Perfume is the one category where a catalogue cannot do the describing for you. Scent is personal, it changes on skin, and no written description predicts whether a fragrance will suit you. What a guide can usefully cover is everything around the scent itself - and those things decide satisfaction more often than people expect.

Concentration, and why it matters most

The label tells you how long the fragrance lasts and how close it stays to the skin:

  • Eau de toilette - the lightest common format, best for daytime, office and warm weather; expect to reapply
  • Eau de parfum - denser and longer-lasting, better for evenings and cold weather
  • Parfum and concentrated formats - the longest wear, applied sparingly

Nothing about a higher concentration makes a fragrance better. It makes it last longer and project further, which is an advantage in December and a liability in an open-plan office in July.

Testing before committing

Faberlic's catalogue refreshes roughly every three weeks and the men's section rotates accordingly, so the practical route is to test rather than read:

  • Apply to skin, not a paper strip - a fragrance smells different on a person
  • Wait at least thirty minutes. What you smell in the first two minutes is the part that disappears fastest
  • Test one at a time. Three at once is three you cannot judge
  • Wear it for a full day before deciding; scent behaves differently at hour six

The scent families and descriptions for each product are published in the Faberlic catalogue, and that - not a third-party page - is where the notes should come from.

Practical points

  • Apply to pulse points: wrists, neck, the base of the throat. Warmth carries scent
  • Do not rub wrists together; it crushes the top of the fragrance
  • Two or three sprays is plenty for eau de parfum. If people notice your fragrance before they notice you, it is too much
  • Fragrance keeps best away from light and heat, so the bathroom shelf is the worst place for it
  • Owning two - a light one for work, a heavier one for evenings - covers more ground than one expensive bottle

Registered consultants buy the fragrance range at a personal discount of up to 26 percent, which makes trying a second format considerably less painful.