Thierry Mugler, Guerlain, Givenchy, Lancôme, Nina Ricci, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Cacharel… With so many perfumes available, deciding on just one can be a daunting task. The vast perfume selection in department stores is impressive, not to mention dizzying, and for a lot of people, finding the right one can turn into a nightmarish experience. Your scent can say a lot about your personality, much like your clothes do, which is why choosing the right one is not something to be taken lightly.

Coco Chanel once said, “A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future.” A woman who wears the right perfume benefits from a certain power of seduction and receives special attention from the people surrounding her, even though she is often unaware of it. Read our tips carefully in order to help you make the right choice.

Take your time
Choosing a fragrance properly cannot, and should not, be done in 15 minutes. Time is essential, not only to find one that you like, but also to try it on. Would you ever buy a car without test driving it, or a pair of jeans without trying them on? Of course not. Well, the same principal applies to perfume. You should take at least three to four hours to try a fragrance on before buying it. A perfume’s scent needs time to manifest itself. If possible, stretch out your perfume shopping over a span of a few days to ensure you sample as many fragrances as possible. The olfactory pyramid is the perfect tool to help understand a perfume’s structure and its evolution on your skin.

Top notes (0-2 hrs): they are the first notes that you smell in a perfume, but are also the first ones to disappear. They then make room for the heart notes, which you start noticing after about two hours. Fresh notes, such as citrus scents, are often used as a perfume’s top note. Heart notes (2-4 hrs): like the name states, the heart notes are at the heart of the perfume, and contain the predominant ingredients. Flowers are usually always found at this level. Base notes (4-24 hrs): finally, the base notes, often composed of vanilla, amber and wood, start being noticeable after a few hours, and can leave their fragrance behind on clothing for up to a few weeks.

Testing method
It is crucial to try on a fragrance before buying it since different skin types (with different levels of acidity) make perfumes smell differently. Even though you might like the way a product smells on one of your friends, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will smell the same on you. Perfume is a very complex substance that is modified by different factors such as temperature or skin’s PH balance.

Step 1: take a whiff of a few scents on strips of carton before spraying any on your person. If you are spraying the fragrance on the carton yourself, distance the bottle about a foot from the carton before you spray. Have a bag of coffee grains handy and inhale after each fragrance you test; this will neutralize the previous fragrances you’ve smelled and cleanse your nose for you to smell others more accurately.

Step 2: out of all the products that you tested, choose the four that you like best.

Step 3: then, apply each of the products on one of the following strategic perfume-testing spots: the insides of both wrists and elbows. That way, each scent will have its own spot.

Step 4: wait a few hours and then smell the four fragrances again on your skin.