Ten Things I've Learned in Ten Years of Blogging About Fragrance
Throughout July, I promised to do 10 things to celebrate 10 years of The Candy Perfume Boy. I’ve held four instagram live events, speaking to beauty journalist Alice du Parcq, Escentual founder Rakesh Aggarwal, PR legend Nicola de Burlet, and Olfiction founders Nick Gilbert and Pia Long. I’ve talked about 10 perfumes of significance from the last ten years over two IGTV videos (P1, P2), I’ve given away a £100 Escentual voucher and 5 Boujee Bougies, and I’m finishing off with this blog post and a celebration of my favourite photos over on instagram. It’s been a busy month.
Throughout July, I promised to do 10 things to celebrate 10 years of The Candy Perfume Boy. I’ve held four instagram live events, speaking to beauty journalist Alice du Parcq, Escentual founder Rakesh Aggarwal, PR legend Nicola de Burlet, and Olfiction founders Nick Gilbert and Pia Long. I’ve talked about 10 perfumes of significance from the last ten years over two IGTV videos (P1, P2), I’ve given away a £100 Escentual voucher and 5 Boujee Bougies, and I’m finishing off with this blog post and a celebration of my favourite photos over on instagram. It’s been a busy month.
For this blog post, I wanted to share just a small selection of the things I have learned since I started writing 10 years ago. From being someone who had never written anything longer than a tweet to a five-time award winning fragrance writer, it has been quite the journey and I have learned so, so many things. Here is a small selection, in no particular order:
1. Price does not indicate quality
When I first took my tumble down the fragrance rabbit hole, I saw a lot of discussion that niche is good and mainstream is bad, but with time I have learned that this simply isn’t the case. Price, in fact, rarely has any bearing on whether a perfume is good or not and just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s better than a perfume that is cheaper. In fact, there are just as many terrible, overpriced niche fragrances as there are uninspired, cynical designer fragrances at half, or even a third of the price. And likewise, there are as many fantastic, innovative, boundary-pushing perfumes in the mainstream as there are niche. So yes, good and bad at both ends of the scale. Follow and trust your nose to find what’s good.
2. You shouldn’t pay attention to gender labels
I was going to say that “gender in perfume isn’t important” but I don’t think that’s correct. Perfume has always been gendered and marketed to either men or women, which means we’ve seen trends and styles that have defined the history of perfume. It’s important to look back and see the evolutions of these styles, trends and families through the guise of gender BUT whatever gender label there may be on the bottle isn’t important. I’ve always worn and written about what I love. If it resonates with you, wear it.
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