Perfumed Court recs, anyone?

[lunabee34]

For my next adventure in perfume, I want to move beyond BPAL and test some more traditional, alcohol-based perfumes. The Perfumed Court seems like a cool place to get sample sizes of those sorts of perfumes. So, I guess I have two questions for y'all.

1. Have any of you purchased perfumes from this site, and what was your experience?
2. This site seems pretty extensive, specializing in a lot of classic perfumes. What should I sample? What's the top ten list of classic perfumes that I should smell?

Comments

[minim_calibre]

I get most of my samples from either The Perfumed Court or Surrender to Chance. They've both been reliable, but TPC sends a small coffee candy with each order. TPC also has a better selection of vintage Guerlains.

http://www.nstperfume.com/2012/11/26/26-vintage-fragrances-every-perfumista-should-try/ is a good place to start.

[rydra_wong]

1. Yup, and good. Surrender to Chance is also good (and I believe is essentially a splinter site) -- sometimes it has slightly cheaper prices. They're both very solid and reliable.

2. What should I sample? What's the top ten list of classic perfumes that I should smell?

SUCH A HUGE QUESTION. *g*

You could go with one of the big lists:

http://www.nstperfume.com/2007/11/26/100-fragrances-every-perfumista-should-try/

But that runs the risk of landing you with a lot of things that are important and fascinating, but that you don't actually like.

One option would be to start with what you know you like, what notes appeal to you, and pursue that -- maybe with one of the Perfumed Court's sample sets. Or you could post here about what you like and ask for recs for (alcohol-based) perfumes that fit the bill.

[feldman]

I've had good luck so far with both http://surrendertochance.com and https://www.luckyscent.com. I've been searching by notes and trawling http://www.basenotes.net/content/ for reviews.

[elfin]

I've been thinking about this, too. :)

I think I'm going to start with some of the Basenote award winners from Surrender to Chance, like the Masterpiece or Classic ones.

[chomiji]

Huh, thanks for asking about this! I see that Surrender to Chance has a Fresh Fig sampler: how wonderful! I may have to get that!

Forgot to say

[rydra_wong]

There's also the fairly common option of "Buy a copy of Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez's Perfumes: The A-Z Guide for entertaining reading, then buy samples of things that sound interesting."

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I last ordered from them, but TPC have always been reliable in my experience, and have been recced for years by a lot of the mainstream perfume bloggers I follow.

And I definitely agree with the other commenters that going for any sort of generalized list of "greatest perfume classics" runs the risk of getting you a lot of things that may be historically interesting, but aren't anything you'll particularly *like*. It might be simpler to look at lists like the one on Now Smell This!, or even just going over reviews on blogs that focus on a lot of classics (like NST, BoisDeJasmin.com, or YesterdaysPerfume.com) and making notes of anything that sounds particularly appealing to you. And once you've tried a few more you may be able to start figuring out that there are certain dominant notes or fragrance types that really work or don't work for you, certain eras or creators that do and don't fit your tastes, and focus more of your exploring in those areas that seem to click for you.