Do you collect or savor? These are far from identical. In fact, there’s generally an inverse relation between the two. The more fragrances you collect, the more difficult it is to savor. If you’re looking for the next quick fragrance fix, you have little time to spend wearing and savoring a great fragrance, say, an entire week, or even an entire month. You’re collecting or, to switch metaphors, dabbling in a huge buffet rather than enjoying a savory gourmet dinner. This is not to say you can’t enjoy collecting. As the character in the movie Heat once declared, for some people, “The action is the juice.” It’s the collecting itself they enjoy, and not the fragrances as such. If you spend many years collecting fragrances as I have you might discover collecting isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. A few weeks ago Antonio posted a video declaring he’s reducing his collection from about 1000 to about 15 fragrances. Of the myriad of “decluttering” videos I’ve observed from the “influencers,” his was by far the most impressive. Why? Because he gave thoughtful, principaled, permanent reasons for retaining his 15 fragrances. He has reasons to savor, and not collect. I intentionally keep my collection at about 100 (though I actually own more fragrances than are in what I deem my collection). I suspect in 5 to 10 years that number will reduce to 25–50 and in 15 to 20 years (if I’m still alive) that number will diminish to 4 or 5. As one grows older he generally enjoys fewer things, but he enjoys those fewer things more than he enjoyed the many things when he was younger. This is true of fragrances. It is possible to both collect and savor, but the more aggressively one collects, the less one can enjoy savoring. Collect or savor. Pick one.

I am probably going to piss off some clone warriors with this one, but so be it. I can say this because I have been there. I chased everything. I owned hundreds of dupes and clones. I chased every new “95% identical” release, every beast-mode version and every $30 alternative that supposedly made the original obsolete. But I also chased every inexpensive designer brand I could find. Rack-store bargains, discounted designers, cheapies that somebody on YouTube said were hidden gems — if it was inexpensive and getting attention, I wanted to try it. Then I started doing the same thing with niche. I chased niche brands, affordable niche, hyped niche and whatever house everybody happened to be talking about that month. For a long time, the hobby became about the next bottle. And eventually I had to ask myself a question: Do I actually love perfumery, or do I just love collecting bottles? Because those are not necessarily the same thing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying affordable fragrances. There is nothing wrong with clones either. Some are excellent, some perform better than the original, and some are incredible values. But if your entire collection is built around copies of fragrances you have never even smelled, I have a hard time calling that a deep appreciation of perfumery. Especially when those same people turn around and say: “Why would anybody pay $300 for the original?” “The clone is better.” “It smells exactly the same.” “The original is a ripoff.” How do you know? You never smelled it. Watching a YouTube reviewer tell you something is 95% accurate does not mean you have experienced the original. And this is one of my biggest problems with clone culture. Somewhere along the way, price and performance became the only measurements of quality. If a fragrance costs $25 and lasts 12 hours, it is automatically considered better than a $250 fragrance that lasts seven. That makes absolutely no sense to me anymore. Perfumery is more than projection and longevity.