This Is Not a Perfume

Nothing is worse than choking on another person's perfume, so I apply it lightly. A dab on the wrists and throat, Or a single spritz in the air, which I then walk through.

My go-to's have been Chanel No. 19, L'Air du Temps, Hermès Caleche, Eau de Givenchy and Joy, but I haven't worn any of them with regularity for a while. I kind of forget about using them. And they're a little dated.

So it was fun to find this wee sample in a recent Birchbox and to discover that I really like it. Not a Perfume is, in fact, a perfume, but with a single ingredient: synthetic ambergris. It smells fresh but musky to me, and it lingers nicely. I use just a drop of it at a time, so even this little vial has lasted a while.

I thought about getting a bottle of it, but a couple of things put me off. First, it's about $75 for a bottle that would take me years to get through. Second, many reviewers complained that the perfume from the bottle smelled nothing like the smaller sample.

So I poked around online and found this great little "discovery kit" for $20 that includes a larger, 4 ml vial of "Not a Perfume" as well as seven 1.7 ml vials  of other Juliette Has a Gun scents.

I'm enjoying rotating though them and seeing which ones I like best. So far, I find I keep returning to Not a Perfume.

If you really want to try it, you can find individual sampler vials on eBay. Sephora shops might also have a tester available.

As is often the case, my research for this post led me to an interesting website: Fragrantica, "an online encyclopedia of perfumes, a perfume magazine and a community of perfume lovers."

A community of perfume lovers! It's like Ravelry for your schnozz. Which is pretty awesome. .I enjoyed reading the reviews of my favorite scents.

Interestingly, for some people "Not a Perfume" smells like nothing at all.