Lifestyle | Beauty The Evening Standard's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Peruse my perfume collection, and you will realise I am a creature of habit.
You’ll always find a rose scent which I turn to when I want to feel a softer; a little less hardened Londoner in jeans and boots and a little more lace-clad Austen heroine, long hair tumbling down my back. You’ll definitely find a perfume leaning heavily on citrus notes somewhere on my shelf for when I need a kick up the backside, and I deploy the sharp, sourness liberally to make me less sluggish of mind and body. Invariably there will also be something more complex, more 1980s, more Joan Collins-holding-a-cigarette-drinking-champagne.
This big scent is there strictly to be paired with big hair and worn to big parties. Come summer though, all my usual preferences fly out the window for two reasons. First, the season invites experimentation, a romance with a scent less usual.
I think of it as an olfactory bad boy boyfriend: fun for a few months, but not something I want in my life year-round. The second reason for my straying from my shelf: summer is all about travel and if like me you don’t ever do quite as much country-hopping as you’d like, it’s worth a scent journey, inviting whispers of exotic climes and varied market stalls into your life via a hint of incense or dash of thyme. Here are the perfumes I will be cheating on my.
