PERFUME bottles look so pretty on display. But as you may know by now, leaving perfumes too near a source of heat or sunlight will break down the fragrance and make the perfume spoil more quickly. It’s always recommended to keep your perfume in a cool, dark place away from sunlight, like the closet or even in a box in a room with more even temperature like the living room; not the bathroom or kitchen.
In the same way that heat can affect a fragrance while it’s still in the bottle, it’s obviously going to affect the way that it will smell once it’s on your skin and exposed to sweat and humidity. You might notice that your usual perfume smells a bit different when it’s the rainy season or when it’s high summer. Heat makes perfume oils evaporate quickly, so instead of the notes slowly unfolding over a few hours, they can come off too strong, or worse, start to smell sour.
Here are a few scents you may want to try for summer. Everyone does have different body chemistry, but at least on me, these scents continue to smell fresh and not funky in this heat:
Victoria’s Secret Love
I still love the Victoria’s Secret fragrance mists we’ve been wearing since high school, but on these extremely hot days it seems like the scent is there for only minutes before it’s gone. Love perfume is very different from any of the fragrance mists I’ve tried over the years. The blend of fresh juniper, apricot blush and fresh cotton (they call it a “boyfriend tee” scent) is so unique that it was love for Love at first sniff for me.
DKNY Be Delicious
The shape of the bottle looks quite like the green apple that it is based on, but this has such a mild apple scent; think of the fruit peel instead of a really sweet, ripe apple. This has a number of florals in it, including violet, rose, tuberose, and lily of the valley, but combined with the apple and base notes of sandalwood, white amber and blonde wood, the scent, to me anyway, is more on the green and citrusy side than fruity-floral.
Jo Malone English Pear and Freesia
By the name alone, we know this is a fruity, floral fragrance, but it is very different from the usual combinations out there that smell like candy. Instead of the usual sugary scent that may become overly sweet in the heat, the fresh and mellow top note of pear and middle note of delicate freesias have patchouli as a woody base for a fragrance that’s sophisticated from day to night.