60 days of tracking fragrance: a favourite, a heatwave and a travel bag

At thirty days, I had found a rule I did not know I was following. Louis Vuitton Imagination appeared on every Saturday in my fragrance diary: four Saturdays, four wears, a trusted choice for a succession of social days.

The next thirty days changed the leading bottle. Between 23 July and 21 August, I recorded twenty-six wears across eight fragrances. Sixteen were Mancera French Riviera. Imagination, which had appeared ten times in the opening period, appeared twice.

On paper, the rotation had become considerably narrower.

But this time I could explain part of the repetition. There was the fragrance I wanted to wear during a hot London summer, and there was the fragrance I had taken to Florida. They happened to be the same bottle.

French Riviera became my summer choice

French Riviera first appeared in the record on 16 July, with one wear before the end of the opening thirty days. In the next period, it accounted for almost sixty-two per cent of all wears.

That is a much larger share than Imagination held in the first period, when its ten wears represented just under thirty per cent. Fifteen fragrances appeared then; eight appeared in the next thirty days. Each of those eight had already been worn during the opening period.

During the London summer heatwave, French Riviera became my go-to, particularly for daytime activities. I carried it with me and decanted it for travel. It had become a practical part of how I was using fragrance that summer.

Imagination still had a place. When daytime gave way to evening, I would return to it. The record had initially made Saturday look like the rule; my own account of the following month suggests a distinction between the kind of day and the time within it.

There is also a reason to look at the two periods separately. Across the first sixty days, fifteen fragrances appear, and the two leaders account for just under half of the sixty wears. Those headline totals sound much like the opening month.

They conceal the change within it. The first period is led by Imagination and Light Blue Eau Intense. The next is dominated by French Riviera. Earlier variety remains in the cumulative total even when the latest choices have become more concentrated.

A fragrance diary becomes more useful when I can see both the longer record and the shape of the most recent days.

Six travel days with one fragrance

I was on holiday in Florida from 9 August until I returned to the UK on the morning of 15 August. French Riviera was the only fragrance I had carried with me.

The diary shows it on every date from 9 to 14 August. There is no mystery about why another bottle did not appear during those six days: I had not brought one.

The choice to take French Riviera belonged to the wider summer preference. Once I was away, repeating it also reflected what was available. Those are two different parts of the same sequence: choosing what to pack, then wearing what I had packed.

The holiday explains some of the concentration, rather than all of it. Outside those six dates, French Riviera still accounts for ten of the remaining twenty wear entries. It was already doing much of the work in my summer rotation.

The record also contains a small catch-up. The wears dated 9–12 August were entered together on 14 August. The date of a wear and the moment I record it are not always the same.

Without the context, that stretch could look like a fresh default taking over the collection. With it, I can distinguish a strong seasonal preference from six days when the rest of the collection was unavailable.

Saturday was too broad a label

The next four Saturdays did not repeat the opening pattern. French Riviera appears on 25 July, 1 August and 8 August; Imagination returns on 15 August.

Those first three entries are labelled social, home and social. They do not all represent the same occasion. What fits my account more closely is the place French Riviera had taken in summer daytime wear.

The fourth Saturday gives the distinction a particularly clear shape. I landed home at about 7am UK time on 15 August. That evening, I went on a date and wore Imagination.

The first article's pattern remains an honest account of those four Saturdays. The extra month shows why I should be careful about turning it into a permanent explanation.

A day-of-week pattern can be a useful place to start. Asking what happened on the dates gives it meaning.

Recording the days without fragrance

The second period introduces six days explicitly recorded without fragrance: 26 and 27 July; 7 August; and 16, 17 and 18 August.

What I learned about recording those days was more specific than a story about keeping a perfect streak.

The freshness of the experiment had made me particularly committed during the initial thirty days. Over time, I realised the prompt to log was attached to putting on fragrance. When I wore a scent, I would naturally go and record it. When I did not, there was no equivalent moment to remind me to record the absence.

Being able to go back and add a no-fragrance day became useful for precisely that reason. I could preserve the difference between a date I had not answered yet and a date when I had worn nothing.

Across sixty dates, fifty-four contain fragrance and six contain an explicit no-wear entry. Six of the fragrance-wearing dates contain two wears, producing sixty wear entries in total. The diary is complete without suggesting that every day involved fragrance.

Eighteen of the second period's twenty-six wears were entered on the day they happened; eight were entered later. Completion and immediacy are different things.

What sixty days added to the first finding

The opening month had made the difference between a favourite and a default harder to ignore. The second month added circumstances that a count alone cannot hold: summer daytime wear, a decant in a travel bag, a week away with one option, and an evening back in the UK with the wider wardrobe available again.

I had used fewer fragrances in the latest thirty days. That is a useful observation. It does not, by itself, tell me that the rotation had stopped working for me.

French Riviera was a repeated choice in the summer, and the only available choice during much of the holiday. Imagination still had a role when the setting changed. The same distribution contains both preference and practicality.

At sixty days, the useful next step was to read the pattern alongside the days that produced it. The diary could show me where the repetition was. I could supply the part it had not recorded.