There are so many fragrances, so little time … sigh, and money. As much as I would love to indulge my nose and fragrance habit with a new bottle of fragrance a day, there’s just not enough hours in the day, or days in the year, to use it all—and if you ask me, that’s just a smelly waste of money and perfume. Rather than accept defeat, I accept decants.
A perfume decant is a fragrance that has been transferred from the original bottle and sprayed or poured into a smaller, brand new, and sterile glass vial or bottle. A decant from a reliable source allows you to try out a rare or original fragrance you think you might like, to purchase a reasonable amount of an expensive fragrance you love but can’t afford, or to just add a new fragrance to your collection without running out of dresser space. Fragrance decants are available in sizes from 1-milliliter sample size vials to 30-milliliter spray bottles and they come labeled with the fragrance’s name.
There are a number of sources for perfume decants, but you have to be careful for obvious reasons. I’ve bought decants from both the Perfumed Court and the Posh Peasant and I’ve found both sites to be fun to look at, informative, and most of all, easy to purchase from! Emails are answered and orders shipped promptly, with pretty packaging, by ladies who love perfume as much as I do. Gentle warning: receiving packages full of different fragrance decants in the mail is quite habit-forming!
The Perfumed Court
The Perfumed Court is the grande dame of decanting. The ladies of the Perfumed Court have an extensive collection of French perfume as well as hard-to-find and discontinued fragrances.
A fun feature of the site is their list of some of the top perfumes mentioned in Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. If, like me, you have been reading the book and are curious about some of the perfumes, you can click from the Perfumed Court’s list to obtain samples. You may not agree with all the book’s reviews (I certainly don’t), but if you’re interested in fragrance, the book is a wonderful reference guide and an excellent read. I recently sampled the following fragrances from the Perfumed Court:
Mayotte by Guerlain
Eau de Parfum with notes of neroli, frangipani, tuberose, ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, vetiver, and vanilla.
I came across Mayotte while stalking the counters of Neiman’s for a bottle of Apres L’Ondee. I couldn’t find one, but I did smell Mayotte. I didn’t like it at first, and couldn’t place the smell, though it reminded me of something. My nose kicked in eventually and remembered the smell of a wonderful Spanish brandy, Fundador. I promise you will not smell like a keg of brandy when you wear this, but it does have the same richly spiced vanilla essence. I left the store—and the fragrance—behind, but when I got home, the man in my life was va va va voom for the lingering scent and offered to buy me a bottle … until I told him it’s $200 a bottle! The Perfumed Court to the rescue …
