You do get inured to any smell, and stop smelling it. So although you still smell of , you can't smell it, and refresh it. I think this is how people end up drenched in the stuff.
My first boyfriend's mother wore obscene amounts of ... something that came in a white and yellow stripey box. It was vile, well, at least in the quantities she wore. You could walk down a public hallway and smell that she'd been there an hour or two before.
One time, she was in our house, and one of our (particularly weird) cats was just fascinated by her smell. She was flattered. Because yes, cats are connaisseurs of good smells, aren't they.
Thing is, if you wear too much perfume, sensitive people will shrink in horror, and people with nearly no sense of smell will express their delight at your lovely smell, as it is one of the very few things in the world they can smell!