I am a total sucker for perfume. I know it, everyone who knows me knows it, and everyone who reads my reviews knows it, too. While this might sound like a totally normal statement for a beauty editor to make, in my case, things are particularly severe. I own nearly 100 bottles of the stuff. And while I don’t (and wouldn’t) wear all of them, I couldn’t possibly bring myself to part with a single one. You see, I surround myself with fragrances all day long, so I appreciate great perfumes so much that, even when they don’t appeal to my personal tastes, I like to keep them and smell them from time to time.
To me, a great perfume (whether it’s citrusy, woody, or sweet) is one that evokes emotion. It might make you want to scrunch your face up in a tight ball, but if a perfume gets an overwhelming response out of you, I think it’s doing the right job. The very best perfumes make you feel something. And it’s for this reason that I don’t give time to perfumes that champion specific notes—I want my perfume to swaddle me up in a blanket of nostalgia and sentiment. So when I first heard about the new kid on the block, Phlur, I was intrigued.