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Kate Apted

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A hearty good evening to you all from balmy Melbourne. Well, it is for now; tomorrow might be another thing.

For months, I have been making my way through a 200ml bottle of Scandal shower gel by the one and only Jean Paul Gaultier. A quick spray on a card when it was first released confirmed it isn’t my style. I found it sweet, waxy and all too flighty. There was a Pentavite* vitamin drops note to it that annoyed the hell out of me. I happened upon the shower gel at an absolute steal, though, and gave it a chance.

After my first use of the gel, I found a lingering note of bees’ wax. A thick, rich, almost honeyed milk type of note. I had washed my hair with the gel too and adored the gentle warmth of the bees’ wax that emanated from me all day. It has been a good ten uses later and I find myself craving the enveloping depth of the wax. I have made a truce with the Pentavite vitamin note, strangely. It also heralds the end of my bottle of gel.

Rather than try to track down an inflated priced replacement, it made financial sense to source a bottle of the EDP. So, I did.

Scandal by Daphne Bugey, Fabrice Pellegrin and Christophe Raynaud for Jean Paul Gaultier (2017)

Fragrantica – Fragrantica lists the following notes: honey, patchouli, bees’ wax, blood orange, gardenia, caramel, licorice, orange blossom, peach, jasmine, mandarin orange.

My fatal mistake was to over spray myself. Just don’t. Take it from me, Scandal smells infinitely better with one, maybe two, sprays on the decolletage. I applied my usual 7 sprays and moaned for the rest of the evening that I could smell NOTHING! A very vague sweetness with a ghost of an orange blossom or something. No trace of the dense wax at all! Not even Pentavite. Then, last Thursday night, I absent mindedly applied one quick spritz on my chest and continued on with the clothes washing. Miraculously, an hour later, it registered in my brain that the wax was there in all its abundant glory.

I tried two sprays after showering with the last of my gel Saturday morning. All I could sense until lunch time was the golden elixir of bees’ wax.

So, the very simple moral of my story is to be judicious in how one applies perfume. Something that may have not appealed in the past, or didn’t release a particular note may have just been applied in a manner not intended. It may take a bit of playing around with some perfumes to bring their best sides out. Much like relating to people, I suppose. Our relationship to our perfumes are never really fixed and much can be discovered by exploring the myriad of ways we might wear it. Trying different formats helps to familiarise one’s self to a new scent, or even find new facets to an over looked cheapie.

Have you ever discovered you were wearing a scent wrong? Or have you used a scent you dislike in perfume form, only to enjoy it in another format?

Be safe, APJ family, in this busy time of year.

Kate xx

*Pentavite vitamin drops were commonly used with tins of Carnation evaporated milk to feed babies in the early 1970s in Australia. Particularly if the mother could not breastfeed her child.