When last week's review of Norell elicited almost more comments about the bottle of Amouage Gold I found at Goodwill than it did about Norell, I decided to share what I know about finding perfume in thrift shops. Some of you probably live or work within blocks of vintage Guerlains and Chanels going for less than a ten spot and don't even know it. It's time to get those bottles off the shelves and onto the bodies of people who love them.

You might protest that your thrift shops don't have anything but Avon figurines with peeling labels. But think about it: every town, no matter how small, has at least one glamour puss. She will almost certainly offload a bottle or two of something nice at some point. Plus, people who don't love perfume often receive bottles as gifts. After a few years they figure that bottle of Chamade Eau de Cologne they received for Mother's Day a few years ago has surely gone bad so they give it to the Salvation Army. And then there's the occasional love affair turned sour that lands a nearly full bottle of Yves Saint Laurent Paris down at the Teen Challenge thrift shop...

Fragrance families cause a good deal of confusion, even among seasoned perfumistas. Two experiences, both involving the fruity floral category, illustrate the problem.

I once got a rather unpleasant email from a reader who was angry that I called a fragrance a "fruity floral" in a new fragrance announcement: she assumed that I was making an arbitrary assignment based on the notes listed in the press release, and that I was trying to make a critical statement about this particular fragrance.¹ This nicely introduces the first point I'd like to make about fragrance families: you cannot determine the fragrance family by reading a list of notes. If you see a fragrance family listed in a new fragrance announcement, it came from the press materials or some other primary source.

Some time later I held a poll asking readers to name their favorite fruity floral perfumes. While most of the suggestions were, in fact, fruity, a rather large percentage of them were not, in fact, fruity florals. And that introduces the second point I'd like to make: you cannot determine the fragrance family just by the noticeable presence of certain notes, either...

One of the many hazards of writing about perfumes is that they're not static objects. If you pick up a new bottle of Jean Couture Coriandre, what you'll smell won't be at all what I smelled when I first bought it in the late 1970s. It might not even be the same as what I smelled when I reviewed Coriandre a couple years ago, and found it to be an entirely different animal than the scent I remembered. The Coriandre you smell tomorrow, or next month, or next year, might have changed yet again.

This has obvious implications for anyone blogging about perfume or reading perfume blogs. When you read a perfume review, unless it's about a perfume that launched recently, you can't be sure that what you'll smell in the stores is the exact same fragrance.

This article is meant as a very basic primer on reformulation, and most of what I'll cover is well-known to seasoned perfumistas.

Perfumes get reformulated all the time, and they always have. Why? Well, there are any number of reasons. Sometimes companies substitute cheaper ingredients as a cost-saving measure...

Yikes! How many bottles of Jean Patou Joy or vintage Worth Je Reviens had she left behind? She might have passed up some of the perfume because she's not used to smelling a powerhouse vintage perfume, but she probably figured that anything old is likely to have spoiled. It's time to nip these kinds of heartaches in the bud and lay out a few of the biggest misconceptions about perfume:

1. Perfume goes bad over time. Perfume can sour, but it's usually sunlight and heat that destroy it, not time. Put a bottle of your favorite, brand new perfume on the dashboard of the car for a few weeks in summer and keep another bottle in its box in a drawer and you'll learn this lesson firsthand. It doesn't matter how expensive, or cheap, the perfume was...

There are lots of articles on Now Smell This to help you get started, and I've also included some links to helpful information on other websites. Readers, please comment and add your best advice!

You're really brand new, and have no idea what anyone is talking about...

Start by reading the frequently asked questions. After that, you might take a peek at the glossary, then learn a bit about the basic building blocks of fragrance by reading on lists of fragrance notes, why they matter & why they don't and getting to know fragrance notes. If all of that starts to seem overwhelming, reading how much perfume knowledge is too much? might help you put things back into perspective.

Of course, you'll need to find some perfumes to smell, so take a look at our primer on how to get fragrance samples, free or otherwise. You might also want to learn more about how to apply perfume, and in case that new perfume isn't working for you, you'll need to know how to remove fragrance from skin.

You're learning more, but still worried your taste isn't up to snuff? Please read de gustibus non est disputandum ~ random thoughts on perfume snobbery.

If all of that wasn't enough, it's time for a trip to your local library or bookstore...

One of the many obstacles facing perfume consumers today is how to go about finding fragrances they might like in the great sea of new releases. As I've written in the past, reading the list of fragrance notes for a given perfume can be misleading, but sometimes it's about all you have to go on other than the ad visuals or celebrity sponsorship. Just because you find Jude Law sexy as all get out, it doesn't mean you're going to love Dior Homme Sport; likewise, just because you like jasmine and saffron, it doesn't mean Ungaro by Ungaro is going to appeal to you.

Still, it helps to know a little something about fragrance notes. Most of us have neither the time nor the inclination to smell absolutely everything. Figuring out which notes you find attractive and which you detest can at least help you to narrow down your choices...

Say you want some JAR Bolt of Lightning, or whatever. You don't want to swap for it, you don't want to buy a decant online, but you also don't want (or can't afford) a full bottle. A bottle split is one option. For anyone who's never done a bottle split, here are some details.

What is a bottle split?

In the simplest terms, you agree to split a full bottle of perfume with one or more other people. The first time I did a bottle split, I was after bottles of Ormonde Jayne Champaca and Frangipani but didn't want to pay full price for both scents, nor did I think I needed that much juice. I found 4 other people interested in buying a portion of each scent, so that each 50 ml bottle would get split 5 ways — each person on the Champaca split would get 10 ml of Champaca; each person on the Frangipani split would get 10 ml of Frangipani...

If you missed it, you might want to take a look at Things I wish I'd known as a newbie perfumista, part 1 for an introduction to today's subject, and many of today's points expand on comments from that post so huge thanks to everyone who took the time to share their experiences.

Don't pay full price if you don't have to. If money is not an issue, buy where you like, but for the rest of us, shopping around is worth the time and effort, and the product you'll get from a reputable discounter (assuming you can find what you want at a reputable discounter) is every bit as good as what you'll get in a department store. You may, however, have to wait another month or two after a fragrance launches before you can find it at a discounter...

This is really a random collection of thoughts that I started pulling together (at my usual glacial pace) back when Angela wrote Becoming a perfumista. The subject: what I wish I'd known when I started out with perfume. Part 2 is coming next week, and I'm hoping all you Stage Four and Stage Five perfume addicts will add some advice of your own in the comments.

After you've smelled 100 fragrances, you'll have a hard time keeping them all straight. It took me a good long while to start keeping notes. When I finally did, I wrote my notes in a little bound notebook. Um, duh! If you're going to smell 100, there's a good chance you're going to smell 500 or 1500, and pretty soon that little notebook is going to be useless. I'm amazed at how long it took me to start keeping my notes on the computer...

Decant worthy: a fragrance that is worth having in some small amount, but that you don't love enough to justify buying a full bottle. See also: how to decant perfume.

Evil Fragrance Twin (EFT): someone who loves all the perfumes you hate, and vice versa. EFTs can be useful — you follow them around and try whatever they can't stand...