90 days of tracking fragrance: what I bought, what I rediscovered

At sixty days, French Riviera had become the centre of my summer rotation. It accounted for sixteen of the latest twenty-six wears, helped by a Florida holiday when it was the only fragrance I had packed.

The next thirty days contain exactly the same number of wears: twenty-six. This time, they are spread across eleven fragrances rather than eight. Prada Paradigme leads with seven. French Riviera appears once.

The broader rotation has several explanations. I bought a fragrance with work in mind. I rediscovered two bottles I already owned. And some of my favourites, which the hot weather had made less appealing to wear, found their way back into the evenings.

Those are different kinds of change. The diary helps me keep them separate.

The same wear count, a wider fragrance rotation

Across the full ninety days, I recorded eighty-six wears across twenty fragrances. That tells me how many different choices appeared over the whole experiment.

The separate thirty-day periods show how the distribution moved. The opening period contains fifteen fragrances across thirty-four wears. The second contains eight across twenty-six. The third contains eleven across twenty-six.

The leading fragrance's share rises from about twenty-nine per cent in the first period to sixty-two in the second, then falls to twenty-seven in the third.

There is more range in the latest period without a larger number of recorded wears. But knowing that the rotation broadened is only the beginning. The interesting part is what created that extra range.

Paradigme: buying with a job in mind

Paradigme was a new purchase. I blind bought it after reading reviews that described it as a good office scent.

That gave it a particular purpose before I had worn it. I tried it several times to see the reaction and to find out which occasions beyond work it might suit. It also became my go-to for work.

The record reflects both parts of that trial. Paradigme first appears on 28 August, at home. By 10 September, it has seven wears: four labelled work, two home, and one day out.

Four of the five work-labelled entries in the third period are Paradigme.

The diary records the choices, rather than the reactions I was hoping to observe. These seven wears are not a measure of compliments, performance or whether a blind buy would work for someone else.

They do show an intention taking shape in use. I bought it with the office in mind, tried it in a few settings, and kept returning to it for work.

The wider rotation and that more specific habit could coexist. A collection can become more varied overall while one bottle settles into a particular part of the week.

Two additions to the diary were rediscoveries

Orange X Santal and L'Homme Idéal Eau de Parfum also appear as new presences in this part of the record. Neither was a new purchase during the period.

Orange X Santal was a 10ml bottle I had bought in Japan and forgotten about. After rediscovering it, I liked keeping it in a jacket pocket. I find the citrus opening really fresh, but it does not last long on me. Carrying the small bottle makes it easy to top up.

It appears three times in the third period. Those entries count the recorded wears, not each top-up; the diary is not measuring how many sprays I used.

L'Homme Idéal was an older bottle I had not added to Rotation. I found it again while tidying my flat, added it to the record, and wore it on 25 August.

This changes how I read the apparent arrival of three fragrances. Only Paradigme was a new purchase. The other two were already part of the collection, even though they had not been part of its recorded use.

Removing Paradigme's seven wears leaves nineteen wears across ten fragrances I already owned. Rediscovered bottles account for four of those wears; the remaining fifteen are spread across eight fragrances already present in the opening record.

The widening was not simply a consequence of buying more. Some of the range was already there, waiting to come back into use.

The favourites waiting for cooler evenings

Angels' Share, Tobacco Honey and Vanilla Diorama are some of my favourite scents. Their sparse appearance during the summer was not a sign that I had stopped liking them. In the hot weather, they had not felt like the best choices.

Perhaps I was also eager for autumn to arrive. As the weather began to feel cooler, evening dates offered a happy medium: I could wear those favourites again from evening into night.

Angels' Share first appears in the record on 29 August, for a date. Tobacco Honey follows on 12 September, also for a date, then again on 19 September, for a day out. Vanilla Diorama appears twice in this third period, including a night-out entry on 4 September.

A short period without a wear cannot explain itself. For these favourites, my account is about the conditions and occasions in which I wanted to wear them, rather than a lack of affection for the bottles.

That also makes the two entries on 12 September easier to read. Club de Nuit Intense is a daytime go-to for me, rather than an evening choice. That day's record pairs it with a daytime outing, followed by Tobacco Honey for a date.

One calendar date can contain two different decisions. Counting the day without preserving both wears would lose that distinction.

The habit of logging had a prompt

By ninety days, every date in the window has an answer: seventy-nine days with fragrance and eleven explicitly recorded without it. Seven of the fragrance-wearing dates contain two wears, producing eighty-six entries.

The record did not stay complete because I had remembered to log everything at a fixed moment.

Early on, the freshness of the experiment made me particularly committed. Over time, I noticed that wearing fragrance was itself the reminder. I put something on, and naturally went to log it. A day without fragrance did not provide the same prompt, so I would not always think to record the absence until later.

Retrospective no-fragrance entries helped me finish the account of those days. They preserved what happened without requiring me to remember an extra ritual on a day when I had worn nothing.

Sixty-four of the eighty-six wear entries were made on the wear date, and twenty-two later. In the third period, eighteen of twenty-six wears were entered on the day; the other eight within two days.

The record is complete. That does not mean every observation was immediate, or that logging had become an identical habit on fragrance and no-fragrance days.

What ninety days revealed about the collection

The three periods now have different shapes: an opening led by Imagination, a summer stretch concentrated around French Riviera, and a later period with an office choice, rediscovered bottles and the return of evening favourites.

A list of bottles owned would not have shown those differences. Nor would a single ranking across all ninety days have explained them.

Paradigme shows a new purchase finding its intended role. Orange X Santal and L'Homme Idéal show that an existing collection can hold choices I have temporarily lost sight of. Angels' Share and Tobacco Honey show why an absence needs context before I decide what it means.

The numbers do not establish that recording caused the wider rotation. They give me a way to describe what changed, and to connect those changes to the choices and circumstances I remember.

After ninety days, the useful picture of my wardrobe is more specific than how many bottles are on the shelf. It includes what I reach for at work, what I carry with me, what I rediscover, and what I want to wear when the evening gives it a place.