Gents. I’m young in this hobby. And I’m glad to be apart of this hobby. And I am learning so much from you all. I’m thankful. However, I’m hoping you all can help me with an issue. When starting this journey, I wanted to accumulate as many fragrances as possible so that I had choices. Most are dupes of the best designer and niche brands I can’t afford. Now I have some designers. And I went to Nordstrom’s to get samples and played with all the niche today. And it occurred to me. Even after watching countless hours of YouTube videos, in the beginning I didn’t care. But now, IT’S A MUST. I must have a magnetic 🧲 cap or a heavy cap and a pressurized atomizer. I’m addicted. I feel like I’m autistic or I have OCD. It’s supposed to be ABOUT THE JUICE. But my first judgement is that cap. How heavy is it in my hand? Does it snap back. The atomizer, I push it half way or all the way for a full cloud. If I had a judging system as good as ( @Edward Mooney ) I would have this IN THE criteria. What is wrong with me? I have a bottle of Missoni and just because it has a heavy magnetic cap I’m going to tell you it’s better than what it really is. I have a problem here guys… 😫

I haven’t felt very patriotic lately, so going out and celebrating wasn’t something I initially wanted to do. But my friends convinced me to go out, and I’m so glad that I did. The local parks and rec department put on an amazing celebration. We had probably 10-15K people from all walks of life coming together to celebrate. It just goes to show that sometimes you have to touch grass and ignore the doom scrolling and pundits with agendas. So my fragrance today was a little symbolic. I wore Tempestarii from indie house Andromedas Curse. It’s a rain storm themed scent that is pretty realistic. It captures that scent of rain on the wind just as the temperature falls and the first drops begin to fall. It’s earthy, slightly floral, ozonic and a little damp. On top of it. I did a couple of sprays of The Noir 29 to put some black tea mixed into the eye of the storm. My own olfactory nod to the tea party that started it all. I hope that wherever you are , however you celebrate, that you had a fun, safe night tonight.

Is there a resource that recommends bar soap or deodorants that would match or complement fragrances?

I hope you smell good today!! See graphic.

I debated about whether to post this in Miscellaneous or Favorite Fragrances. Let me know if this whole series would be better suited to Miscellaneous. I am a competition nerd. From my days running speech and debate tournaments, to big sporting events, I've always loved organizing and tracking results. With the World Cup getting to the business end of the tournament and the Tour de France beginning (and in my personal world, reaching the end of the BookTube Prize Semifinals this month), it's time to do some competitive match-ups with my fragrances. I have 40 bottles now, a pretty good variety of seasonal and occasional choices. So I set up a double-elimination bracket for myself, seeding the bottles by their Fragrantica ratings (not perfect, but good enough for this). It will take 78 match-ups to complete the double-elimination process, so it's going to take a while. But I'm hoping this will teach me more about my own tastes (at this time) and what my true favorites are within my growing collection. Matchup #1 coming tomorrow.