u/lexiconic

So my 7th grader told me after we did back-to-school shopping, “Bro, I need to find my scent. I can’t show up with all this drip and not have a scent.” I said, “Bet!” and after he rolled his eyes at me for using his slang, we agreed to hit up Sephora this weekend. The thing is, I know very little about designer scents because I’ve focused on niche and indie fragrances in my own exploration.

For the most part I’m just going to let him try whatever he wants and see what he likes, but I do want to offer a little guidance (if he’ll take it, lol). If you were introducing a middle schooler to designer fragrances, what would you want to make sure he tries?

I have been enjoying exploring Amouage through decants, mostly from r/fragranceswap. I ordered 8 2ml decants from a seller and when they arrived all the labels had worn off during shipping, so I don’t know what any of them are. The seller was really professional about it when I let them know, so this is not to complain or put anyone on blast. But now I have 8 unidentified fragrances that could be Elsewhere, Imitation Man, King Blue (Opus XV), Reasons, Reception, Royal Tobacco (Opus XVI), Silver Oud (Opus XIII), or Timber (Opus XVI)

I tried testing them and recording the notes and comparing them to the official notes but the thing is, my nose and scent vocabulary are not that sophisticated. I can describe things as light, sweet, fruity, funky, smoky or spicy. Sometimes I can identify leather or tobacco as distinct scents but not always. Usually I can pick out vanilla pretty easily. So I’m like “this one is spicy and fresh” or “this one has something sharp and astringent but then turns fruity,” but when I read the notes I can’t figure out what that matches up to.

I do feel like I’ve been able to identify Royal Tobacco because it’s TOBAC through and through . Then I’ve got two strong/loud funky oud scents that are probably King Blue and Silver Oud, though I’m not confident about which is which and there are a few others that have some out/animalic/barnyard notes so that makes me even less confident. After that I’m pretty lost. Any suggestions on how to solve this scent mystery?

The collector/video game completionist in me thinks it would be a great idea to get samples of ALL the Memo Paris leather scents. So far I just have African Leather and I like it a lot. Good idea? Bad idea? What do y’all think of these scents?

Hopefully this is okay for a stand alone post. I’ve been exploring fragrances for like 6 months and every so often I try a scent that has a strong melon note that usually gets more intense over the dry down. Melon is never listed in the olfactory notes so it must be something else. I really don’t care for it so I’m trying to figure out what it’s called so I can hopefully avoid it in the future.

Two scents where I’ve encountered it are Thousand Palms by Fulton and Roark and Arashiyama by d’Annum, though I know there are more and I just didn’t write it down in my notes.

Any ideas?

I’ve booked a short Inca Trail trek that includes circuit 1B and 3B. Would it be worth adding 2A or 2B as well?