July 18, 2010

The Road Goes Ever On and On

Hair and Grooming #5 - The Golden Ratio of Fragrance

Perfume and cologne can enhance one's overall appearance. The alluring scent that is complimentary to a person  increases attractiveness, however, when perfume is applied wrong, the overpowering effects can actually have an opposite effect. Through a little perfumeducation and some trial and error you can discover what your personal Golden Ratio of fragrance is.



The first step in learning how to make perfume work (guys, if you still think perfume is for girls and cologne is for men, please read my previous post on fragrances), is by selecting a scent that's right for you. While a certain fragrance can smell just great on a testing strip in the perfume shop, it can behave quite differently on your skin, once it combines with your natural scent and skin oils. Because of this, the only way to be certain a perfume is compatible with you, is to apply one or at most two perfumes, each on a different wrist, and then take a walk outside the shop for at least 30 minutes. By this time the perfume has had time to start evaporating and allow you to perceive the actual smell it emanates from your skin. If you are still pleased with it then you should definitely purchase it.



The second and most important step is the all time cliché, "location, location, location". I have seen plenty of guys getting ready to go out, only to watch them in horror as they sprayed perfume all over their clothes and sometimes even under their armpits.

Spending time taking care of my clothes has made me aware of the effects all our grooming products have on them and the alcohol in perfumes is one of the most harmful of all. Perfumes are mostly always a mixture of different organic molecules that are designed to evaporate at different times, however from skin, not clothing fibers. Without direct contact with warm skin, the alcohol evaporates before all the essential oils have had time to, possibly leaving you with a stained garment.
Now that you know better than to apply fragrances to your clothes it's time you learned about pulse points or the points on your skin where blood flows closest to the surface and are the warmest. Applying perfume to pulse points insures optimum delivery of the scent.

The 6 Male Pulse Points
The 6 Pulse Points are: 1. the temples; 2. behind the ears; 3. clavicles for men and the cleavage for women ; 4. elbow pit; 5. the insides of your wrists; 6. the insides of your knees.

While it is definitely not advised to apply perfume to all 6 pulse points at once, depending on what you are wearing, as well as the weather conditions, here are some patterns I would use:

a) Warm/Hot weather, shorts and a tee: 3,4 and 6
b) Warm/Hot weather, night out, freshly shaved: 1,2 and short sleeve: 4/long sleeve: 5
c) Cold weather, casual: 2 and 5
d) Cold weather, formal: 1, 2, 3, 5 (Remember, perfumes effuse slower in colder weather so don't be afraid to add a bit more than in the summer )
Knowing the essential pulse points will insure you won't stain your clothes anymore and that you'll make good use of your perfume.

Tips


1. It is also important to remember that we are all prone to olfactory fatigue, which means that after being exposed for a prolonged period of time to a certain smell, our nose becomes temporarily desensitized to it. IF you are at any time uncertain of whether or not you are applying enough perfume ask some close friends for advice.

2. In the summer time, hot weather and sweat contribute to an accelerated loss of perfume and if you're planning to be out longer your nice fragrance will start to become unnoticeable. What you may have seen some women do is carry around a small pen-shaped perfume applicator which they use to reapply perfume when out. Here are two such applicators you can use to carry some perfume around if you want to freshen up, as well as a mini funnel if you need to transfer perfume more easily (if your perfume bottle does not open, your only option is to spray and spray into a closed chilled container and wait for the perfume to condensate on the walls after which you can pour it into the smaller bottles)