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How many of you do blind testing?

post #1 of 17
2/9/09 at 2:26am
Thread Starter 
Lots of us here take this business seriously, but really, how serious are we? Some draw
parallels to wine tasting, which often happen to be done blind. And that to remove any
expectations given by manufacturer, packaging and price.

I have done almost no blind testing with fragrances, unfortunately, but I would like to. To
judge the fragrance solely on scent and nothing else, see if it holds up on it's own merits. Too
often I read reviews colored and cluttered with impressions gained by either the looks of the
packaging, the press material, the name, the nose, the brand... And it annoys me, since it
doesn't feel the slightest honest or genuine to be frank. Just empty bollocks.

Many might say that well I can sure sniff what I sniff, but can we really? Our mind is a
powerful thing when it comes to altering what be accept (or expect) as reality.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone doing any blind testing at all?
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post #2 of 17
2/9/09 at 2:31am
I don't do it, but how do you figure we'd go about this blind testing? In wine, it's usually accomplished through others handing you a pre-filled glass at some official event. I don't really see that working for fragrance sampling...
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post #3 of 17
2/9/09 at 2:39am
I try to blind test all the time...I am never swayed by brand or bottle or juice color...if I like the smell I buy. Period dot. Brand/Bottle/Juice color is just gravy.
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post #4 of 17
2/9/09 at 2:40am
Give it another 10 years - there may be a local Frag-sampling club near you holding blind sampling events. The good part is, you can indulge in as many frags as you want in one evening without getting drunk. Worst thing that could happen is you'll smell like a scrubber when you left....
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post #5 of 17
2/9/09 at 2:42am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merlino View Post

I don't do it, but how do you figure we'd go about this blind testing? In wine, it's usually accomplished through others handing you a pre-filled glass at some official event. I don't really see that working for fragrance sampling...

Well, it could always be arranged somehow. It is kind of hard to blind test fragrances you
bought, as you probably decided upon them after sniffing. But one could have someone label
samples with numbers for example and the other one keeping track of which is which. Who
that would be is another question of course...

I think it would be interesting to test this way with similar fragrances. Not for the sake of
picking out the right release amongst many, but when trying to decide which one is best (for you).

Once I got a decant of a scent från Bond No. 9, but the label was missing. I only knew that
it came from them. I had never sniffed it before or any other Bond No. 9 fragrance. But I
had done some reading on the debate about Creed's Millesime Imperial and Bond No. 9's
Wall Street being too similar. Now, neither had I smelled the Creed, but I was still almost
100 % certain that from what I smelled in the decant, it was indeed Wall Street (and it
was).

So what do I want to say with this last paragraph? Well, maybe we need to stop reading
too if we really want to be fair in our judgement
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post #6 of 17
2/9/09 at 3:20am
I agree that blind testing would be more fair towards the juice in question. However, in order for a test to be truly blind you'd have to have someone else pick out the samples as well, and that's the part I don't see happening.

I try to somewhat test blind by refraining from reading about the notes before I sample a frag. But yeah, I pick samples based on house first and I and probably a lot of others here are prejudiced against designer frags.
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post #7 of 17
2/9/09 at 3:53am
The womens side is doing a 3x3 blind testing event, feel free to join.

My equivalent of blind testing is to use samples without reading about them if I haven´t heard of it before. It´s not completely blind because I might recognize the brand name with associations and I may have seen the fragrance mentioned around, but I won´t go and read up all about it right before spraying it on.

I seem to enjoy the sampling and testing a lot more this way.
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post #8 of 17
2/9/09 at 4:30am
It's a good point, shifts. I know that I'm influenced by names and pyramids, and some of this can be helpful and some of it probably accounts for hasty impressions that don't last. And the answer is that I've never done blind testing but I suppose one possibility wd be to establish a box of samples that you're interested in and apply them without looking at the labels? Other ideas? I'm going to look into the 3x3 thing.
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post #9 of 17
2/9/09 at 5:27am
i order samples every week...i always know whats what. well i had one that said D men on it and i had no idea what it was......well i tried it and didnt really like it. now i was on a mission to find out what it was. i went digging around my emails and orders and found out it was dia man amourage......odd thing is i liked it alot more the 2nd time i wore it knowing it was a $250 a bottle fragrance.
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post #10 of 17
2/9/09 at 6:27am
I don't see how "blind testing" can be considered "serious".

It's like blind testing a car.
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post #11 of 17
2/9/09 at 6:40am
I do semi blind testing all the time, I actually did it this morning again. I always decant and I usually label the decants with weird codes and acronyms. The problem is that with my handwriting I do not know if what I have at hand is "we" or "dm". Sometimes it is completely unknown. Today I sampled something by burrbery or bulgary and it was strangely identical to Chanel Allure Blanche.

Still, I think this is more important for discovering new notes than for removing expectations from the manufacturer. While I agree with you that it is really hard to remove any expectations from the manufacturer, I also think that, eventually, that kind of paradigms become irrelevant once you walk beyond certain presumptuousness.
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post #12 of 17
2/9/09 at 7:07am
Often though I get very riled up from reading on certain manufactures and then when you finally finally sample something from them, it often leads to disappointment. While if you sniffed it without knowing who made it, you might be pleasantly surprised.

So now I try not to expect too much when I try out a new house.There is no need for me to know the history of the house, what all the internet bloggers and the 30 reviews on basenotes say about the scent I´m about to sniff. I can compare my findings to theirs later.

It´s a balance I need to find between researching what fragrances might suit me and researching them to death.
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post #13 of 17
2/9/09 at 7:07am
If you are to blind test fragrances like you blind test wines, you would have to divide the frags up by type. Then there would have to be a consensus as to what the diffirent frag types actually are. In wine, there are distict categories in which wines fall into (ie white and red wine, there may be more, I'm not that familiar with wine). In fragrance, there are so many frag types, some of them frags could be two different types, not even everyone agrees that any particular fragrance falls in a set category.

This would be a very complicated process, if at all possible
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post #14 of 17
2/9/09 at 7:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lian View Post

My equivalent of blind testing is to use samples without reading about them if I haven´t heard of it before. It´s not completely blind because I might recognize the brand name with associations and I may have seen the fragrance mentioned around, but I won´t go and read up all about it right before spraying it on.

That's what I've been doing, as well. Or trying to. Some fragrances get talked about so much, it's hard to ignore comments, especially when one reads the forums a lot.

Lizzie_J, I think, says she brings a bag of samples with her to the movies. Without being able to see the labels, as she samples them, it is partly blind sampling.
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post #15 of 17
2/9/09 at 8:26am
I do more sampling now than when first I became involved in fragrances but, to be honest, I have blind purchased some good fragrances like Guerlain frags and Balmains Ambre Gris, Cabaret, Moliards Homme 2 and Prada. I have had pretty good luck. Cause like the song goes " Can't please everyone so you got to please yourself." Have a wonderful garden party. Life is short and then you die so, stop softly in the that garden and smell the roses. Opinionated? Not me. Peace and love baby. Lol.
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post #16 of 17
2/9/09 at 8:29am
It was a few years ago but I had a blast exchanging blind vials with members (once I received the vials labeled only with numbers and once I sent them) and making a thread about my impressions, what I thought the ingredients were, and what I could say blindly about the scents.
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post #17 of 17
2/9/09 at 10:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DustB View Post

It was a few years ago but I had a blast exchanging blind vials with members (once I received the vials labeled only with numbers and once I sent them) and making a thread about my impressions, what I thought the ingredients were, and what I could say blindly about the scents.

That does sound like it would be an interesting experiment.
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