How has your taste matured?

During the last few years I spent time buying up all the basenotes favorites to calibrate my taste. My nose was easily pleased back at the start of my scent journey and its been quite a ride with all the different frags I have smelled. These days my nose is harder to please and I can go through forty samples with only a few I deem bottle worthy. I tend now to try to look out for those superstar frags that blow you away. And they are harder to find.

I did start out with totally avoiding anything not masculine but now I appreciate and own good few unisex scents that I would never have considered if I was a newbie.

Over the years my taste in scents hasn't really changed. The type of scents I collected and used over the past 3 plus decades are the same type of scents I collect and still use today

My tastes have seemed to "mature" or evolve fairly rapidly I think. It wasn't all that long ago that I only seemed to like fresh & light scents and thought I would never like, let alone wear, a gourmand. Darker, richer fragrances, or notes, didn't "agree" with me, but I seemed to like a good majority of the modern masculine designers. In a fairly short period of time, I now find I really enjoy quite a few gourmands and have warmed up to some darker, richer fragrances. I never thought I would really like, or want to own many niche fragrances early on, and now I seem to gravitate toward niche & high-end stuff much more than designer (even though it makes my bank account sad)

I've also become very picky recently, and find there are very few fragrances I test lately that I like enough to wear, and especially buy full bottles of. It's definitely been a fast & progressive journey for me - and my tastes - and I know I'm still only getting started. It'll be quite interesting to see where I'm at with this fine hobby 1, 2, 5 & 10+ years down the road. Maybe I'll stabilize where I'm at soon, or maybe I'll end up doing a complete 180. Who knows...that's part of what makes this so fun and interesting, though!

It's truly amazing how much I've learnt on Basenotes in 3 short years! I've grown to appreciate the florals and the feminine-marketed fragrances much more since then. Before BN I was less enlightened to try on much less wear any female-marketed fragrances. And the more I smell the more familiar I get with fragrance notes and structures. With this greater familiarity comes a heightened awareness of the different interpretations of familiar accords in different compositions, and of similarities among 'clones'.

Thankfully this newfound ability has not made me cynical as I still find fragrances that surprise me. And I also thank fellow BNers who through sharing of experiences show me other aspects of a fragrance I have never noticed before.

Has my taste changed over the years? Not really. I still enjoy citrus woods as I used to as a teen. But it has certainly expanded a great deal to include chypres, fougeres and florals. I still don't like to wear sweet gourmands though.

My tastes have indeed changed to be much more comfortable with things marketed to women. It hasn't hurt that the whole male market is shifting toward formerly feminine notes and styles anyway, but my taste has definitely shifted faster.

I've also expanded the number of styles I'm interested in. I've learned to enjoy a very wide range of fragrances.

For me, the most unexpected aspect of change was a renewed interest in "mainstream" fragrances and styles. While I found niche to be very liberating, I think I managed to see mainstream scents with new eyes - as both a risky fashion game, and something of an artistic challenge (must be self-satisfying to the perfumer AND marketable). Now I see them as being "where the action is", and I'm genuinely excited about a lot of fragrances that seem rather mundane to most folks.

If there is one way I've changed, that I would agree with the characterization of having "matured", it's this: I've learned to respect other people's choices in fragrance, by approaching those fragrances with an open mind, and trying earnestly to see the same beauty that the people who love them do. All the way from shockingly expensive stuff that elicits 98% sour grapes, but really does show a lot of perfumer effort, to mass-market-buy-two-and-get-one-free-cuz-it's-our-most-romantic-vanilla-ever-OMG!!!, to all-natural artisan fragrances that are almost like cult scents. There are people who love all of these types of fragrances dearly, and with just a little patience and an open mind, it's possible to see why, and to sense and enjoy that same beauty.

As I mature on the frag journey, Guerlain seems to grow progressively on the board.

This is definitely true of me. When l joined basenotes two years ago, l was heavily into white florals & feminine orientals. l still enjoy these scents, but my tastes have expanded to a degree where l am now exploring, & enjoying, animalic scents, incense, leather & so on. For example, l recently bought a bottle of Habanita EDT, a fragrance l'm certain l would have hated just a few short years ago, but now adore!
Like others here, l am also getting more fussy about what l buy, & adding more niche than designer scents to my wardrobe.

I have turned more and more towards vintage male fragrances and what I refer to as 'Only' male fragrances. I have tired of experimenting with unisex and so called all citrus, ozonic frags. Years ago I was satisfied with a sweet, fruity, sexier scent.

I have been doing this for about three years. Like many, I happened on basenotes while trying to search out my "signature scent." That never happened. On the contrary, I have a accumulated about 66 frags in that time.

When I started, my tastes were very limited. I wanted something quirky and different...ONLY. Things like Musc Ravageur, Muscs Kublai Khan, etc. Now, three years later, I am much more appreciative of just good, old-fashioned men's scents...woods, leathers....and also love feminine scents.

I thought my fragrance journey would narrow my tastes even more. It did the opposite.

Two years ago I did not like classics, unisex or I could not think of wearing some feminine scents. Now my tastes has changed
and I am trying to understand fragrances better . Now I'm not influenced by anyone when I want to buy a perfume.

I'm not sure I'd use the word 'matured'. I think my taste has both 'broadened' and 'narrowed'.

A few years of immersing myself in what's out there has enabled me to get some perspective on most genres, altho I'm still woefully uninformed on the better known 'femmes' - just haven't had the time or inclination to really explore that world. I honestly couldn't tell you a Coco from a Charlie. That said, I have zeroed in on chypres and some of the eaux marketed to women over the last few decades (or more) and I'll take a Mitsouko or Vol de Nuit, or an Eau de Patou or Chamade EDC over most of what's currently out there for men anyday. I think I'm comfortably at a point where I can take something on board and assess it reasonably well within it's style, and that would include femme marketed florals. It's not that difficult to get a handle on the works that constitute 'top of the class' in their respective genres and use that as a basis for comparison with others . . . The Guide, a handful of blogs and some writers here make that simple enough to do then it's just a question of trying them.

On the other hand, while being open enough to smell something and appreciate it for what it was designed for, even if that might be tweens from the burbs or whatever, my tolerance for what I actually want anywhere near me - on myself or anyone else - has become pretty low. With every new release I am becoming more and more attuned to the LCD running thru so much stuff, the 'woody notes' with a cheap varnish job, the blowsy 'woody ambers', the chemical musks and vanillas with a half life of decades etc.

I read an article about 'professional industrial tasters' who can nibble a biscuit or a cookie and tell you what grade and batch the basic 'crumbs' come from before the flavouring was added. What a depressing job. And that's, sadly, what perfumers and more finely tuned amateurs can do - pick the chemical, which recent rose from IFF, iris from Givaudan, patchouli from Symrise or whatever. Sort of kills the romance a bit. I'll never get close to that and certainly don't aspire to, but what seems to have happened is that I am just more intuitively aware of what 'quality' of ingredients are in something now and that has increasingly narrowed down what I personally enjoy.

None of this is revelatory stuff - in any hobby or profession the more you experience the easier it is to zero in on what is actually any good, or at least what you like, I guess. It's weird, on the one hand I can sniff something and see how it will probably be a massive hit with a certain segment of the population and appreciate how the perfumer arrived at the end result and managed to make the focus group / marketing people swoon etc. (while personally loathing it), and then go off and breath easy in the knowledge that my vintage Guerlain still has a decent slug of oakmoss holding it up, there is Mysore sandalwood there in my Patou Pour Homme and that a (very) few people are still shooting for the stars with the work they do, in the face of an increasingly cynical industry churning out front loaded impressions of a happy clappy sanitised chemical wasteland in a bottle. I think I've hit grumpy old man status at last - nirvana

I consider myself still a newbie and my nose and need for experimentation is already changing. I am still in the sampling phase, sampling lots of different frags and I used to like almost everything that came under my nose. However, now I can now tell what is worth a buy. Now along with age comes experience and I wanted to expand my frag experience with feminine and unisex frags and am enjoying the host of unisex frags have to offer and expand my scented journey. Scents have no gender and so I wear what I like and I like to be myself!

Not really matured, just evolved and varied a bit. In fact, I sometimes get the feeling my tastes have grown somehow "younger", while in my teens and early 20s, I only enjoyed almost exclusively powerhouse, leather, formal, chypre, citrus etc. scents, I now have also discovered a fondness for gourmands and some of the more youthful notes (albeit few or no aquatic or airy scents).

Like dear mr.reasonable I won't say matured but I will say broadened.

Before getting into perfumes at this level (online discussions - learning about notes) I knew most of the major notes. The florals, the oud, some of the woods and a couple of resins.

At this point I can say I have smelled or can identify 95% of notes mentioned in a perfume. Either by having tried perfumes prdominant with that particular note, or know it from outside of the perfume world (the spices and woods) or from smelling the essential oil. Combined, these three sources, I have established which notes I love for eternity, which notes I want to further explore, which notes I will avoid and most importantly (and most difficulty) which medley of notes I want to further explore.
The recent Seville a'Laube being a prime example of a note medley that never occurred me to try and which I loved. Incense & orange blossom.

Great thoughts. I agree completely - broaden the mind and narrow the focus.

I was wearing Guerlain Vetiver Pour Elle a couple of days ago, and after a day of enjoying that amazing scent, I realized that whether it's that very well-regarded scent, or the somewhat disregarded Bond no.9 I<3NY For Him which I also love, the point is to find what we love and spend our time with it. If fragrance becomes your day job - well, OK - but never forget the importance of the magic moments with the scents that you truly love, and don't let the other stuff get in the way.

Thanks for giving me a new personal mantra, M.R....

Never let fragrance turn into a job sniffing biscuit crumbs!