothing about my choices are based on price, and I have many perfumes that are more expensive and less expensive (this one is my favorite very cheap scent*), this is solely which fragrances I would immediately buy again because I can’t live a single day without them.
1. Giardini di Toscana
BoraBora Eau de Parfum
I feel it’s important to “get on the same page” about what notes I usually love and hate, and while I know “gourmand” scents are hugely popular (this just means more edible notes like vanilla, caramel, etc), I am a gourmand hater. I’m sorry if you love them. You can do you, and I will continue to do me. I just typically find them to be sort of simple and juvenile, and while I love those notes in a warm oven, I do not love those notes on my skin. But this unspeakably addictive perfume is the ABSOLUTE exception. Here is the description on the site:
Borabora whisks you through a romantic explosion of flowers: tropical tiare, sweet ylang-ylang, luscious rose, and sultry jasmine. From there, the fragrance drags you into a joyful dance of mouthwatering coconut and vanilla, creamy and indulgent, buffeted by a warm base of elegant musks and seductive amber. Borabora is a celebration, a journey, an invitation to dance - will you answer?
I … don't know if I would be compelled by this copy myself (I found the scent in a discovery collection because I am constantly trying scents) but if you are someone who likes sweet but slightly sultry scents, and certainly if you are someone who does like gourmands, this will, without doubt or hesitation, become your new favorite perfume. The sweet mingles with a lot of different musks, and it almost smells like a faint banana note on the dry down. There is no perfume I’m more addicted to at the moment, and the instant I use it all, I will be repurchasing.
Price: $160
2. Child Perfume Extrait De Parfum
Perhaps our avid readers are not surprised by this one. I wrote an entire love letter to this fragrance here, and I think 12 of you read it. It’s not lost on me that it’s very, very, very hard to get someone excited about a perfume through words alone. Smells are meant to be smelled! So I consider it a personal challenge to be able to thrill you about a fragrance through the internet, but if you “blind buy” any fragrance in your lifetime, this one should be it. It is definitely a white floral, but the notes are so tender and fresh, the overall experience is something like when you’re inhaling deeply while standing next to lilac bush, in Hawaii, holding a shimmering glass of champagne. Never mind that lilac bushes don’t really grow in Hawaii. It is so soft, so innocent, so lovely, the name really says it all.
Price: $150
Byredo Rose Of No Man's Land
Well. It’s come to this. This is the perfume I would submit to you as my “signature” fragrance. To love it, you do have to be somewhat gaga about a rose scent, but it is utterly unlike any other rose scent that exists on this earth. There are notes of pink pepper, white amber, a subtle raspberry, and the dry down is more like a fresh, sliiiightly spicy skin-scent. And even though Byredo is a cult favorite, for whatever reason, this fragrance is never talked about. You will smell like no one else in every room you enter. Except of course if I’m also in that room.
Price: $235
Bonus: Future Society Optimal Habitat Fragrance Enhancing Primer
And if you feel like you spend all this money on perfume and it never lasts, try this. It's a perfume primer that you spritz onto your wrists and throat prior to your fragrance and it makes it last all day. I have it. And it works.
Price: $60
Audie Metcalf is the Editor-in-chief of The Candidly, and lives in LA with her family. You can find more of her articles here.
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