Wardrobe Strategies

My strategy is no strategy at all ... and I like that. I would hate to have to "think" before I bought a scent to see if it fit within the parameters I set for a wardrobe.

I agree 100% with you though on having similar frags. I could've saved thousands of dollars if I limited myself to just a few orientals, ambers, citrus frags, etc.. . I own both Philosykos and Heeley Eau de Figuier and I don't know why except I can't decided which I like better. I also used to own a whole bunch of orientals but after a while, they all started to smell the same to me. So I finally just settled on my fave ... Cartier Must Essence ... and got rid of the rest.

I think having a strategy may be a good idea for some ... just not as fun.

No strategy is still a strategy!

I think that all people have some sort of trend they follow. I am a very oriental person. I like vanilla and sandalwood basenotes. I also go for woody notes, and any combination is wonderful with me. I'm wear heavy scents. I guess that is my strategy but I don't consider it that at all. It is more like a style.

Thank you for this very interesting topic.

For me the 'strategy' tends to be to have seasonal fragrances, and sort of back up list in case something falls off.

First, Fall and Winter. Certain fragrances are best for such temperatures, and I found that some like Arlington by D.R. Harris make no sense in the cold NE winters, where it fades very fast. Yet in the summer, it is very nice, especially when it is quite hot or humid. So winter is JHL and the like. Certain fragrances go well with a tweed jacket as well (Sienna by C&E N.B.).

Spring and Summer for the citruses and vetivers, and the like.

I too get bored with certain things, so I have a back up list of things I am trying or want to try for each season. For instance, I had Gendarme and Creed's Green Valley in rotation for years, but both are now out. I am looking a Acqua di Genoa and Par Four to possibly take their places, but maybe not.

I usually have no more than 5-6 in regular seasonal rotation at any one time, with LV Uomo and Chevalier D'Orsay ready to go on a moment's notice in any season.

Joe

Hi,
I think your strategy is a very sound one, which would represent someone who has excellent taste, but may not want to spend a huge amount of time thinking about, buying, and discussing fragrances.

If you have, say, 11 of them, and don't keep buying (or at least sampling) new ones, it's possible you may run out of topics to discuss, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The discussions here tend to center around things like "what should I buy", "what store is best", "what is the sexiest fragrance", "fragrance X really stinks", "what are you wearing for a formal occasion", "what's a good fragrance for clubbing", "I just discovered Blah-Blah Pour Homme", and of course the omni-repeating "what do chicks dig?" To various degrees, these all have to do with buying more juice, and tend to feed the acquisitive beast. There's subtle social pressure to buy more - the tacit "be like us" you find in any forum. Sort of the price of admission, you could say.

Whatever you decide to do, have a good time, and welcome!
Dave

my strategy is to rebuild my drobe with frags that i really like instead of blind buys.

I'm not sure if it's much of a strategy, but i just buy what smells good lol. I look around for frags with notes i like, then i go and test them out. If i like them i buy them, the only thing I've ever bought blind was Lolita Lempika and Live Jazz, i didn't care much for the Live Jazz. I wear the Lolita Lempika all the time. Other then those two i have tried everything I've bought in store.

I think that you change your strategies with your needs. I've found that I don't have a lot of summer fragrances, so I'm on a spending spree to obtain one or two more summer frags (a fig and maybe a grass). After building a great fall/winter wardrobe, I realized that other than roses and a few fresh scents, I'm SOL for this spring and summer, so off I go to scentiments! I'm also real interested in roses right now. We'll see where it ends up.
- Rich

My strategy is to have a core of fragrances which are the base of my wardrobe that I wear about 80% to 90% of the time. I want to keep this at about 10 to 15 bottles. I then use decants to enhance the variety of my wardrobe and also give me a chance to test something I'm interested in. I want each fragrance to be unique in my wardrobe so if there two which are close, one will soon be on the swap block.

I've found myself more attracted to the more masculine/stronger scents when it is colder and citrus and/or aquatic scents when it is warmer.

I collect the extreme, strange, or unique frags that I come across. There are a few that are pretty run of the mill, but they were usually a result of a blind buy. I find myself unimpressed by anything that isn't smack-your-face new or exciting.


-ben

Reading each of the posts on this thread I want to agree with almost everything (except I still love a blind buy every now and then). I also could write a few pages on the topic.

My strategy has changed a few times. At first I wanted vetiver scents, and only vetiver scents. I was going to make myself into vetiver master.

Then I fell in love with a sandalwood scent. I'll become a sandalwood master instead! No, make that also.

Then I just got tired of those plans and my searching, testing, and buying revolved around the scents mentioned here so much. I wanted to sniff what everyone else was sniffing so that I could understand what they were talking about and contribute to the discussion too. So my strategy was to let Basenotes members teach me by seeking out scents that members said interesting things about.

Then I started wanting to find the esoteric scents from once-big houses. I wanted all the B-side fragrances. Eau de Patou, for example. Equipage (it's not really a b-side), Alain Delon AD Classic, and Annick Goutal Sables, just for a few examples.

Then a spring came and the scents of the earth, the city, and the newly planted or budding flowers were around in the streets and I set myself on a floral scent seeking spree.

Mixed in with those projects were my projects to figure out the different houses. I devoured Diptyque, Caron, and Patricia de Nicolai this way, and I'll try the same with a few other houses.

At another point I fell for tobacco scents and had to experience a bunch of them.

I've got a few gourmands but I've never liked the family much except for Amen. I'm not going to have a gourmand scent phase. I've got a few musks too, but I'm not big on musk and am going to avoid them for the same reason.

That's about the extent of my wardrobe building strategy, or at least several examples of how it works.
Fun thread.
--Chris