Ask Drugstore Cowgirl
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Gather ‘round! You don’t even need to jot these down!
Greetings, Dames Nationals! Dame Karen’s column on smelling good for less, Drugstore Cowgirl, has been enlivening the inboxes of paid subscribers for a few months now, and we wanted to share a full issue with everyone this week. It’s a little Q&A between us, with Dame Karen as the expert and Dame Sophie the enthusiastic amateur. Think of it as Perfume Pro Tips.
S: What’s the best way to store perfume to…keep it fresh, I guess? Can perfume spoil?
K: YES, it absolutely can. It’s very important to keep it out of the sun. A row of perfume bottles in a window looks beautiful but it’s very bad for the perfume. I keep some very beloved perfume (a set from a trip to Bermuda over 20 years ago and my late grandma’s bottle of Shalimar, her signature scent) in the refrigerator. It all smells just as it did decades ago. (I also keep body spray in there in the summer because it’s refreshing and fun to spray cold scent on!) It’s not realistic or desirable to keep entire collections in the fridge, though, so I have a pretty tray in a shady corner of my bureau for current favorites, an old children’s jewelry box that I use for samples and decants, and several plastic storage bins in a closet and under my sink.
S: oooh, tell me more about storage: I’ve looked and been overwhelmed at how many options there are out there. Do you recommend any particular features?
K: I have Target bins that I randomly found in the Dollar Spot section that are similar to these Container Store extra-small plastic storage bins with handles in the closet and under the sink. It’s easy to look at them and see what’s there and the handles let me pull them out and switch scents in and out easily. Clear ones would probably be even better.
S: I need to get over to my local Container Store and Bed Bath & Beyond to see what looks helpful for me. I want to put things away, and also I want to be able to see them, lest I forget the entire existence of my put-away things. And I need something with some internal structure so my many samples aren’t just scudding around the top of my bureau as they are now.
K: Yes, the children’s jewelry box has been a good corral for me. I also have some cute tiny plates and vintage saucers that I use as “staging areas” for samples that are currently in use.
S: I love these ideas. Do you have any recommendations about what to do when you have too much of a given fragrance? Before I got wise to the 5 & 10 mL decants at sites like Surrender To Chance and The Perfumed Court, I bought full bottles of some great scents I just don’t need in this volume.
K: I have this problem too. If you want to use them up, I’ve had fun and luck adding drops of perfume to unscented oil and lotion and making “sets” of scented products. (This recommendation will come up again in a different context below!)
This isn’t really about sillage, but how could we not use it??
S: How can I boost the longevity of a beloved, but quick-disappearing scent? This one is particularly on my mind because your tantalizing descriptions of the Jo Malone x Zara fragrances you wrote about recently led me to purchase several (your beloved Ebony Wood, Gracefully Madrid, Caviar Bergamot, and Elegantly Tokyo). The very reasonable price points for the 10mL rollerball option made it (too?) easy! So far, I’ve been enjoying Caviar Bergamot and Gracefully Madrid (wearing the latter today) but I notice that the opening notes disappear really fast, they have scarcely any sillage, and they dry down to skin scents very quickly. That can be useful, and I don’t want to have my perfume announce my presence at 10 paces, but sometimes I’d like my lovely-smelling self to project that loveliness with a perimeter larger than 2 inches.
K: Yep, some scents are going to dissipate more quickly than others, particularly if you’re using an eau de toilette or cologne or of course a body spray instead of a perfume/“parfum” -- I recommend those a lot on Drugstore Cowgirl because they are generally cheaper than perfumes but the downside is they don’t last as long. You also never know how various scents are going to react with your personal body chemistry. My skin seems to “eat up” citrus and most white floral notes while orange blossom and vetiver are extremely “loud” and long lasting on me, often overpowering other notes and distorting the perfume! Skin! It’s weird! Scent also loves oily skin, so if you tend to be oily (me) it will last longer than it might on someone with drier skin.
The trick I shared above about unscented oils and lotions can help with longevity. Other classic tips include applying scent while your skin is still warm from a shower, putting down a thin layer of petroleum jelly on pulse points before applying, spray over your hair [probably a bad idea if you have dry hair, but again, you’re talking to ol’ Oil Slick Corday over here], and of course, if your scent comes in bubble bath/shower gel and/or lotion, you can get the whole set. I do this with my fav Bath & Body Works scents, and the lotions and creams in particular help keep what is often a weak scent from the “fine fragrance mists” going. Also, a lot of people like to spray a scent and walk through it as their application method, but the whole pulse points thing really does exist for a reason--they are warm areas that will continue to release the scent throughout the day.
S: Thank you so much – this is all really helpful! I’m going to try warm from the shower, just after applying unscented jojoba oil, and see how we do. And your point about how your skin “eats up” citrus notes rings a bell – that’s a great way to describe how they vanish quickly for me, too. So far, I’ve noticed that vetiver, musk, rose, and patchouli (which I have really come around on since the mid-90s – used with a light hand as a base note, I love it) love to hang around on me. I’m sure others have different experiences. If any Dames Nationals find that citrus lingers on their skin for ages, I’d love to hear about it! Sound off in the comments, friends!
Looking for some priceless advice on cheap perfume? Right this way, friends, Karen is here to help! Yee haw!
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Love this!