Club circle
Choosing a perfume for someone else: clues, families, samples and gift ideas.
The Giving Fragrance circle helps you choose for someone else. Start from the clues: what the person already wears, the smells they love in everyday life, the season of the gift. Members suggest a family to explore, remind you why a sample comes before the bottle, and tell the story of their gifts that worked and those that missed. The Class on giving perfume without getting it wrong sets out the method; here, you apply it to real cases.
16 posts · 12 active members
kemi.cocoain Giving Fragrance · London ·
Memory
Every December my class gives me little homemade things. The one I kept for years was a jam jar of cinnamon sticks tied with red wool, wrapped by a seven-year-old in half a roll of tape. The whole staffroom smelled of it until spring. It's the only present I…
mags.lavender That's lovely. Children put a lot of thought into a smell without ever saying so.
kemi.cocoain Giving Fragrance · London ·
ChallengeSmall challenge for the season, from a teacher who writes thirty cards a year: in each card, put one smell you share with that person. The bakery on the corner, the cinnamon in her kitchen, the rain on the walk to school. It costs nothing, and it's the line…
mo_from_leicesterin Giving Fragrance · Leicester ·
Memory
Our weddings all smell the same: rose water sprinkled at the door, cardamom in the tea, saffron in the rice, and the aunties' attar. My mum's birthday is next month and I've realised I've been smelling her taste my whole life. She wears rose, always rose. Do…
rafa_azahar Hello friends, it is the same with orange blossom in Seville, you know your mother's taste before you know the word for it. Stay with the rose, I…
dex_in_brooklynin Giving Fragrance · New York ·
Questionok so my girlfriend says she hates perfume, but she'll stand over my station sniffing the toasted cumin like it's a spa. what do I even get her. your all going to say a candle
hamish_heather Aye, she doesn't hate smells, she hates sprays. Different thing.
mel_from_adelaidein Giving Fragrance · Adelaide ·
Question
At the cellar door people often choose a region before a grape. Can you do that with perfume, pick a family first and narrow it down from there?
priya.cardamom Yes, that's how the families work best. Start with the Class on the seven fragrance families and their materials , pick one, then look at its…
mo_from_leicesterin Giving Fragrance · Leicester ·
QuestionMy daughter is thirteen and has asked for 'a grown-up perfume' for Diwali. At weddings her older cousins wear something heavy with oud and rose, and that's what she wants. I'm not sure it suits a thirteen-year-old. Any thoughts?
kemi.cocoa I teach kids not much younger, and the ones who wear scent always want what the big ones wear. Mademoiselle Bulle's guide to gifts for a young woman…
ollie.grapefruitin Giving Fragrance · Manchester ·
QuestionOur office drew Secret Santa names early this year and I've got a lad from accounts I've spoken to twice. Is fragrance a bad idea when you don't know someone?
hamish_heather Skip anything that goes on his skin. A wee bag of good coffee is safer.
mel_from_adelaidein Giving Fragrance · Adelaide ·
QuestionSpring's here and my sister turns forty next month. I know exactly which wine she'd pick at the cellar door, but I've no idea what scent she'd wear. Is that any help at all?
hamish_heather More than you'd think. Read a gift guide that picks a woman's perfume by personality rather than age , then match it to what's in her glass.
joon.yuzuin Giving Fragrance · Seattle ·
Scent diaryTL;DR: before buying anything, I logged what six friends already wear. Taken from scarves, coats and the odd hug, no names, no bottles: - two citrus, one of them with green tea - one rose, very soft - two woody, one of them smoky - one who smells of laundry…
ingrid_berlin Laundry is usually musk, see the musk page, from the deer's gland to clean white musks . I wear it since years, all bass, no treble.
kemi.cocoain Giving Fragrance · London ·
QuestionMy little brother turns thirty soon and has never owned a bottle of anything, just the same deodorant since school. I'd love to give him his first proper scent. Where do you even start with someone who wears nothing?
hamish_heather Watch what he reaches for: his coffee, his tea, the jumper he lives in when it's dreich. That's your wee shortlist before any shop.
priya.cardamomin Giving Fragrance · Toronto ·
TipWith Thanksgiving coming up here, my gift list starts now. Before anyone heads to a counter, I ask myself three questions: 1) Do they already wear a scent, and which family is it in? 2) What do they light, cook or grow? 3) Do they want fragrance at all, or…
mel_from_adelaide Question three is the one I always skip, and it's the one Mademoiselle Bulle's gift guide for women takes seriously: it explains why perfume is a…
mags.lavenderin Giving Fragrance · Norwich ·
ReadingMorning all, I finally sat down with the club's Class on choosing a fragrance gift and a cuppa while the rain came down. Two things stuck. Keep the bottle sealed and keep the receipt, because a broken seal can stop you returning it. And look at what someone…
kemi.cocoa The dressing table tip is the one I'll use. My mum's is a little museum.
hamish_heatherin Giving Fragrance · Edinburgh ·
Snapshot
Aye, dreich afternoon and the shop quiet, so I've started wrapping the first presents early. Brown paper, string, old oak from the casks, and a wee bit of peat smoke on everything whether I like it or not.
priya.cardamomin Giving Fragrance · Toronto ·
Exercise
Thread of the week: a scent portrait of someone on your gift list, done before you set foot in a shop. It's the exercise from the Class on giving fragrance without guessing , and nothing goes on skin. 1) Write down five smells that person seeks out: what they…
kemi.cocoa My mum: cocoa, nutmeg, Sunday rice and peas, the cocoa butter on her hands and the sorrel she steeps at Christmas. Amber, amber, amber, then floral.…
rafa_azaharin Giving Fragrance · London ·
Question
Hello friends, I go home to Seville for Christmas and I want to bring my mother a scent. She has always loved the orange blossom water she puts in her cakes, and the trees in our street in spring. Is it too obvious to give her orange blossom again, or is that…
kemi.cocoa Not obvious if it's what she loves. You'd be telling her you noticed.
hamish_heatherin Giving Fragrance · Edinburgh ·
TipAye, a wee tip from behind the counter. Folk who come in buying for someone else do best when they leave with a dram in a sample jar and come back later with the person. Same with scent: two or three samples tucked in a card, and they choose the bottle…
kemi.cocoa Three little vials in a card feels more personal than one big box anyway.