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Will any fragrance grow on you if you give it a chance?

post #1 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:05am
Thread Starter 
What do you think? Will you eventually like (and even love so much) a fragrance if you give it a chance to express itself to you? Certainly there has to be some kind of attraction at first, but let's say you tested a fragrance and you thought it was "okay." Will the fragrance move from being "okay" to "very nice" to "awesome" (or even just stop at very nice) if you give it a few full wearings?
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post #2 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:11am
I think its important to take the time to get to know a scent, but where a scent can grow on you, there ARE scents that I KNOW I will never enjoy wearing despite trying them on a number of occasions. JOOP! Homme and Au Masculin are two of these.
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post #3 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:12am
Some do, some don't, but that's not what you seem to ask, given your use of the word 'any'... So I'd say no, not any fragrance will eventually 'grow' on me, for some are just plain ugly to begin with and will just continue to stay that way.
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post #4 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:12am
This has certainly been the case for me for two fragrances: Penhaligon's Blenheim Bouquet and Hermes' Eau d'Orange Verte. Both are oldworldly citrus fragrances to which apparently my nose needed some getting used to. But I don't believe that you can grow to like every fragrance available provided you put in enough effort.
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post #5 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:13am
Definitely not.

Some just are terrible, and it would be torture to wear them over and over again. Are you listening Don Rumsfeld?
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post #6 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:17am
Thread Starter 
Ok let me rephrase. Will you eventually love anything that you first thought was "okay" if you wear it a few times (for whatever reason)?
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post #7 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mostapha View Post

Ok let me rephrase. Will you eventually love anything that you first thought was "okay" if you wear it a few times (for whatever reason)?

Sure, in fact I'm wearing one right now. It's the original Comme des Garcons. Took me a while to really like this, but now I think of it as sort of a landmark scent.
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post #8 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:42am
I tried Rive Gauche ph on a card first, and thought it was nice but a bit 'old mannish.' I had the card in my pocket all day though, and while sitting at my computer at work kept getting hints of the shaving cream / woodyness in it. I smelt the card again and was intrigued, and tried it on my wrist the next day. I liked it, but not enough to spend 100$AUD on it. But then I tried it again and loved it, and managed to snag a big bottle as a bargain price on ebay

So thats one that definately 'grew' on me!
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post #9 of 20
4/2/08 at 5:59am
Like anything else, it has to be something that forces you to sit on the fence (regardless of first impressions). It was like this for Chergui (too moody), Aoud Lime (lack of experience with ouds), Vetiver Extraordinaire (first vetiver experience) and Gris Clair (tested in the wrong season) - they all had something vague that intrigued me but didn't come across as scents I would bother wearing.

I mostly dislike certain fragrances for the usual reasons (low sillage, poor longevity, too synthetic, not to my tastes, etc.) but sometimes you come across one that doesn't fall into any of these categories. These are the ones that should be revisited from time to time. It took me almost a year to get Arabie and, although I initially found it too much, I always had a sample of it lying around to sniff occasionally.

So, it's worth giving any fragrance a chance but only if it possesses a redeeming factor (no matter how abstract that may be).
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post #10 of 20
4/2/08 at 6:14am
No, some fragrances are just plain vile to begin with. I won't start another polemic about A*Men, but my feelings about that are well known.

What can be difficult is when for example you belong to an online forum like this and the world and his wife likes something and you stand there like the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes thinking the world's gone mad because you think a certain frag is disgusting.

What can also happen of course is that you start off half-liking a fragrance and then end up hating it completely because you've given it a chance and it failed miserably!
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post #11 of 20
4/2/08 at 10:37am
not all, but I think you could be surprised at how your tastes can change over the years, for instance some bottles I didnt like 3 years ago and just kept in my closet are now being used more often
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post #12 of 20
4/2/08 at 10:44am
Burberry London probably. It was a bit too smokey and musky for me, but I'm sure there's a time and place for me to feel otherwise eventually.
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post #13 of 20
4/2/08 at 11:37am
I had difficulty with Dzing. At first. After several wearings, I really started to like it - and eventually got a bottle.
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post #14 of 20
4/2/08 at 1:05pm
There's always the possibility of that happening, although it hasn't happened to me yet..
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post #15 of 20
4/2/08 at 1:36pm
I wouldn't say just because you expose yourself to it more that you'll necessarily start loving it, but there's certainly a chance. There have been many musicians who I thought were alright the first time around and now I go crazy for them.
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post #16 of 20
4/2/08 at 1:54pm
For me, it's really a compromise between price and likeness, if it's something that I only give 7/10, but if its £20, or if it's something I give 9/10 but its £120, i'm likely to snap up the 7/10 and hope it grows on me. Cologne Blanche has done so
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post #17 of 20
4/2/08 at 2:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vivek View Post

For me, it's really a compromise between price and likeness, if it's something that I only give 7/10, but if its £20, or if it's something I give 9/10 but its £120, i'm likely to snap up the 7/10 and hope it grows on me. Cologne Blanche has done so

In my case is more complex than that. I have to consider stuff like diminishing return, how often I am going to use it, for how long, etc etc But alot of times, buying cheaper stuff compromisng more expensive is never worth it and it is usually a waste of money. I had to learn that the hard way (i.e. owning 50 scents and using only 10)

As for any fragrance growon you... again, it is complicated. I do believe that people can have a strong hability of changing their paradigm to like something (of course this is between certain limits). Not wanting to change our taste is something different.
OTOH, I believe that no matter how much I like an EDT, I know that at some point I will either get tired of it or become indiferent to it (use it as a habit, not as an act of apreciation).
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post #18 of 20
4/2/08 at 3:03pm
Terre D'Hermes. I've been on the fence about this one for 3 months. I've worn it 3 times. Two times in the winter and once a couple weeks ago when the weather was warm. It's definitely pretty nice in the winter and fall, but spring/summer, not so sure. I'll try it again later. It's already gotten this far into my testing phases.
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post #19 of 20
4/2/08 at 3:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by HDS1963 View Post

What can also happen of course is that you start off half-liking a fragrance and then end up hating it completely because you've given it a chance and it failed miserably!

This exact thing happened to me with Dolce & Gabbana pour homme. I thought it was just so-so at first, my reservations being that I found it too sweet. So, I started wearing it often, mostly because of its' popularity. Well, you know, I never did grow accustomed to the sweetness. I won't wear it anymore because it literally gags me, and I don't enjoy smelling it on anyone else.
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post #20 of 20
4/3/08 at 12:20am
Definitely that's the case for anything I ever paid for myself. I've had several that went from "God, I wasted my money!" to "Oh, God, the bottle's almost empty! What will I do?" A lot of times, waiting allows my tastes to change. Sometimes, one scent grabs me, and that can help me gain appreciation of another, similar one that I was only so-so about. And I have had some that ripened in the bottle - giving them a slight change that made the difference for me. It's why I never throw anything out.

It works both ways, too. For me, Acqua di Gio went from:

"My wife bought me two ounces of water." to...

"It's such a tiny bottle! Noooo!" to...

"Will this go bad if I never use it?"

But *any* fragrance? I don't know - the ones that I would *not* buy to begin with, would probably not get a second chance.
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