My Partner Hates Every Perfume I've Ever Tried, But Loves All The Options from This One Brand
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My partner has the nose of a hound dog. It is both frustrating and intriguing—he can literally smell when someone has a cold, when someone ate too many spices, and when someone is stressed (whenever I’m stressed he says my breath smells bad lol). In other words, he’s extremely sensitive to scents and has never liked any fragrances I’ve worn. I’ve known this man for 10 years, and not once has he enjoyed a perfume I brought home.
It didn’t bother me all that much—I was never really a perfume girl to begin with. In fact, he said that was one of the things that drew him to me in the beginning: I smelled good. Or, in his words, 'I lacked any off-putting smells.' I thought I was lucky that, at the very least, he seemed to love the smell of my hair/favorite shampoo.
Then one day I had to write about the best perfumes for work. I got to take home a bunch of samples, and a ton of brands sent me their favorite perfumes to try out. With a full range of arguably the best perfumes at my disposal, I presented them to my boyfriend and told him to pick one. To no one’s surprise, he found them all off-putting… except one. He picked up the Byredo’s Rouge Chaotique perfume and said “oh… this one isn’t bad”. I laughed, claiming of course it’s the most expensive one. Unfortunately it was a scent that I didn’t particularly love myself (it has a very heavy and spicy aroma).
But it was a lead I could work with. Byredo claims to use only non-synthetic materials, and perhaps that was something my gentle hound dog could sniff out. On another occasion, a friend of mine purchased Byredo’s Rose Noir perfume, and although I had presented a bunch of rose-scented perfumes to my partner in the past (which he disliked), this one appealed to him. That’s 2/2 Byredo perfumes he liked, but still I considered it a mere coincidence.
During our trip to Vienna, we went to a department store in an attempt to find a perfume for me. We went through the racks of perfumes and he, again, did not like any of them. Then I spontaneously bought a perfume I loved in Paris, thinking he must like this one (he didn’t).
Ready to give up, I attempted one last thing and visited the Byredo store in Boston. I explained my situation to the store clerk, including that all the perfumes he found agreeable so far have been from Byredo. She giggled, and gave me a sample of three perfumes to take home to him: Mojave Ghost, Gypsy Water, and Bibliothèque.
Fearfully, my partner sniffed at all three, then sniffed again, widened his eyes, and exclaimed he likes them all! Even Bibliothèque (a sweet scent), he found pleasant, despite notoriously despising sweet scents. Which brings us to 5/5 of winning Byredo perfumes.
So we did it ya’ll. After ten-years of trial and error, we finally found not one, not two, but multiple perfumes my partner loves and they’re all from one brand: Byredo. So while yes, their perfumes are quite expensive, I think this was solid proof that their fragrances are made of high quality materials and are therefore worthy of the steeper price tag.
