Buying Backups Matter

The thought hit me last night when I was looking through my collection last night when looking for my before bed perfume. Do backup bottles of perfume matter or needed? I have to say yes they do in a few ways.


When you are always dealing with the threat of reformulation due to restricted ingrediants, backups do start to matter if a perfume is either your signature or one of your favorites. Mitsouko is an example of a restricted ingrediant and subsiquent reformulation. The IFRA had decided that too many people were allergic or some such thing to oakmoss and that meant that Mitsouko had to be created without oakmoss. But a chypre that is like Mitsouko, the oakmoss in all of it's inky glory, is vital. So Mitsouko was in real danger of being discontinued but treemoss was substituted and Mitsouko doesn't smell quite the way it should but it's a valiant attempt of the perfumers to save a part of perfume history. Now this is when hunting down vintage and back ups become vital. But if you are like me and don't live close to a really good Salvation Army or flea market, E-Bay is probably your only way to go. And in my opinion, it becomes a good like trying to find any reasonably price bottles. But I keep looking for bottles and very rarely come across one I can afford.


Then there is the discontinued perfume deal. Because there are companies that just up and decide to discontinue a perfume. Sometimes it is that a perfume after a while just isn't doing well in terms of sales and I can see that aspect of having a perfume discontinued. Sometimes it's not the right time to release that kind of perfume. Take Deneuve for example, it was released during the time where the bigger the better perfumes was fading and the watery CK Ones and all similar ones were becoming all the rage, so a floral hyper didn't sell and being sold by Avon didn't help. Some companies seem  have a tendency to just discontinue a popular perfume for no reason. Fend seems to be one of them. Theorema is probably the most recent one. I know that it maybe it's not the biggest best seller for Fending but just by poking around the internet, it's popular enough to keep it as a staple in Fendi's perfume portfolio. When perfumes are discontinued, it's always good to grab a few bottles.