Why I Wear Perfume - Top 10 Reasons

This post first appeared on Persolaise.com in November 2021.

The most frequent question I’m asked about perfume is: what's your favourite? (Answer: I genuinely do not have one, and even picking 10 is a process so agonising, I can almost see it turning my hair grey before my eyes). But perhaps the most interesting question I’m asked about perfume is why I wear it. Even though it’s come up a few times over the years, I feel I’ve never given it a satisfactory response. Sometimes, the context hasn’t been quite right (a noisy event where it isn’t possible to exchange anything more than pithy soundbites). At other times, I have the suspicion the person asking isn’t actually prepared for a full answer (and as you know, I don’t do brief). And then there are the days when I simply don’t think I’m capable of articulating all the emotions and sensations that would need to be part of an honest and comprehensive reply.

But today is the day when I try to address the issue once and for all: an attempt to express, in as much detail as possible, precisely what it is that has made me reach for my bottles of scented magic, day after day, for several decades. And what it is that keeps making me reach for them.

In true nerdy Persolaise fashion, I’m presenting this as a Top 10, but I ought to point out that the reasons aren’t in any special order. And although I'm sticking to 10 for the moment, I suspect there are many more, some of which I don't even consciously know yet. Perhaps I’ll need a few more decades to figure them out. For today, 10 will do…