Why perfume samples and perfume decants?

We aren’t going to tell you what you should like or what you should sample or what we think are the best perfumes specificallly for you.

We have put together some of the best perfumes of different types in  perfume sampler packs as a place to start. Once you know what it is that a perfume represents – as a type, brand, note, theme or genre – exploring beyond that is totally up to you, and we will encourage you to take that journey as far as you want to go and just one step further.  

Perfume should be something that stirs the emotions, brings you joy, makes you feel like your best self or the self you want to be that day - happy, introspective, quiet, odd, masculine, feminine, flirty, sexy as hell.

There is no good taste or judgment in perfume. Well, okay, I'm not being entirely honest there, Axe should be banned after the age of 14.  Beyond that, what you love and smells good to you is all that matters.

Scent is memory and emotion.  Ever catch a smell of something that instantly transported you back to another place and time?  That first love?  That summer at the lake in your childhood?  Scent is a hard-wire straight into everything that you have experienced or felt - it is the emotional roadmap to your life.. Babies can pick out their mothers just by smell when they are hours old.

Smell is the sense that is the most primal and the most potent. I may forget where I put my watch or the color of someone’s eyes or how their voice sounded, but I will never forget what they smelled like, especially when it is a person who smells like home. 

If you are trying to find a scent that smells good based on other people's tastes, it is hard to come to a true appreciation and understanding of what you really love and what makes you feel something.  Exploring scent, finding what you love, what you hate, what makes you excited, makes you feel warm and safe is an experience like no other.  Spend a little time reading perfume blogs and message boards like Basenotes, and you will quickly see how deeply personal scent is.

Don't let other people's reviews of perfume scare you.  You may not know exactly what a fougere note is or know a gourmand from a chypre.  You don't need to, these are all things you can learn or just ignore if it doesn't interest you.  If you read a review that hates the perfume you just cracked open and fell in love with, don't despair!  We hate some of the most highly regarded perfumes out there and Feel No Shame.

What Perfume Should Be

• Perfume is a luxury. If you can’t have fun with a luxury, what’s the point?
• Perfume can be and is educational – there is so much to learn – but it should never be intimidating.
• Perfume should make you happy. Even when you don’t like what you’re smelling, you should enjoy the experience of feeling the hate or revulsion. Realizing what you don’t like is sometimes more important than realizing what you do like.

Surrender to Chance is here to help!

So…what if you’re new to perfume? Where to start? Well, first we absolutely recommend, obviously, that you use perfume samples and perfume decants as a way to test out perfume before you buy a full bottle of it, learn what is the best perfume just for you.  Not just that, though, perfume samples and perfume decants are an economical way to create a personal fragrance wardrobe for day/night, changes of season, special occasions without maxing out your Visa on full bottlles that you may only love for a season.

Our website has a wide range of best perfumes for a beginner sample packs, from historical to genre-specific, such as:

• Introductions to notes like white florals, rose, smoke, tobacco, leather – great olfactory tutorials to get you started in one specific area or a broad beginning note sampler to let you try one of many notes.
• Introductions to Perfume Houses – the classics of Dior, Chanel, Guerlain. Or try an independent perfumer or niche house that you can’t find in any department store.
• Introductions to types of perfumes. If you want the intellectual knowledge of what a chypre, fougere or oriental is, we have sampler packs that will give you some great scents of that type to explore.
• Introductions to perfumers or “noses.” The men and women who create these perfumes aren’t known to the general public, but they become the rock stars of the perfume world.  
• Introductions based on use – for the office, finding a wedding perfume, a special night out, for a young adult. 

The Experienced Perfumista!

You’re hungry for something new and exciting or longing for the old and obscure.  Surrender to Chance has a huge range of vintage/obscure/niche/luxury fragrances you can’t find just anywhere. We’ve taken the the guesswork out of some of those scary vintage buys, with every perfume vetted for authenticity.  Buy perfume samples of that new release that you think has your name written all over it to make sure that it is one of your best perfumes and not one of your worst perfumes!

We have spent years loving perfume and acquiring the scents available for perfume samples and perfume decants so we can make this as fun for you as it has been for us.  We hope you enjoy the journey as much as we have!