Every year, I try to start by wearing a different perfume each day for at least the first month. This year, inspired by fellow perfume blogger Flaconneur who undertook this project last year, I’m also aiming to wear every single perfume in my collection at least once (except those few that have never yet been opened—those I’ll get to when I’m ready!). I should be done before the end of March, taking into account anticipated breaks for travel.

I began the year 2026 with a firm favorite, Atelier Materi Cacao Porcelana. A couple of days later, the bout of (most likely) COVID I’d contracted over the holidays stole my sense of smell completely for about half a day. At that time, I came up with the brilliant idea to wear my least favorite perfumes one by one, starting with Mauboussin Histoire d’Eau.

It may be a beautiful, retro, spicy amber floral to those who love the genre, but one or more of the spices strongly disagrees with me. I had bought it without ever smelling it because I was captivated by the bottle design. If it were glass instead of plastic, it would be even more impressive.

Luckily, it wasn’t as abrasive to my gradually recovering sense of smell. Next up was Lalique Encre Noire, which I vaguely remembered disliking but wasn’t sure exactly why. This took a positive turn because my still partially anosmic nose picked up the grapefruit note followed by a very clean vetiver, making for a cheerful and refreshing experience.

Now I’m fully recovered, but I’ve continued this pattern of wearing perfumes I don’t like as much on days when I stay home and those I like a lot when I go out. So far, it has become apparent that:

• Most of the perfumes I own that I don’t really care for were purchased because I went gaga for the bottle design, and/or because I’d read or heard how great it was. I think I’ve gotten better at resisting this kind of temptation over the years.
• The perfumes I’m indifferent to don’t really have specific memories associated with them. Perhaps nothing memorable happened on the rare occasions that I wore them previously.
• The perfumes that feel very “not me” are not that difficult to coexist with (yes, “coexist” is the word that comes to mind when wearing them). They may be on me, but are still apart from me rather than a part of me—a bit like Inspector Clouseau’s ill-fitting, comical disguises in the old Pink Panther movies that I’ve been watching out of order recently. They’re showered off at the end of the day and promptly forgotten.

The costume idea is easier to develop when a feature is exaggerated, rather like a caricature, because that makes it obvious who the character is supposed to be. Otherwise, how is one to role play being relatively nondescript?

Still, the exercise helps me pay attention to what I’m wearing each day, whether the fragrance is one I love or not. And I’m “wasting not” in hopes of “wanting not.” So, why not?