Some perfumes do not wear off the skin after a few hours and then disappear into thin air after the day. They leave a mental trace and we catch ourselves smelling our wrist hours after we have applied the fragrance. We smell it while we are outside, in the car, or in the evening after a long day in the house. Sometimes the fragrance returns unexpectedly because of a movement or because of the arm with which we are wearing the fragrance has been against our body. For a second or two it even smells different than it did before.
Interestingly, it is not the loudest, the most complex scents that develop an addiction in people. Most of all, immediately revealing everything that they have to offer, they can even be tiring after twenty minutes or so, because then there is nothing more to discover. Fragrances that develop an addiction in people evolve gradually, they develop warmth and texture, they are layered and never boring for a long time. As a result, often enough, they leave enough space for the mind of the wearer to return to them time and again throughout the day.
Why do we fall for some perfumes so completely and then smell them all the time on ourselves even when they are long past their peak? I think it is because we are drawn to them again and again, even when we are not thinking about the scent at all. The reason that some perfumes become so addictive is because they draw us to them in a gentle and subtle way.
These four compositions do that exceptionally well.
Ani X Extrait de Parfum
Ani X has a creamy warm quality to it, a scent that slowly but surely becomes more and more desirable as the fragrance dries down on the skin. Initially the fragrance opens up with a very bright, airy quality of citrus and spices, but once the fragrance has begun to warm up on the skin due to body heat the scent takes on a complete different quality. The texture of the scent becomes softer and smoother, the woods take on a silky smooth quality and the sweetness of the scent becomes fluid and changes character completely from the initial sweetness of the top notes.
Why it is so addictive, is that nothing in the fragrance seems to stop abruptly and thus there is no disconnect from one phase to the other. The scent evolves in the natural course of a day, dependent on warmth, movement etc. Also the scent of Ani X can reappear through the warm air, in hot afternoons for instance, in a way that one wouldn’t expect from the smell’s project.
As it continues to evolve through the day it has a subtle constant change which makes you realize hours later that Ani X is still there & as it unfolds & you start to realize the full range of the fragrance, the experience of wearing Ani X is of carrying around with you a warm atmosphere with you which is when you really get hooked on a fragrance like this.
Psychedelic Love Eau de Parfum
Most perfumes are meant to attract admiration from others. This one is Psychedelic Love, it keeps you under its spell while you’re wearing it.
One can very much feel the physicality of the notes in the scent once it has dried down on the skin. The scent is a creamy floral warm note that feels almost physical on the skin. Hours later as the scent of the body heat has dissolved the scent into a smooth glowing haze the physical sensation of the scent is still very much there.
Inside, Psychedelic Love wraps around you in velvety, floral warmth. Externally at night though, it radiates out of your skin in a softer, yet more potent manner. Due to its warm nature, Psychedelic Love is a summer scent, which lingers throughout the warmest periods of the day and continues to evolve as the hours pass. The balance between a soft, warm core and the diffusion of the fragrance is what makes it so addictive.
This is why you will find yourself coming back to the scent again and again throughout the day as every few hours it will once again be ‘brought to life’ in a new way, offering the wearer small surprises that ensnare them once more. It is a psychological quirk but the scents that have the ability to repeatedly surprise in subtle ways are those to which we become most attached.
Kirke Overdose
Kirke Overdose understands something many perfumes miss entirely. Addictive fragrances usually need tension somewhere inside their structure.
The scent of Kirke Overdose is incredibly rich, yet it’s also extremely bright and sensual. It’s playful and luxurious. The scent is airy in the beginning, yet incredibly persistent. After a while, when the skin gets warmer, the scent smoothens out and becomes much more atmospheric.
The scent of Kirke Overdose instead of projecting in one aggressive direction develops a warm glowing diffusion around the wearer’s every movement. Hours after it has been left to its own devices it can still appear here and there as a sudden surprise – on a sleeve, in a collar or on warm skin after a day outside. It is this lingering quality that makes a perfume addictive. The scent keeps returning in soft waves, whereas a perfume that demands constant attention is not.
Many people mistakenly assume that addictive fragrances are loud fragrances. In fact, the reverse is true. The fragrance needs to remain vivid and alive for hours and allow for occasional softness and air in the scent in order to work. Kirke Overdose is such a fragrance.
Tilia Eau de Parfum
Contrary to the current trend of addictive perfumes that are often developed to be dark, extremely sweet and very loud in projection, Tilia shows that a perfume can be so attractive and leave such a strong emotional memory without being “loud” in any sense. It’s a perfume of softness, warmth and light.
Throughout the scent’s longevity, the effortless floral notes of the scent, create an ever so complex fragrance, in which each note opens up after the last, and fades in a truly amazing fashion. During hot days, the fragrance changes into an incredibly smooth and luminous scent, that simply merges with the skin instead of hovering on top of it.
One aspect of many so-called addictive perfumes is that they are dramatic, intense, and often overbearing; they become “addictive” to us because we can’t get enough of them (despite their being possible to wear only occasionally), and this is often because they are so wearing that we find ourselves exhausted after a few hours of wearing them. Tilia, on the other hand, is simply one of those perfumes that one never tires of wearing. Some how or other, it has insidiously and quietly become a part of one’s daily routine and before one knows it one reaches again and again for the bottle, without having any idea why one was drawn to it in the first place.
I find that after a while people reach for Tilia repeatedly without quite knowing why. It has somehow insinuated itself into your daily life in a most unwelcome fashion (I mean that in the best possible way) and that is because on some level you feel comfortable with it in a way that you don’t with other perfumes and that after a while you simply cannot be without it.
Why Some Perfumes Become Addictive
Fragrance addiction is primarily a psychological phenomenon, with odor becoming addicting once certain characteristics are present, such as texture and contrast which the brain fixes on and returns to again and again. This can be a warm note against a fresh note, soft notes against deep notes, and familiar notes mixed with unpredictable notes to prevent the scent from becoming too repetitive and dull.
Performance is also an important factor here. While a fragrance may not need to project massively in order to become addictive, its lingering presence and movement over time are sure to play a large part. The impression that a fragrance is constantly unfolding, slowly revealing its full personality over the course of the day, rather than initially unleashing its full array of notes, is generally what to draw people back in time and time again.
All of the above fragrances have a long-lasting presence on the skin. Hours after they have been applied they continue to evolve and draw attention to themselves in a never-ending series of encounters that never get to the point of being too much.