The Case for Wearing Less

There is a particular kind of person who can be smelled from the far end of a corridor. You will have met them. They are rarely unkind people; they have simply been told, at some point, that fragrance is a thing to be announced.

We would like to make the opposite case.

Close enough to matter

The English understood, for a long time, that the best things are discovered rather than displayed. A well-cut coat reveals itself in the way it moves. A good house is known by its proportions, not its gates. Fragrance, worn well, belongs to the same family: something noticed at the distance of a handshake, or an embrace, and not before.

If someone across the room can smell your fragrance, they are not the person it was meant for.

In practice this means less than you think. Two sprays is ample: one at the base of the throat, one at the inside of a wrist. On a cold day, a third on the lapel of a wool coat, where it will last until the coat goes back to the cleaner.

What lasts

A fragrance composed to be worn quietly tends to last longer, not shorter. The loud opening of a modern fragrance is usually its briefest part. What remains after an hour, the woods and mosses and leathers, is where the real character lies, and that is where we spend most of our time when composing.

So wear less. Stand a little closer. Let the right people find out for themselves.