Coordinating Perfume with Body Care Products

[lunabee34]

I have made my first BPAL purchase! Thank you to everyone who gave me excellent suggestions.

As I wait for my imps to arrive, it suddenly occurs to me that I have been satisfying most of my smell pretty needs with soap, bath gel, and lotion. When I start testing out imps, best case scenario is that my body care products complement the new perfumes. Worst case scenario, I start smelling like the Yankee candle end of the mall.

So what do y'all do?

1. Do you "match" your body care products to your perfume? Or coordinate them to complement in some way? If so, what have you found that works for you?

2. Do you go the unscented, most neutral route so that only your perfume shines through? If so, what have you found that works for you?

3. To what extreme to you take it if you don't like other scents interfering with your perfume? Unscented laundry detergent? Etc?

Comments

[lunabee34]

My absolute favorite neutral bar soap has to be Ava Anderson bar soap. It's organic and is so soft on the skin; there is a teensy weensy hint of a fragrance of cleanness maybe, but almost nothing. I have even used it on my hair before and it doesn't strip my hair.

[white_aster]

I honestly don't try to coordinate at all because my soaps/shampoo scents don't really last long enough to interfere with anything. Maybe this is because I shower at night and everything has a nice long time to sublimate off me? The only thing I use during the day other than perfume is relatively unscented lotion (just because I've found that kinds that focus on the scent often aren't very good lotions in general...and often this is the case with soaps and shampoos, too, now that I think about it....)

If I do have something particularly smelly, though, I'd try to coordinate soap with scent (I am notorious for having multiple soaps...soaps was my first smelly addiction. >_>)

[pebblerocker]

I wondered this! If I use perfume subtly, will it come across stronger than my coconut-scented shampoo? Do I need to find unscented things? Or are perfume-orientated people generally more likely to be the bucket-it-on type, like that one woman at work, so that the perfume knocks everyone over from metres away and any remaining soap scent doesn't stand a chance...

[rydra_wong]

I haven't found that soap or shampoo scents stay on skin/hair enough to be a problem. Though I tend to use "natural" products scented with essential oils -- it's possible that some more mainstream products have more lingering scents? Or it may simply be the limits of my particular sense of smell.

I do use unscented body/hand lotion if I'm planning to wear perfume, so it doesn't clash.

Alternatively, I've made my own body lotion by dumping a sample vial of perfume into a bottle of unscented body lotion (the Neal's Yard unscented base is a good one for this); with a very powerful/long-lasting perfume (e.g. Bal a Versailles), this can be a nice way of getting a low-key/non-overwhelming scent all by itself.

Using a matching body lotion can also reportedly be a way of extending how long a scent lasts on your skin (especially as moisturized skin seems to hang onto scent better).

But people have also had fun using "mis-matched" body lotions and perfumes as a way of playing with layering, coming up with different combinations.

[kaberett]

1. Yep, I coordinate them. Original Source honey+something tends to be the most "neutral" thing I own on me (I have a ridiculous range of shower gel I feel a bit awkward about, but it's because it makes it more likely I'll actually ever wash, so), so I'll use that if I'm wanting to put something delicate over the top. But e.g. I'll use my ridiculous Lush jasmine-scented thing and then happily layer smoke+leather perfumes over the top, coz I love the effect. (This is actually how I started trusting myself to try layering perfumes proper and see what happened, and I have some combinations I love now.)

2. Nope! But I would tend to go for unperfumed hypoallergenic things in the first instance - v easy to get hold of in the UK e.g. from Boots.

3. I don't, particularly! I have unscented laundry detergents anyway because I just... really don't like scented laundry detergents, but otherwise I really like playing with how perfumes interact.

[sathari]

Ooh! This is a topic near and dear to my heart, for all it took me a while to respond!

The short answer is: I personally definitely go for unscented everything-not-perfume, and this includes not using dryer sheets at all because finding unscented ones is more work than I like.

Longer answer is that I actually don't like most scents-tacked-onto-others things (like dryer sheets or soap or lotion); not only is there that problem of "smelling like the Yankee candle end of the mall" (perfect description, btw!) even without a perfume added into the mix, but if my sinuses are acting up, the last thing I want is scent, especially the way that "add-on" scents smell to me. (Not to mention that I've gotten rather more worried about setting off other people's allergies in recent years, so now almost the only time I wear perfume is when I'm at home, because I do like to wear enough of it that I can smell it on me or there's no point!) There is this common note under a lot of the add-on scents in lotions or soaps and other washing products whether for bodies or clothing, that really bothers my nose and even when I'm not sick smells very unpleasant to me.

So, even when it's not about the perfume, I love unscented products!

The one product that I would recommend most broadly in the unscented-stuff line is First Aid Beauty's Ultra Repair Cream. They seem to have gone out of their way to be safe for sensitive skin and otherwise gentle and healing; I have yet to dislike any of their products that I've tried, actually, including their body wash.