Choose a perfume according to your style

Everybody chooses their perfumes according to different criterias: according to the seasons, their personality, their age or their style of clothing. Whatever your criteria is, the most essential is to choose a perfume in accordance with your olfactory heritage that will give you a strong emotion.

Choosing a perfume according to your olfactory heritage

The olfactory heritage is the sum of all the scents and flavours recorded in your memory. This pool of olfactory and gustatory experiences is built up before the age of 7, but continues to develop throughout life. It will be particularly influenced by your environment and your travels (countryside, mountains, sea, city).

If you wish to choose your perfume according to your style, we still recommend that you take into consideration your olfactory heritage, the only real indicator to find a fragrance that suits your image.

When perfumery echoes fashion 

It is not uncommon for fashion and perfume to echo each other. Indeed, after the glorious period of the great perfumers (such as Guerlain, Pivert, Houbigant, Coty), the Paul Poiret fashion house was the first to launch into perfumery, by creating the Parfums de Rosine brand.

Paul Poiret used to say about his perfume Nuit de Chine: "My perfumes will do for your soul what my dresses have done for your body".

Subsequently, major brands such as Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Lanvin, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Mugler developed perfumes.

From then on, fashion began to associate itself with perfumery. And it was a two-way street. Indeed, with La Petite Robe Noire, which Sylvaine Delacourte developed in collaboration with Delphine Jelk Guerlain. A perfume brand thus became associated with fashion, creating a somewhat revolutionary concept.

 

 

Choosing a perfume at day and at night 

If you like to choose perfume according to your style, you should choose one that is adapted to everyday clothes and one adapted to evening clothes. A perfume worn during the day can be light (it should not be too heady to avoid bothering your entourage) that perfectly match a casual look or a work look. An eau de toilette or a fresh eau may be particularly suitable during the day. 

On the other hand, a more sophisticated evening look can echo an eau de parfum, a more pronounced and diffusive fragrance.

You can therefore choose to wear the same brand of perfume as an eau de toilette during the day and as an eau de parfum in the evening.

How do you choose a perfume according to your style?

Depending on your clothing style, the colours of your clothes, your hairstyle and your accessories, certain fragrances will be more or less adapted.

Here are a few examples of looks associated with fragrances:

• The classic look

If you have a rather classic, timeless, chic and elegant style and often wear classic suits, tweeds, trench coats, blouses, pencil skirts or ballerinas, the fragrances of the fougère olfactory family may suit you well. 

Lavender is particularly fashionable these days, and is very present in both women's and men's fragrances. Here are a few fragrances with fougère notes: 

• La Fougère Royale Houbigant 
• Jicky Guerlain
• Mon Guerlain 
• Libre Yves Saint-Laurent

 

• The preppy look 

If you tend to wear satin scarves, cashmere sweaters and moccasins, you might have a more preppy style, a look that is currently very trendy.

Such a look goes very well with aldehydic fragrances, composed from synthetic products.

Here are a few fragrances with aldehyde notes: 

• N°5 Chanel
• Rive Gauche Yves Saint-Laurent 
• First Van Cleef 
• Arpège Lanvin

 

• The "flower power" look

Women with a very flowery clothing style, with macro-flower fabrics, for example, can then adapt their perfume to these patterns, favouring hyper-floral and powerful fragrances, such as : 

• Giorgio Beverly Hills 
• Fracas Robert Piguet 
• Carnal Flower Frédéric Malle
• Poison Dior
• Ysatis Givenchy (in which the white flower, and mainly the tuberose, will be able to sublimate your outfits very well)

If you have a floral style, but with more romantic floral fabrics, then you can choose rose-based fragrances (cf. Floral Family), such as Chloé or Trésor de Lancôme.

Orange-blossom-based scents will also do the trick, such as those in Sylvaine Delacourte's Orange Blossom Collection.

• The discreet look

People wearing more discreet clothes, with pastel colors and soft half-tones, may prefer powdery floral fragrances (cf. Powdery Facet), such as : 

• Flower Kenzo
• Florentina Sylvaine Delacourte
• Dovana Sylvaine Delacourte

 

• The summer look 

Clothes with exotic patterns and summer outfits will harmonize very well with sunny scents, such as Lilylang and Vanori by Sylvaine Delacourte.

• The iconoclastic look 

People with an iconoclastic, avant-garde style of dress, with rather dark tones, can wear chypre or woody fragrances (cf. Chypre Family, Woody Family), such as : 

• Mitsouko Guerlain 
• Aromatics Elixir Clinique
• Féminité du Bois Lutens

 

• The sexy look 

For very feminine and more sexy style, vanilla scents can be very well paired, like the fragrances in Sylvaine Delacourte's Vanilla Collection, or Guerlain's Shalimar, or Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle (cf. Oriental or amber facet).

• The sporty look

People with a sporty, casual look, who often wear jogging suits, may opt for eaux de Cologne, or eaux fraîches, rather than eaux de parfum. In particular, they can choose Nouvelle Fraîcheur or Fougère modern eaux de toilette.

 

 

How do you choose a perfume according to the type of clothes you wear?

Some fragrances will be more adapted to specific types of fabrics. For example: 

• Leather and suede combine beautifully with the leather facet.
• White jeans and T-shirts go well with eaux de Cologne and eaux fraîches, or with fragrances based on white musks, which evoke the scent of clean linen (cf. Musky Facet), or Estée Lauder's White Linen, or Sylvaine Delacourte's Oranzo from the Orange Blossom Collection.

 

Creating a discrepancy between your scent and your look 

If you're a bit adventurous and forward-thinking, you might consider creating a discrepancy between your clothing style and your perfume. For example, you could choose to wear Eau sauvage by Dior, with a sexy outfit, or a sophisticated look; or you could pair jeans with fragrances where incense is the main theme, such as the fragrances in Comme des garçons, Eau blanche by Lunx, Shalimar by Guerlain, and the fragrances in Sylvaine Delacourte's Vanilla Collection.

 

Sylvaine Delacourte fragrances

Discover Sylvaine Delacourte's brand with her Orange Blossom, Musks and Vanilla Collections. You can try them thanks to the Discovery Boxes (5 Eaux de Parfum x 2 ml) and rediscover these raw materials as you have never smelled them before.