Most people generally rotate between three and five scents for the year or part of it, says Harris. That said, there is no strict rule about such things; the point is not to accumulate a trunk-load of bottles that will expire before you have used them all up (the shelf life for most fragrances is three to six months).
— British perfumer Lyn Harris, in A Perfumer’s Guide to Building the Perfect Fragrance Wardrobe in 2018 at Vogue.
If the shelf life is 3 to 6 months, then I need to get rid of 99.9% of my perfumes, especially vintage…
Same! And it’s silly, anyone who has ever bought perfume knows it does not generally turn in 3 months.
I would so love to get some of these people who talk about the shelf life of perfume in a room together, with some identically-formulated bottles but one is from today and one is from a year ago, and challenge them all to tell the difference.
Zing!
Same here, I’ll need to get rid of everything i have! I don’t think it’s true. All my bottles are old but they are in good shape and smell amazing.
Three to six months? That… That….
I’m going to go put on some My Sin extrait and bang my head against the wall.
If you’re going to bang your head against the wall every time a magazine (or blog!) prints something silly about perfume you won’t have much head left
Fair enough.
But if you put My Sin extrait on every time you’ll be a very good smelling headless person!
Can’t. Compute.
If I think too much about all of my bottles turning or how much unused perfume I might have when I die, I’ll be super anxious.
Ditto. But I think she’s wrong about the shelf life.
Oh, I completely agree! The shelf life comment is way off but still gives me stress to think many of my bottles may go off before I get to use them up. I have already had a couple bottles turn, although both were received secondhand so I don’t know what condition they were kept in.
Everybody start spraying quick!!!
Ha! I’m a light sprayer, very rarely using 2 sprays in the morning. I should definitely spray more generously!
Agree! I’m also a one spritzer and while the section above is just clearly untrue, it’s true that I could afford to spritz more laviously.
That is just not true. It baffles me that they published that quote.
Do note that they don’t assert that the 3-6 months came from Lyn Harris.
I re-read the piece and noticed that. Good! My faith in her is restored ☀️
Yes, that was concerning me too. And if that were true then 100 mL bottles should be illegal ????
Truly!
I happen to have a bottle of 4711 that I know to be over 35 years old. It smells great. 4711!
Many of my favorites are over 30 years old. Dare I make a comment about the media? Fact-checking is not enough, actually. The real basis for facts in this fragrant realm is lived experience, empirical data.
Well if the writer of that article’s perfumes only last 3-6 months,I’m curious what on earth she’s wearing!But it MUST.BE.CRAP.
If I think about the pre-WW2 Shalimar in my collection,for instance.*Footnote.
Of course they tend to last longer, but some fragrance do turn very quickly. Angel is known to turn in scent and colour after about a year, womanity changes extremely fast, Flowerbomb browns after 9 months, escada summer scents turn in 3-9months when exposed on counter. Terre D’Hermes turns in about a year. It all depends on storage of the fragrance. I have some that I’ve had since I started in the industry 9 years ago, and they’re still good. Some bottles I’ve recieved about a year ago have already turned. Most of my fragrances are in my closet, boxed away and I open them occasionally, rotating what to wear.
I am curious, then, about what you experience as “turning” as this has happened to me so rarely. Is it a slight change in character or top notes that you can only detect with a very sensitive nose?
I have bottles of Angel and Womanity from the early 2000 and none of them have turned. As least, my nose has not detected any changes. As you said, it depends on how well they are stored and care of.
Someone had better tell that to my vintage bottles of Magie Noir, Fidji and Miss Dior because they obviously didn’t get that memo????. They’re all in their mid thirties now but not ready to be pensioned off yet.
Too late! Already got the trunkload, lol! I’d be happy to take some of the author’s 6 month old scents off her hands, though.
While you’re at it throw out any wine or distilled spirits older than three months. Wine, like perfume, has a high level of alcohol, so you should throw it out when discarding old perfume. Same for distilled spirits…no good after 3-6 months.
Never mind that some of those distilled spirits are aged for several years before they are even offered for sale.
I do agree that the average person only rotates a few fragrances – my sister in law has two, one for fall/winter and one for spring/summer. I also think that most people store their perfume on their dressers or (gasp!) even in the bathroom, so the likelihood of them going off is higher. But like most perfume articles in mainstream magazines, just silly.
I thought the average was 3 years. usually it says 36 months on the box. I’ve found some perfumes have gone off after 5/6 years and I’ve thrown them out.
I’ve had a few go off, but that’s life. And I rotate between 7 and 14 scents a week.