Although I have a pretty extensive perfume collection — around 200 bottles, plus hundreds of samples and decants — for the last several years I've only worn a handful of them on a regular basis. Lately I've found myself gravitating to older and vintage scents, particularly classic Guerlains (Jicky, Mitsouko, Shalimar) and Caron (Yatagan, Caron pour Homme). Often dismissed as "old lady perfumes" (which is both ageist and misogynist!) they're the best examples of perfumery as high art I know. There are decades-old vintage samples out there if you know where to look or get lucky at an estate sale, but even the contemporary reformulated versions are more interesting and intricate than 99% of what you'll find at Sephora or even a niche shop like Luckyscent. I'd much rather smell of something that would have been familiar to Proust (that would be Jicky, a spiced lavender-vanilla considered to be the first "modern" perfume and one that has been in continuous production since it was released in 1889) than Santal 33 or whatever Maison Francis Kurkdjian everyone else is wearing.
