Perfume people, please can you help me analyse why I dislike these perfumes.
I had never had any particularly adverse reactions to perfumes until a few years ago when I tried Baccarat Rouge by Maison F Kurkdijan. When I first tried it I thought this is it, this the perfume I’ve been looking for: it’s perfect. I sprayed it on my neck and it went all over my scarf.
The next morning I put my scarf on and I felt knocked out and disgusted by the smell. It was like eggy sugar and something else I can’t describe. If I hadn’t taken the scarf off, I’d have vomited. I also tried one of the Diptyque perfumes and had a similar reaction along with a horrendous kind of burning chemical smell.
Since then, if In in somewhere like Selfridges, I find it hard to walk through the perfume section because of the wafts of these sorts of smells.
From what I can tell, I get this reaction from all the more expensive perfumes, the ones over 150. If I was in Debenhams passing Estée Lauder, Clinique, Chanel and so on I would have no reaction.
So what chemical is doing this to me, so I can avoid it? Also, I used to laugh at the Lush cosmetics shop, but now the smell coming from there is a blessed relief compared to Selfridges.