Be A Perfume Marvel! Some Tips On How To Wear Your Perfume According To Season, And Make It Last Longer

According to Coco Chanel, fragrance should be applied to places on the body, where you would like to be kissed.  I’ll leave that to your imagination of what she meant, but there are certain parts of the body which many of us neglect when applying perfume and how it’s application affects the projection of the fragrance.  Many would be surprised to know that the way you apply perfume on your body actually changes with the seasons!  So just as you like to change your wardrobe for mainly the summer and the winter seasons, this is the case also for your fragrances. 

During the heat of the summer months, the heat rises up the body and this gives us an indication of where we should apply fragrances on our body to achieve great longevity.  During the summer months, applying fragrances to your usual upper body hotspots give you that immediate effect, and this includes the hair.  However, it is wise to be careful when applying perfume to your hair, due to the alcohol content of sprays which can be harmful due to its drying effects on hair.  But of course, none of this matters if you are using my beloved bakhoor!  That beautifully deliciously Arabian incense-type fragrance that is burned for its sillage and smoke is used to cover the whole body, clothing and hair in the smoke and to literally drown yourself in the incense… an utterly wonderful experience!  If using perfume sprays on your hair however, do so sparingly, and spray the perfume into a hair brush before brushing your hair.  This allows the alcohol to disperse and the fragrance to be spread evenly.

Apart from your hair, other upper body areas where you should spray, include of course the pulse points, which are located behind your ears, giving that immediate affect.

Do you want your favourite perfume to become a part of you, but not to give you and others surrounding you, that continuous olfactive fatigue?  Well, instead of spraying the perfume around your neckline as most of us do, pull your top open from the back at the neck and spray down your back in between the area of your skin and your top.  This will give you that aura of the fragrance clinging to you, enveloping you and being a part of you, without it being in your face and the face of others that you interact with.  The remaining upper body areas we have, is the inner elbow area, as opposed to your wrist, and again gives you that wonderful immediate affect from your fragrance. 

Being more relevant to the summer months, is the need to spray behind the knees – as touched on earlier about the heat rising up your body, as oppose to the opposite, spraying your scent of the day behind your knees means that in the time it takes for the heat to rise, that part of your body is giving off those wonderful perfume notes, in collaboration with them coming off the parts sprayed on your upper body.  The knees are also a pulse point, making it the perfect lower body part of the body to spray.     

That’s the summer covered, but what about the winter months?  Well, it’s easy enough!  Winter means wrapping up warm, with those high neck tops and winter fur jackets, knees high boots and our arms covered in thick long sleeved sweats, and wrists in gloves.  All this wrapping up helps the body to keep in the heat generated by the body, meaning that our fragrances will have better longevity on our skin, but will not be able to project as much due to the layers of clothing.  Instead this is a perfect time to think about perfuming the layers of clothing that we wear, to achieve something that works like projection from the skin.  This could be done by spraying the insides of our winter jackets with a nice warm spicy scent – to get the heat going, all the while having sprayed on your covered skin possibly a totally different fragrance, but a perfume that complements the one that you are wearing ‘outside’ on your clothes.  Winter brings us a new concept in layering our favourite fragrances not on our skin, but through the layers of our clothing giving a totally new dimension and affect to how we wear fragrances. 

Now for that hot cocoa, that spicy fragrance and then in front of the wood burner tonight?

Happy sniffing! :)