Can you wear perfume around cats?
11 Expert-Backed Tips To Make Your Perfume Last All Day Long
Jamie Schneider is the Beauty & Wellness Editor at mindbodygreen. She has a B.A. in Organizational Studies and English from the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in Coveteur, The Chill Times, and Wyld Skincare.
December 14, 2021
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Oh, the allure of the signature scent. Isn’t it magical to enter a room, the smell of sandalwood, or jasmine, or bergamot announcing your arrival? Which, we’ll admit, is a little difficult to accomplish if your perfume wears off after only a couple of hours. It’s a common gripe with clean fragrances: These often don’t have the same longevity as traditional products, as they tend to skip a lot of the preservatives and stabilizers that help the potion last longer—both on the skin and on the shelf.
It’s a small price to pay for safer fragrance but, still, a bummer nonetheless. However! A few handy tricks can help your clean perfume last longer; it just may take some more time to get the most out of the juice. And honestly? Slowing down to connect with your fragrance only adds to the transformative experience—so we’d consider it a total win.
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Apply on your pulse points.
There’s actually a functional reason why we tend to apply perfume on our pulse points (like the insides of your wrists and elbows, behind your ears, on your neck, the back of your knees, etc.): The skin is the thinnest at those points, which means it’s closer to your blood and body heat, explains celebrity makeup artist Rosie Johnston, founder of by/rosie jane. As the fragrance warms, the aroma process begins.
Cat Chen, founder of clean fragrance brand Skylar, explains further: «All your pulse points are like little radiators,» she tells mbg. «The warmth helps to diffuse the fragrance.»
Don’t rub your wrists together.
Once you apply on your pulse points it may feel instinctive to rub your wrists or elbows together to blot the fragrance (especially if your skin feels pretty damp). But both Chen and Johnston advise against it: «The rubbing together is considered a big perfume no-no,» Johnston says. «It just makes the top notes burn off a little quicker.»
If you would like to blend two fragrances together—or would like to blot away some of the juice—try tapping your wrists together instead of creating friction. You can also dab your wrist up your arm, onto your neck, or anywhere you’d like to deposit some scent without messing with its longevity.
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Spray your heart.
Since applying perfume on your pulse points helps radiate the scent, why not apply it on where your pulse is strongest? «If you have [fragrance] at your heart, you can smell it a lot,» says Chen. «The fragrance will travel up; your heart will act as a diffuser.»
Chen also recommends using fragrance in an intention-setting practice: «You can get ready for the day by putting fragrance at your heart, which is linked to how you feel,» she explains. Then whenever you catch a whiff of that fragrance from your heart’s center, you’ll be subtly reminded of those intentions.
Spritz after a shower.
A quick Google search might leave you with this clever little hack: Spritz on a perfume right after a shower, as the steam helps open up the aroma. Both Chen and Johnston give this tip a stamp of approval, for a couple of reasons: «When you get out of the shower, your skin and body temperature is high,» says Johnston (and we know that heat helps diffuse the fragrance). Plus, your skin is clean and free from sweat and excess oil, which can buffer the fragrance. «Your pores are open, and your skin is hydrated naturally from the water—and hydrated skin holds fragrance,» notes Johnston.
Of course, you don’t want to spritz on a perfume while your skin is sopping wet. Johnston recommends patting dry, coating your body with a moisturizer to trap in all that hydration, then spritz a little fragrance. «You have this beautiful foundation of clean, hydrated skin,» she says.
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Keep your skin hydrated.
Hydrated skin is important for a number of reasons, but in case you needed one more reason to baby your skin barrier: «Hydrated, moisturized skin is really going to hold fragrance a lot longer,» says Johnston.
What to Say When Someone Asks What Perfume You’re Wearing
After inhaling hundreds of combinations of essential oils and alcohols, testing them on every inch of your forearms, you throw down your credit card: You’ve found your signature perfume. The one you spritz in your hair, in between your boobs, and on your bellybutton because you read about that somewhere. The body’s heat sends it upwards? Something like that.
This perfume is you.
Or at least, this is one of the those things that helps you feel unique in this wide, slowly flooding world. Like your iPhone background, your Facebook password, or your elaborate Starbucks order. No one else could possibly have the same, right? Isn’t it pretty to think so?
Until your colleague catches a whiff when you pass in front of her in a mad dash for free donuts in the office kitchen. Ooooh what perfume are you wearing? She or he asks.
But this isn’t fourth grade. You can’t stick your tongue out and say, “Not telling!” and then run away with the last pink frosted even if you touched the chocolate one first.
So, as a public service to you all, here are some possible responses you can go ahead and use, no copyright pending or anything! That’s how important this issue is to me, Alex Beggs, that we keep this world an interesting and diverse one with many scents, good or bad. And mostly because if I smell one more person in New York wearing Santal 33 I’m going to scream.
Self-deprecating deflection:
“You know, it’s funny, it was a gift and the bottle says something in French but I haven’t Google translated it!”
Mystique, sheer mystique:
“It’s a custom blend.”
Lies:
“It’s ‘Sneeze’ by Trish McEvoy, but sadly they discontinued it and this is my last bottle!”
More lies:
“It’s ‘Snow Caps and Buttered Popcorn’ by Jo Malone, but it was limited edition at the holidays.”
Even more lies:
“I have no idea—it’s crazy, I rubbed a perfume sample from a magazine at my therapist’s office all over my body. That was four days ago.”
Baffle them:
“I didn’t wear perfume today.”
Reveal something else instead, something much more interesting:
“It’s a mix of three essential oils from my herbalist with a sprinkle of holy water I brought back from the Vatican.”
Make things super uncomfortable:
“It’s my scented tampon!”
Ensure they’ll never bother you again:
“It’s expired Axe body spray I found in the back of my medicine cabinet. Or wait, it might be expired bug spray. Hard to tell, but it’s aged nicely, right?”
Isolate them:
“It’s the Hamilton perfume—you have to enter a lottery and good luck with that.”
Give them false hope:
“You know the one they spray when you walk into Macy’s? That one.”
Throw a red herring:
“It’s called ‘Nunya’ by Diptyque.”
Defy expectation:
“You like it? Every morning I spray Paris by Paris Hilton with one hand and Someday by Justin Bieber with the other and they just mingle in a cloud above me like an Us Weekly headline. Isn’t it divine?”
Challenge them:
“What, do you want my social security number, too?” Guffaws
Feign amnesia:
“Huh. I can’t seem to remember. Have you seen my cat? What day is it? Is Hillary Clinton still president?”
Send them running:
“Oh this is so embarrassing—I actually just farted.”
But please don’t say “A lady never tells,” because that shit is corny.
Alex Beggs is a perfume genius—you can read her grown-up scent versions of high school fragrances here.
