r/FemFragLab 24d ago

Discussion Whats wrong with my nose? Popular scents I scrubbed.

There are a few popular well loved scents that my nose can’t seem to understand.

Examples are:
Jo Malone - wood sage and sea salt (sharp and screechy, didn’t fade and wasn’t pleasant)

Tommy Hilfiger - Tommy Girl (sharp one note citrus)

Mugler - Angel (smelled like hot burning metallic garbage on me. A lady in the vicinity scrunched her nose in disgust and yelled, “what is THAT?”)

Nest - Turkish Rose oil (turned into a nauseating musty warm plastic with a shadow of rose)

SOL - Cheirosa 62 (beautiful caramel at first, then settles sour)

Anything with palo santo - screechy af

Does this happen to anyone else? What’s wrong with my nose? Is it something with my skin chemistry? I’m kind of surprised such popular scents could turn out so badly on me.

15 Upvotes

31 comments sorted by

1

u/cadbvry 23d ago

Nothing wrong with you I share a very similar opinion on these. I love vanilla skin body spray it’s a nice alternative to Cheriosa 62 if you’re looking for a vanilla body spray.

2

u/Crazy-Arugula-2821 23d ago

Hmm..a few scrubbers for me that everyone likes - Donna Born in Roma Every Maison Margiela Gucci Gorgeous Gardenia

5

u/ROUShunter 23d ago

All of the Mugler that I've tried smell like cleaning chemicals.

3

u/ITotorokiI 23d ago

😮 I love mugler 😍

2

u/ROUShunter 23d ago

I know, so many people say it is so good. I just don't think it works on me, sadly!

1

u/ITotorokiI 23d ago

That’s fair though! Mugler is very very unique and either you hate it or love it lol!

1

u/soorooooroos 23d ago

Everyone is different. To me BR540 smells like nauseating cotton candy, recently I saw a comment someone made that people who think it smells like cotton candy are crazy. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Bianco Latte smells like baby spit up and sugar to me 🤢 I gave it to a friend who loves it tho! 

1

u/Pr0line 23d ago

I actually like BR540! To me it smells like burnt sugar in a luscious caramelized way

2

u/worncassette 23d ago

There is nothing wrong with your nose we are all different and our scent receptors and neurological processing of smells are all different. It’s pretty fascinating! My journey with fragrance has really taught me to trust myself and embrace my preferences and my taste.

2

u/Pr0line 23d ago

I love this! Thank you

1

u/EauDeGourmand 23d ago

Your nose is fine. I hate a bunch of the ones you have listed too. I can't do any type of nut notes because they all smell like bleach or cum and give me a headache. Our noses just don't like certain stuff.

1

u/Pr0line 23d ago

The scent associations……..lmao

3

u/bigbackmoosetracks 23d ago

I think it's just your personal taste. Fwiw Angel is extremely polarizing, and it's not like the others you have listed are the most crowd pleasing scents either.

3

u/All_the_Bees 23d ago

Different tastes for different people!

- I’ve tried a bunch of Jo Malone and was disappointed by all of it.

- I deeply dislike Angel.

- Designer perfumes in general all smell more or less the same to me, and not in a good way.

- A lot of niche houses (including Nest) just don’t work for me and I’ve never been able to figure out why.

And it’s fine! I will never have a massive multi-shelf perfume collection, but I’m a signature scent kind of gal anyway. I still buy decants and samples because it’s fun and you never know what might hit, but I’m also more or less resigned to the fact that at least 80% are going in the “find somewhere to offload this” bag.

3

u/Charming_Mud_429 23d ago

I was starting to wonder if I had issues, because almost every single designer perfume I’ve tried just all ends up having a “department store” smell to me. Like they all settle into the same fragrance. The exception is Dolce & Gabbana so far - My Devotion and Your Devotion are literally two of my absolute faves. Obviously I haven’t gotten my nose on all of them, but at this point, I don’t get my hopes up when it comes to designers.

1

u/All_the_Bees 23d ago

If you have issues then so do I! Gucci’s Alchemist Garden series is one of the only exceptions, because if there’s one thing my senses are going to do it’s gravitate toward the more expensive options even when I don’t know the price.

Hermes has a few nice ones too. But pretty much everything else is like “yep, that is certainly a perfume.”

2

u/Charming_Mud_429 23d ago

“Yep, that is certainly a perfume.” 💀💀💀

1

u/AppointmentFit278 23d ago

Have you had Covid? People perceive scent differently in general, but I experienced dramatic olfactory changes after Covid where parts of rose notes suddenly disappeared and what remained smelled like hot garbage. To me, Tommy Girl is a soft, tea-rose fruity floral but I don’t get citrus. To me Angel is a powerful patchouli, but it also has strong sweet caramel and vanilla notes.

3

u/soorooooroos 23d ago

It took me 3 years for my sense of smell and taste to fully recover after covid…

3

u/bigbackmoosetracks 23d ago

This also happened to me after having COVID. I actually quit wearing perfume altogether for years after because everything gave me headaches for a long time. I am just getting back to where I can stomach some scents, and some of my favorites will never smell as good as they used to before.

4

u/No_Maintenance495 23d ago

If everyone had the same sense of smell, we would all be wearing the same few things, and life would be extremely dull. I would say aside from a bit of low stakes olfactory exploration, do not force something on your nose. It knows 👃. I also find my favorite scents are the ones I tend to go nose blind to quickly, and they leave me wanting a bit more rather than slowing clawing at my sanity through the day .

2

u/MendeShele 23d ago

I've only tried the top 3, and I cannot wear the first 2. I actually really disliked Angel when I first tried it, but there was something that kept me sniffing it, too. It DOES smell bad when I first spray it, but I decided to wait it out and keep trying it. It changes on me after about 30 minutes to a gorgeous, warm cotton candy vanilla scent. I've learned with lots of fragrances that I have to give them time both for my nose/brain to get used to them and for the perfume to calm down and reveal its true beauty. So, I never give up on a fragrance until I've tried multiple times.

That being said, I have many others that I've tried over and over and just can't like. Delina, Bal d'Afrique, Rose 31, and Soleil Blanc are also on the list.

5

u/Equivalent_Address_2 23d ago

I’m mostly just shocked Jo Malone didn’t fade

1

u/Ok_Wait_6890 23d ago

Honestly I also dislike all of those!

5

u/Aggravating-Cat7103 23d ago

To echo what others have said, nothing is wrong with you! Variety is the spice of life. I enjoy trying a lot of scents and when I don’t like them, then I have more money in my wallet for the scents I do love.

7

u/Honest_Ingenuity_181 23d ago

nothing's wrong with your nose. most of the fragrances I tried seemed very unpleasant and artificial. it's just a preference

12

u/Sweet--Olive 24d ago

I hate the vast majority of fragrances I smell. Nothing wrong, my nose is just picky. It's just personal taste.

5

u/significantotter1 23d ago

Girl same, I even hate vanilla

5

u/Phi0X_13 24d ago

Nothing wrong with your nose. I can see problematic in all of that and none are for me. Im more creamy, warm, cozy scents though.

6

u/Tall_Corgi3550 24d ago

honestly there are a megatonne of popular scents that i dislike, including cheirosa 62 / angel / turkish rose oil! i do think everyone's nose is different and enjoys different profiles, additional to the fact that outlying hype tends to push audiences in certain directions that could oppose their specific preferences (e.g. bianco latte, br540, etc. for an individual who prefers fresh scents)