Perfume decanting supplies - the UK perspective revisited

Every perfumista reaches a point when they wish to share their collection with a fellow fumehead. This may be in the form of a so-called 'care package' or a swap - whether private or via the lively swap board on Makeupalley.  I have racked up some 75+ swaps on MUA, and have sent perfume as a gift (I narrowly stopped myself there from saying 'I have gifted'!) to many of my friends, both corporeal and virtual.  To this end, I have bought and rebought decanting supplies (atomisers and small stoppered vials mostly) many times over the past five years.  In a recent post on Bois de Jasmin, Victoria takes an in-depth look at the whole business of decanting.  I gazed in awe and wonder at the photographs of her spraying 'commando' (ie straight from the nozzle, without the safety net of a funnel) into a perfectly behaved receptacle.

She also canvassed opinions about the best place to buy decanting tackle in different parts of the world.  Undina of Undina's Looking Glass has also compiled a very useful post on this subject, which Victoria referenced in her feature.  Undina's top choice is BestBottles, which has a superb selection of atomisers at very reasonable unit costs.  BestBottles is appreciably cheaper than Accessories for Fragrance, also based in the USA, with a pretty good range and ultra-friendly service.

But here's the thing - last night I had a jolly good trawl of the top perfume bottle websites and UK Ebay.  I placed dummy orders on both BestBottles and SKS Bottle & Packaging, another site that was mentioned in Victoria's post.  Hey, they would have been actual orders, were it not for the fact that the shipping in both cases - for a $50 minimum order approximately - topped out at $148 via UPS!!!  And there did not seem to be any other postal option.

Accessories for Fragrance, meanwhile, has international shipping costs that are vastly more proportionate, albeit its unit product costs are a lot higher.  So I ended up buying a large quantity of plastic atomisers from them in a selection of sizes - I really can't afford more than the occasional purchase of the glass ones on there (beyond the 1ml stoppered vial kind, that is) - and my shipping total was something like $22, ie much more in the ballpark.

I had never investigated the BestBottles site before, though I recognised many, many of the glass atomisers pictured!, which American swappers have sent to me over the years.

For a small-scale decanter like me, the only other overseas site I clocked with reasonable prices and decent international delivery rates - as in included in the price! - is Proud Style, which also gets a name check in Victoria's post, and which (sadly) I only explored after I had placed my Accessories for Fragrance order...however, I may venture there next time.

It is a while since I last looked on UK Ebay, which is a near total desert where cost-effective glass or plastic atomisers in the 2 - 5ml range are concerned.  Where it does score is in knock-off Travalos, ie refillable atomisers of the Travalo style but very much cheaper.  I even saw one seller called Max Trading offering them at £1.99!, compared to a normal retail of about £8 for the branded version.

Source: Ebay

Ebay also sells a lot of those burnished metal purse spray atomisers - some quite cheaply - but having had a bad experience with a seller in the Far East (where many of the cheaper ones hail from), I would be a bit wary again, tempting as their candy colours may be.

Lovely but leaky!

Ebay is also good for these odd little graduated snap top vials to which Freddie of Smellythoughts introduced me.  They hold about 1.5ml or so, and though the lid is very secure when snapped shut, and they are easy as anything to fill commando, I do get splashback issues with them ie as the vial fills up - the impact of perfume hitting what is already in there causes the next squirt to ricochet out again.  So unless my technique is totally to cock, I'd say these are only good in practice for a 1ml fill level at most.

So my assessment today would be: if I was an American I would use BestBottles in a heartbeat.  As a UK-based decanter, I will try Proud Style next time, with Accessories for Fragrance as an expensive but faithful fallback - for plastic anyway, and for 1ml glass vials, which don't strike me as being all that expensive from them for a big bag.  And then Ebay comes into its own for one-off fancier items such as Travalo-type atomisers.

Now I know there is a general preference for glass over plastic in the perfume community - partly for reasons of longevity, and partly on aesthetic grounds - but whilst I have had a few plastic atomisers turn in the past four years or so, it has only been the odd one.  To be honest, I much prefer the look and feel of glass myself and would only ever use glass for decants of 8 or 10ml, say, because it is a much nicer way to present a larger decant, but up till now I hadn't figured out anywhere cost-effective to buy glass atomisers in any quantity (as in 12, for example!).

1ml glass vials with plastic stoppers (somewhere in this bag!)

I mention this fact about my plastic decants not going off because I have got...ahem...about 100 of the things on their way to me as I blog!, so anyone receiving a small decant from me between now and the foreseeable, is likely to cop for one or two of this less desirable variety... ;-) ;-)

Astoria Perfume Wand - How To Magic Away £125 In One Easy Wave!

The other day I got a sales call from the Royal Bank of Scotland - from someone in the bank's Wealth Management team. As soon as the chap gave his name and mentioned the words "Wealth Management", I stopped him in his tracks and explained that I have never had anything he might consider "wealth" to manage, that's even before my business took a knock in the recession, and he seemed happy enough to abort the call.

Puzzled at having been targeted in this way, I took a moment to refresh myself with the definition of "wealth" in the eyes of financial institutions, and found this on the Moneywise site:

"While the big international private banks look for minimum investable assets between £5 million and £10 million, UK private banks are keen to appeal to a wider market and therefore may look to a minimum of £250,000 to £500,000."

The article went on to say that the definition of wealth management is actually more fluid than that, with banks such as the HSBC considering a client with investable assets of just £50,000 a person of interest - in terms of offering investment advice at least to these "mass affluent" customers, under the auspices of its Premier Service.

These tiers of affluence remind me rather of the distinction between "niche" perfumes, "masstige", "prestige", "mass", "luxury" and whatever else counts as a fragrance category these days.

But as someone who has not even used their Cash ISA allowance for several years running, I do think that on balance I was probably right to cut that salesman short, even though we didn't get into the nitty gritty of his asset thresholds...

And then this morning I received two mini-catalogues in the post: one from a high end jeweller's which went straight in the recycling basket - Entwined Ring £6,995, anyone? (their list broker wants shooting!) - and one from Braybrook & Britten, which I kept because it has some sweet two-toned earrings designed to look like slices of Seville oranges, at just £45 the pair. A possible Christmas present idea for Mr Bonkers to give me, I thought, if he has any change left after buying the new top of the range MAC laptop he has his eye on...

Also in the Braybrook & Britten catalogue was this very fetching perfume atomiser - not sure where the name "wand" came from. Following my recent confusion over the correct term for "smelling strips" / "fragrance blotters", I wouldn't mind someone adjudicating on when an atomiser becomes a wand.

According to the blurb, this elegant sterling silver atomiser was made "in the same workshop that produces our Mont Blanc style silver pens". Did you spot that weasel word "style"? I missed it on the first pass, I must say.

"Proper glass phial and good quality mechanism", the description continues. So I should think at that price.

"It's exactly the sort of thing Audrey Hepburn would have pulled out of her purse with a flourish." Top marks for a vivid imagination. Presumably she would whip this stylish accessory out of her bag having previously decanted L'Interdit into it with the funnel thoughtfully provided.

Do I sound a tad bitter at the fact that this item is a little out of my budget? Even more so than those metallic purse sprays you look at wistfully on Ebay now and again that cost all of a fiver? Ah, but when you are used to the plastic version from Accessories for Fragrance at 40p a time even a fiver sounds extravagant...

If money were no object, I would love to wave goodbye to £125 and buy this wand. The Wealth Manager I would probably have appointed if I had that kind of cash to blow might consider it a pointless frippery. However, it is nowhere near as frivolous a frippery as the partially silver plated bee honey dipper next to it, which will sting you for £75...


All photos from the Braybrook & Britten website