Why winter vs summer?

Hiya I am new, but have lurked for a while. Reading the reviews here over the past 6 or 7 months is actually what started my journey away from the more typical designer frags and into the lovely perfume realms discussed here. Luckily, I have a step-daughter near my own age who is more than happy to gain ownership of the perfumes I've outgrown and no longer enjoy.

I thought, after breaking my lurking habit earlier today, I might as well ask a series of related question that've been on my mind for a while.

I keep reading about summer fragrances vs winter ones and am wondering if it's just a suggestion as to what season to wear certain frags, or if it's something that's strongly followed. Would it be, for instance, bad form to wear a winter frag in summer?

The reason I ask is that most summer frags that I've tried don't work on my skin - they turn acrid and very sharp. The only summer scent I've ever found that works well on me is "Light Blue." I have mostly "winter" frags in my collection and they're lovely on me in summer. In fact, I get more compliments on them when I wear them in summer than when I do in winter.

This might be skin chemistry, but I also thought it might be sunblock lotions and moisturizing oils affecting the way summer scents work on me. I can't skip on the sunblock - Gibraltar is very sunny - and I can't skip moisturizing oil as I have exceedingly dry skin to the point where lotions don't even begin to help. However, I have been switching around what I've been using to see if summer scents will work on me and nothing seems to help. Winter scents seem to stay the same on my skin no matter what other products I use. With any and every scent I kill sillage, but don't usually have a problem with longevity. It's only the more summery perfumes that go acrid and sharp on me (and Angel, L'instant and Chance - those go quite acrid as well). I don't think it's the sweet notes that go sharp and acrid on me - more the floral? I don't have the nose to identify scents very well. Basically, warm scents seem to work just fine, as do "dirty" or animalistic scents, but cooler ones seem to go pure acrid, sharp and synthetic.

So, after all that random wittering around the subject, my questions are basically these:

Is it ok to wear a "winter" frag in summer?

Know any summer perfumes that won't turn acrid and sharp on someone who tends to turn perfumes that way?

Sorry - got a bit of a giggle out of this bit. I'm actually an American. I lived in Europe long enough that I'm starting to understand what C temps are equivalent to, but after you made the effort of translating to celsius, I had to translate right back to fahrenheit again

I do crave the fresh scents when I smell them on other people, but when I try them on myself they just don't work. I don't even know if Light Blue works on me. I have such a strong and happy scent memory of that one as it was the first perfume my husband bought for me after I moved in with him - I don't think I have the ability to be objective about it. He says it smells good, but he has the same scent memory of it as I do, so....

I could see a white musk working. I think more fruit based perfumes would be alright as well - I've just always been a bit iffy with testing them for fear of them being overly sweet.

It does tend to get hot and muggy here in the summer, but that just means that you can smell perfume on me from two, maybe even three feet away rather than the usual six inches or less

As for the climate, well, Gib is so small, there's no real need to get on a bus or be in an enclosed space. I walk everywhere. Add on top of that, there's no VAT here and there are a lot of tourists. When you walk down the main street it's just perfume shop after perfume shop interspersed with tobacco and liquor shops. A person wearing a single perfume, even a heavy winter one, wouldn't be noticed in the midst of so many tourists who've sprayed themselves silly, or been sprayed near with so many different scents. Many of the locals here are also not at all shy about wearing strong perfumes - perhaps because they have such a plethora to choose from

I married my husband because he is my own personal calculator I suck at maths (still count on my fingers), and he went to Cambridge on a maths scholarship. Calculators impress me but then, I'm a total geek, and am impressed by other geeks.

I'm starting to understand the summer vs winter thing. I've just tried Habanita, and I definitely don't think I would wear this one in summer. First perfume I've ever said that about