Inside a perfume discovery set is one small bottle of each of several perfumes, usually all from the same house, in sizes from 1.5 ml sample vials up to 15 ml sprays. As a gift it solves the hardest part of giving scent: the person who will wear the perfume gets to pick a favorite on their own skin.
A perfume that smells wonderful on a paper strip, or on your wrist, can land differently on someone else. There's research behind that.
Why a full bottle is a hard guess
Perfume mixes with the wearer's own scent, and people seem to choose perfumes that suit theirs. A 2012 study in PLOS ONE, led by Pavlína Lenochová at Charles University in Prague, had twelve men wear their own chosen perfume under one arm and a perfume assigned by the researchers under the other. Twenty-one women then rated the blends. Each man's body odor mixed with his own perfume came out more pleasant than the mix with the assigned one, even though the perfumes on their own were rated about equally pleasant.
It's a small study. Every man in it wore a perfume he had "personally chosen (not a gift bought by someone else)," as the full paper puts it, so it doesn't show that gifted perfume fails. It does suggest the wearer is better placed to choose than the giver.
On top of that sit the ordinary gift risks: a scent family they dislike, a strength that's too much for their office, a note that reminds them of an ex. One full bottle carries every one of them at once, and a set of small bottles spreads the bet.
What sizes do discovery sets come in?
Bottle size decides whether a set is a sniff test or a real trial. At the small end are dab or spray vials of 1.5 to 2 ml, enough for a few wears each. Travel sprays of 5 to 10 ml sit in the middle. At the generous end, some sets hold small full bottles of 15 ml (half an ounce) or more.
A 2 ml vial will tell you whether you like a perfume. It's usually too little to tell you whether you'd wear it for a year, and that's the question a gift is really asking. Sets hold either a house's whole line or a themed group, such as florals or woods, and a smaller themed box is easier to give when you already know what someone likes.
How do you use a perfume discovery set?
Wear one scent a day, on skin, for the whole day. The opening minutes are misleading: The Perfume Society's FAQ gives top notes about 5 to 15 minutes before the heart takes over, and the base can take hours to show.
- Start with freshly washed skin and no other perfume.
- Apply one scent to the inner wrist or the side of the neck.
- Smell it after 5 minutes, after an hour, and again in the evening.
- Ask someone near you what they notice, because the wearer's nose tires of a scent well before everyone else's does.
- Note how long it lasts and whether you still like it at bedtime.
- Wait a day before opening the next bottle.
Trying them all in one afternoon, on paper strips, wastes the set. The loudest opening wins, and the scent that would have worn best never gets a fair day. If you're the giver, a card with those steps is more use than a gift receipt.
Before you buy one
Check that the set holds the same concentration as the full bottles, so the person tests the perfume they'd actually buy. A box of eaux de toilette is a poor guide to the eau de parfum. Then look at the milliliters or ounces printed on the box, and prefer sprays to dab vials, since a spray behaves more like the full bottle. Some houses credit the price of the set against a later full-size purchase; where there's no credit, bigger bottles in the set matter more, because they're what the money buys.
The Eau de Parfum Flight
We make four eaux de parfum, and our Eau de Parfum Flight boxes all four together: Orange Blossom, its darker sibling Orange Blossom Noir, California Lavender and Big Red Rose. The Discovery Collection holds four 0.5 oz (about 15 ml) sprays for $85, and the Collector's Collection holds four 1.5 oz (about 44 ml) sprays for $139.
The Discovery Collection sits at the generous end of the size range. Each 0.5 oz bottle is the same medium spray we sell on its own for $25, with enough in it to wear well past the point where a sample would run out. The Collector's Collection is four of our 1.5 oz bottles, which sell singly at $49.99.
The four cover different ground. Orange Blossom is a soliflore, built around the one flower. Noir sets the same bloom over a warm, resinous wood heart. Big Red Rose takes its cue from the Mr. Lincoln rose, and California Lavender is a single-varietal lavender distilled on a partner farm in San Luis Obispo County.
If you already know someone's scent family, a set built around one perfume makes more sense than a testing box.
The Citrus Lovers Gift Flight pairs a bottle of our Orange Blossom perfume with an orange blossom cloche candle and four beeswax lip balms, two Navel Orange and two Eureka Lemon, and the Rose Lovers and Lavender Lovers flights do the same for Big Red and California Lavender. Each is $85 with a 0.5 oz bottle or $105 with a 1.5 oz.
Our earlier note on choosing a California fragrance gift goes through the flights one at a time, and single bottles of all four scents are in the perfume collection, ready for when the set has picked a winner.
Photo by Beautinow Niche Perfume on Unsplash.
