How scent behaves
Fragrance is the only part of your grooming that other people cannot choose to ignore, so restraint is the entire skill. A scent unfolds in stages. The bright top notes last about fifteen minutes, the heart lasts a few hours, and the base lingers on skin and clothing for the rest of the day. This is why you should never judge a fragrance from a paper strip in a shop. Wear it on your own skin for a full day before buying, since the same bottle smells different on different men.
Concentration decides the dose
The label tells you how strong the liquid is. An eau de cologne is the lightest and fades within a couple of hours. An eau de toilette lasts roughly three to five hours. An eau de parfum is more concentrated again and can last six to eight hours or longer. Two sprays of a toilette is a reasonable dose, and a single spray of a parfum does the same work.
Where and how to apply
- Spray onto clean, dry skin from about six inches away, after you shower and before your shirt goes on.
- Choose one or two warm spots, such as the chest, the base of the throat or the inner wrists.
- Let it dry on its own. Rubbing the wrists together only warms the top notes off faster.
- Keep it off clothing, where it can stain light fabric and will linger through several wears.
- Do not reapply at midday because you can no longer smell it. Your nose stops noticing a constant scent within half an hour, while everyone else still can.
Shared spaces
Many people get headaches, congestion or asthma symptoms from synthetic fragrance, and they will rarely tell you so. In an office, an elevator, an airplane cabin, a car or a restaurant, go noticeably lighter than your own preference, or skip scent entirely. Skip it for interviews, hospital visits and the gym as a matter of course. A man who is clean, in freshly laundered clothes washed in fragrance-free detergent, with a fragrance-free antiperspirant, smells of nothing at all, and that is never wrong. Layering a scented body wash, deodorant, aftershave and cologne on top of one another produces a muddle, so let one product carry the scent and keep the rest unscented.
Tip Store the bottle in a drawer or closet, not on a sunny bathroom shelf. Heat and light break a fragrance down within a year or two, and one kept cool and dark stays good for many years.
