Recommended Buying

While I get samples from many different places, I’d like to take a moment to highlight some of these places for those readers out there who want to begin trying some perfumes but don’t know where to start. While you can get good sample deals on EBay sometimes, or beg them off your local department store salesperson if you are incredibly lucky, here are some places where a budding perfumista can be sure to get exactly what one might be after. While lots of places offer samples for sale or gift with purchase, I’m choosing to highlight a few I’ve had a lot of success with.

Lucky Scent sells samples of just about everything they carry, and their page lets you sort by type or search by note, so if already know you like “vanilla” or “rose” or “iris,” you can get a bunch of different samples that share a note you already know you like. It’s a good way to get started.

Beauty Habit is really pretty generous with their samples with purchase, but their new Try Before You Buy program is really quite something.

The Perfumed Court is a cheap and easy way to get started, particularly through sample sets. Also, this is a great place to get educated about perfume, because some of the grand dames of the perfume blogging world run this site, and they love to help. (For an example, see this page on fragrance families. Also a great place to sample vintage perfumes you might not otherwise get a sniff at.

You can also frequently get samples directly from the perfumer. Here’s a short list of independent perfumers who I think are worth a try and who provide sampling opportunities: INeKE, CB I Hate Perfume has 2mls of the perfume absolutes, Bond No. 9 offers 7ml sprayers and sample boxes, DSH Perfumes has sample packs for sale, Aftelier Perfumes sample packs of three, Artemisia Natural Perfumers sample packs, Sarah Horowitz Parfums individual samples, Roxana Illuminated Perfumes, and last, but never least, Tauer Perfumes has individual samples.

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Addendum: I wanted to add a mention of the Sephora gift sets, which allow you to get samples of multiple fragrances at a discount. I particularly like the scent samplers which provide several samples as well as a gift certificate for a full bottle of the scent from the sampler set you like best.