"Whose that vial?" The tricky - and tracky! - business of tracing perfume samples...

A while ago, Undina wrote a post about Jo Malone's Sweet Milk, which prompted me to have a look for my own sample of that scent. I was going to donate it to her, not least because it was she who had given it to me in the first place. ;) In the course of my concerted rummaging, I came upon dozens and dozens of samples and decants going back ten years or more: some bought from online sites like The Perfumed Court and Lucky Scent, some gifts from fellow fumeheads, and some received in swaps on Makeupalley, where I clocked up an astonishing 75 trades back in the day when you could send fragrance internationally. Now Undina is noted for her typed labels on vials, but many of the samples I uncovered had handwritten ones. I soon became completely absorbed in trying to remember where they had all come from, either from my own recall of the transaction, or by recognising each person's handwriting. This was by no means as straightforward as I thought it would be, as I am out of touch with some of the perfumistas who were "on the circuit" up to a decade ago, and am still puzzling over quite a lot of what I found.

So for fun, I thought I would create a gallery of photos of vials with confirmed IDs, and enlist the help of readers to identify the mystery ones. There were way more unidentified fragrant objects where these came from, but I didn't want to overwhelm people with a blizzard of the things. And I haven't been right through my collection either - this is more of a random dive - so there are doubtless other examples I could have put a name to if my search had been exhaustive, as well as many more I couldn't! So I also hope that no one is offended if they do not happen to be represented in this selection. 

Known sources

Left to right: Thomas (Candy Perfume Boy), Undina (Undina's Looking Glass), Tara (A Bottled Rose), Birgit (Olfactorias Travels), Carol (Bloody Frida), Sarah (Odiferess).

Sources I think I recognise

Left to right: Rachael Potts, Val the Cookie Queen, Marie Pinholt-Krabbe, Freddy (Smellythoughts), Lisa Jones. There is a fair element of doubt about some of these(!).

Sources I have as good as no clue about 

Though I think the one on the far right may be either from Tamsin Simmill or Louise Bodin. ;) 

If you recognise a vial you sent me, or have intell on any of the handwriting, do let me know in the comments. 

I would also be interested to know if you have this problem of forgetting who gave you what!

'Not a perfume': duping the doctor with suggestive spray vials

An actual perfume sample for illustrative purposes! 

Topic advisory: readers of a squeamish disposition may wish to skip this post!

This is not the first time that I have written about medical matters on Bonkers.  The other post concerned my chat with a surgeon while on the operating table having a mole removed, entitled: 'Grosjman on the gurney: perfume conversations you never thought you'd have'.  Fast forward four years and I am in the throes of some other medical investigations - to date mostly in the form of blood tests and the odd scan, though the deployment of probes, cameras and an assortment of other pointy implements cannot be excluded down the line.

Last Monday I had a review of my latest blood results with the doctor, and this time I also had to bring in an...ahem...'specimen'.  The request had been made over the phone a few days previously, so I was not in possession of an official receptacle, and looked around the house to see what I could improvise. It didn't take many minutes to conclude that a 5ml perfume atomiser might be the vessel of choice.

After the customary forty minute wait to see the doctor, I handed the vial over to her with a flourish. She held it aloft and examined it closely, before remarking: 'Well, in all my career that is the most unorthodox container I have ever seen someone use for the purpose!' Then she clocked the atomiser mechanism and exclaimed: 'Ooh, how handy - I can just spray straight onto the card'. Before I knew it - in this parallel universe of the consulting room - the doctor was spritzing a strip of litmus paper to perform a pH test on my specimen, for all the world like a cheery sales assistant prepping a fragrance blotter. It may have been accidental, but one end of the test strip was even bent at an angle, just like the blotters used by pro noses.

'That seems all right', she announced. 'I say, the colour reminds me of...oh, you know...'

'Chanel No 5?' I proffered helpfully.

'Yes, exactly!  Or something like that. Hmm...I could play a fun trick on my colleagues with this, but I will resist the urge.'

There was a moment's pause, while she made some notes, before looking up and inquiring: 'Oh, you don't want it back, do you?' 

Source: forumshop.es

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... ;-) ;-)

Finding The Tipping Point - Vexingly Various Viscosities And Why It Sprays But It Never Pours

As a frequent decanter, I must say that I can't be doing with washing funnels. I own four metal ones and a handful of plastic funnels of varying dimensions, which I try not to use, precisely because they are only suitable for one-time use - or multiple uses involving the same scent. I do in fact have a bag of plastic funnels dedicated to different scents, but rarely find a need to redeploy them. Oh, I have just spotted in the photo the one for Michel Comté's Shared Water! That's ironic, given that the whole point of the funnel is to prevent that very phenomenon...

So for the most part, I decant using metal funnels and wash them in the kitchen sink. That is one of the few perks of my going away as often as I do on work trips, according to Mr Bonkers. When he does the dishes he doesn't catch his hand on an assortment of metal objects lurking like submarines at the bottom of the washing up bowl, along with the obligatory teaspoon or two. For it is an infallible law of nature that there is always at least one teaspoon in the dirty water when you go to empty the bowl...

Yes, I wash and soak and sometimes re-wash and re-soak the funnels - I squirt neat Fairy Liquid in and swoosh it around with my finger, before putting the funnel back in to soak. Overnight, often. Or whole days if the coast is clear. Yet certain scents resist the most determined detergents and retain a trace of the decanted fragrance for a long time afterwards.

Given the palaver involved in funnel care, it is hardly surprising that when I set about consolidating my various bits and bobs of samples of the same scent the other day, I decided to go commando and just tip from receptacle A to receptacle B wherever possible. I was mostly trying to transfer 1ml and 2ml glass vial samples - together with the remnants of minis and small splash bottle decants - into 3ml and 5ml atomisers, with a view to taking some of these scents on my next trip.

Upending a 1ml sample vial and tipping it into the wider mouth of an atomiser is usually straightforward, assuming you have a half-steady hand. The procedure becomes very tricky, however, if you are emptying one of those glass vials with a lip, like the ones you get from Les Senteurs. Tip the sample upside down till you are blue in the face, tap it against the side of the receiving atomiser as hard as you like, but not a drop will come out. Or not until about 10 minutes of concerted shaking and tapping have elapsed will the vial grudgingly yield its contents.

This all seems counter-intuitive though, because at the end of the day, it is still A HOLE, and you would think the laws of gravity would apply. Well, a "lay decanter" like me would think that, anyway. I have the same problem with two of my funnels, which have a markedly smaller diameter of the funnelly bit. You spray a goodly squirt of your chosen perfume and wait for a moment, but the darn liquid won't go down! Again, I repeat - a hole is a hole - or should be. But there again, maybe not. It may be all about the meniscus. Menisci moving in mysterious ways.

So aperture is one thing, but even when I was tipping samples from and to identical vials, I noticed marked differences in the pourability of some scents. I should have been paying more attention at the time, but I recall that Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint was a very compliant pourer, while Tom Ford Neroli Portofino was like recalcitrant magma! Which I wouldn't have expected from what I perceive as a light, "get up and go" scent. I would have placed scents like Ormonde Jayne Tolu or Patou Joy or Micallef Hiver at the magma end of the bell curve - you know, plush and overtly perfumey scents with the sluggish gait of motor oil.

I tried to google "perfume viscosity" and its relationship to decanting and pouring, and came up with surprisingly few citations of note. Though I did find this nugget on the "pour point":

"Pour point: The temperature at which a viscous liquid becomes pourable is called the pour point."

Temperature is also involved? Perhaps it is standard though across all perfume, but actual motor oil may have a different pour point, say. Or maple syrup, for argument's sake. Or sake, for that matter... : - )

The nugget continues:

"If diluents are present in the supplied viscous liquid then the pour point is reduced."

As in the temperature?? Does Jo Malone contain diluents? I am sure those nice people at Estée Lauder wouldn't thank me for speculating on the matter. For that way lies orange squash...

"Pour points are generally not very accurate as they vary with every consignment noticeable in resinoids."

I don't doubt it! So could my perfume collection be construed as "a consignment noticeable in resinoids", I wonder? Very likely - for I fancy a resinoid has got to be just some gunkier version of oil, and my slowest pourers must surely have a bit of those in them?

Still, I can't help thinking that this pour point and temperature lark may be a red herring. I would like to know what else affects pourability, and is it in any way a marker of quality, or not? You know, the double cream principle...

Has anyone else experienced problems relating to narrow apertures and/or variable viscosities? (There I go again, uncharacteristically asking a question!) And was it with the same style of vial? And can you recall which scents poured with glacial torpor? Tip me the wink about what goes on in your sink... ; - )


Photo of woman pouring perfume from art-prints-on-demand.com, photo of Les Senteurs sample from shop.lessenteurs.com, photo of frog pouring perfume from bibliodyssey.blogspot.com, other photos my own