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Lately, my TikTok For You Page has been filled with people trying to convince me that my life will be significantly better if only I could identify my “signature scent.” Committing to a singular fragrance means you’ve “peaked as an adult,” according to one content creator; another says it’s a step towards creating a “perfectly chic and timeless lifestyle.” The concept is simple: Find a fragrance that becomes integral to your personal brand, one that you can and should wear every day for as long as you live. Does that sound complicated? No. But it sure as hell sounds boring.
If you’re a signature scent truther, let me ask you something: Would you wear a plain white T-shirt every single day without fail? Obviously not—besides the questionable hygiene practice, wearing the same thing day in and day out is uninspired and oftentimes inappropriate for the situation at hand. You wouldn’t wear a T-shirt to an important job interview, on your wedding day, or even for a first date—so why should your fragrance routine be one-size-fits-all?
I’m not the only one who feels this way. “I think fragrance is the new lip gloss,” says Rachel Green, founder of L’Epoque Parfums. "If you look in your lip gloss drawer, you probably have 15 different pinky-nudes that are sort of the same color profile, but there's something a little different about all of them." When Green was first conceptualizing her brand, she was inspired by consumers (like me!) who were no longer interested in committing to one scent—instead, they’re yearning for a fragrance wardrobe. “They want to change their scent with their mood,” she says, adding that the sentiment is the inspiration behind L’Epoque, a French word that translates to “the era.” Fitting, since each bottle is only 30ml (fragrance sizes are usually 50ml or 100ml) for the purpose of being “used, loved, and eventually left behind.” The point is to create “a small archive of who you were” during a given “era.”
But there are plenty of people who could care less about building a personal scent archive—when I asked for the signature scent devotees to come forward on Instagram, I had almost 30 people swarm my DMs immediately. One of them was Fran, who works in the fragrance industry and has exclusively worn Oud Satin Mood by Maison Francis Kurkdjian since 2023. “It was a blind buy [so I hadn’t smelled it beforehand],” he says. The risk paid off: He hasn’t been without it since. “I do try other things all the time, but I always immediately go back to it." Dena told me she’s been wearing the same scent for the past seven years: Lancôme Idole. Alex says she’s been wearing Prada Candy every day since its release in 2011. “I always get compliments,” she messaged me. Her philosophy: “Don’t fix what’s not broken.”
While a steady stream of compliments sounds enticing, I still find myself drawn to Green’s concept of a personal archive. After all, fragrance has the power to trigger vivid memories, even decades later. That’s something known as the Proust effect, named after writer Marcel Proust who, in his novel In Search of Lost Time, recalled a trove of childhood memories after smelling freshly-baked madeleine cakes. Venkatesh Murthy, PhD, a Harvard University professor who specializes in the neuroscience of smell, tells me this phenomenon may be possible because of the way our brains are structured. “The regions that are important for making sense of smell are also very close to those that store memories and create emotions,” he says.
Throughout my life, I’ve had my fair share of Proustian experiences: Aquolina Pink Sugar, for example, reminds me of middle school dances while Britney Spears’ Fantasy causes my stomach to turn in knots, the same feeling I had when I’d sneak into my older sister’s room to steal a few spritzes. On a less traumatic note, Leila Lou, a light, fruity scent from By Rosie Jane, teleports me to the fall of 2022 when I went to Paris for the very first time with two of my best friends.
Our olfactory system is powerful. But when we inundate it with the same, monotonous smells over and over, do we lose what makes them so special? I ask Dr. Murthy this, but he says there’s not exactly scientific evidence to back it up—he does, however, tell me about a broad concept called adaptation. “When you repeatedly experience something, then you start responding less and less to it in general,” he says. When it comes to scents, people can become desensitized if they’re exposed to the same thing over and over, which, in my opinion, makes dedicating yourself to a signature scent all the more dull.
“To me, it's sort of like eating the same food every day,” says Dominique Astorino, a content creator based in Paris. “I would get sick of that.” Ironically, Astorino runs an Airbnb experience in the City of Love that’s advertised as an opportunity to “find your signature scent” at fragrance hotspots like Guerlain, Printemps Haussman, and Galeries Lafayette. But instead of zeroing in on a singular perfume, she says people often end up buying discovery sets—collections of mini vials that serve as a preview before investing in a full-size bottle—and are more interested in the shopping experience versus finding a fragrance they’ll wear forever.
“There's something cool and chic about having a signature scent, but I think your signature scent can evolve or function as your anchor point of the rest of your [fragrance] wardrobe,” she says. Astorino has an all-time favorite scent—Safanad by Parfums de Marly—but since she has 150 perfumes, she “wears something different almost every day.”
Think of ditching your monotonous perfume routine as a sort of fragrance friction-maxxing. That is, making an effort to disrupt your tolerance for convenience, like reaching for the same ol’ perfume everyday without putting any thought into it. I’m not encouraging you to run out and purchase a roster of perfumes that end up collecting dust on your shelves, but broaden your horizons. Invest in a rotating cast of two or three, and start with a trial size before fully committing to a purchase. “You want to test a perfume in different environments, different climates,” Astorino says. “For women, you want to test it during all four weeks of your cycle because [hormones] impact your sense of scent.”
Explore other ways scents can mingle with each other—hair perfumes! Body oils! Solid perfumes! They can all join together to create a harmony of aromas that’s unique to you. If you’ve already committed to a lifelong partnership with a fragrance, like Allure’s senior beauty editor Jesa Marie Calaor has, try layering. She sprays DedCool Xtra Milk everywhere but her wrists, saving that space to experiment with other scents. “The base is always the same and feels inherently me, while my wrists are more experimental,” Calaor says. “It’s like the scent version of a mullet. Business in the front, party… near my hands.” If a fragrance mullet doesn’t entice you and you still want to stick to a single scent, so be it—when you hit the bottom of the bottle, though, maybe try to find something else to replace it with.
If you’re unsure of where to start, Astorino says to start taking notes (pun intended) on what perfumes you like and investigate what individual scent components repeatedly come up for you. For me, that’s jasmine and musk. Then, look for variations. My current perfume rotation includes By Rosie Jane Rosie for lazy weekends, NOYZ Detour at the office, YSL Libre for nights out, and Parfums de Marly Athénaïs for when I’m feeling fancy. And when all is spritzed and done? I’m excited to see what’s next.
