Peaceful Perfumes

The London Telegraph has a great article about perfume bottle collectors – many of them,  especially from the late 19th and early 20th century, are made from Baccarat crystal or designed by famous artisans like Lalique.  L’Air du Temps is one such perfume.

There are a lot of helpful hints about collecting and storing old perfumes.  For instance, they can get better with time but also degrade and eventually do lose their wonderful scents.  Wiping the stopper once you’ve applied helps prevent transferring oils and skin cells back into the perfume.

A lot of the scents I review aren’t in their production bottles, so I often forget how important the packaging really is to selling a fragrance.  Honestly, if a fragrance really wows me but the bottle itself doesn’t appeal to me I’m much less likely to buy it.  And I’ve often found myself attracted to a scent based on the packaging, but was disappointed in the juice inside.

Unfortunately, the article reveals that to really collect perfumes as an investment, it’s not advisable to use them.  Even keeping the receipt (and of course don’t remove the cellophane) can increase the value down the road.  I say life is short, use your perfumes!

Do you collect perfume bottles?  Do you save the empties for nostalgia’s sake?