Giving Perfume for Mother’s Day: Our Advice

If this year you are going to give your mum a perfume for Mother’s Day, you are in the right place! This gift may well be a great classic, but it is not always easy to find the one that hits the mark. Don’t panic: Master Parfums has cooked up a little guide to help you understand which perfume to choose for your mum.

A Sometimes Thorny Choice

It goes without saying: all mums are different. The good news is that the same is true of perfumes: with a whole host of raw materials, accords and formulations, there are probably as many perfumes out there as there are mums. Hard to know which way to point your nose!

New releases, best-sellers… Lists and rankings blossom relentlessly, and it is not uncommon to drown in this ocean of suggestions that is nonetheless supposed to make our task easier. Rather than buying online, our first piece of advice is to favour a visit to the shop: nothing beats the sharp perfume advice of a sales advisor who knows their products inside out.

Here is what you should keep in mind so that your visit is fruitful.

Tell Me What You Wear…

Try to establish a kind of olfactory history of your mum: which perfumes has she already worn, or does she wear currently? Even without their names, just their smell can guide the person advising you. Is it rather floral? Green? Spicy? It will obviously be easier if you know from the outset that your mum has a soft spot for a particular ingredient, for a perfume she likes to wear, or for a brand she is especially fond of.

If you know her perfume, and you want to give her a different one but in the same olfactory spirit, you can also search on specialised platforms/apps* that will point you towards perfumes of the same olfactory style, which you can then go and smell at the point of sale.

Whether or not you already have a long list of fragrances, the aspect you must absolutely not overlook during your search is your mum’s personality.

A Perfume to Magnify Who She Is

A perfume says a lot about the person who wears it: it is an invisible piece of jewellery that complements and even sublimates her. Is your mum natural or sophisticated? Discreet or exuberant? Depending on her way of being, her personality and her style, and the perfumes she likes, one will favour one olfactory family over another.

The Olfactory Families

The Société Française des Parfumeurs defines seven olfactory families: aromatic, woody, chypre, floral, fougère, hesperidic and oriental. Among all this fine company, you must find the juice that will go hand in hand with your mum’s personality. A perfume’s belonging to an olfactory family is determined by its heart notes and its base notes.

Floral fragrances are often associated with serenity and elegance. They can be delicate and romantic (rosy notes, peonies, lily of the valley, etc.) or more heady and captivating (jasmine, tuberose, ylang, etc.).

One will no doubt suggest a voluptuous, even gourmand, oriental to mums who embrace their sensuality and like to be noticed.

Is she a dynamic, natural woman? It is a safe bet that the advisor will draw out lively, sparkling scents of citrus or green notes…

Rather mysterious but with character—perhaps a woody will know how to seduce her… Is she chic and sophisticated, and does she like her perfume to be unique? The advisor can steer you towards a chypre or towards a perfume from a more confidential (niche) brand.

The Notes of the Perfume

There are safe bets for the more classic among us—for example, a timeless rose or vanilla—and there are the rebellious children. Would your mum raise a worried eyebrow at an accord of caviar or white chocolate, or would you have piqued her curiosity? A perfume that stands out, with bolder combinations, can be an option for those who are not afraid to stray from the beaten path.

Of course, there is no miracle formula: would being extroverted necessarily mean liking patchouli? Off-limits to tonka bean for the shyer ones? No, and thankfully so! The key lies in the interpretation of the ingredients and in the way the fragrance is formulated.

Besides, most of us are incapable of really detecting the specific ingredients in a perfume. It is the harmony of a creation that makes all its beauty! After all, a floral perfume can just as easily be a lush bouquet as a delicate, airy veil.

This is why sales advisors are advised not to drown customers too much in the details of the ingredients. The latter are rather “mental tools” that the advisor keeps in mind and that will help refine the choices to offer you. Depending on the description you give of your mum and her perfumes, the advisor will know how to find the most suitable olfactory suggestions.

Their job is to ensure that the olfactory result reflects the temperament of the person who will wear it.

In this equation, the sillage and the projection of the perfume also have their role to play.

Sillage and Projection

The sillage of a perfume is the olfactory imprint it leaves behind the person who wears it; the projection, for its part, is the way people nearby perceive it. Here again, it will depend a lot on the heart and base notes.

Think about what most resembles your mum: a perfume that announces its arrival in the room with a bang and leaves a trace there even after she has left? Or rather a second skin that reveals itself intimately only when one is close to the person wearing it?

Unsurprisingly, it is once again a matter of personality… but not only: take into account the context in which the perfume will be worn. This can be a time of day, a season, a place, an event… A warm sandalwood perfume will suit autumn better than summer temperatures; an opulent juice with thunderous sensuality will be more suited to a chic evening, and one will prefer a light, tonic fragrance for a barbecue among friends! Even if she wears perfumes with heady notes, perhaps she will be delighted to add to her olfactory wardrobe a pretty, luminous cologne that she can wear at the weekend in the countryside or on leaving the gym!

And for mums faithful to their perfume, you will not go wrong by letting yourself be tempted by gift sets offering her perfume accompanied by a body product (shower gel, body milk, etc.). Indeed, while we readily buy ourselves our perfume, we do not always add a product from the body range to our basket, either because of its price or simply because we do not think of it.

Yet a body cream, a hair mist, a soap, a deodorant are all pretty bottles that will come to decorate her bathroom, perfume her from head to toe with the perfume she loves, sublimate her scenting and increase its longevity, or just leave a scented veil on the day she does not wish to be very perfumed.

Ready, Set, Perfume!

A perfume testifies to the attention you pay to the person who receives it… when it is chosen with care! We hope our advice will help you unearth not just a perfume, but THE perfume—as unique as your mum—that will remind her of what she means to you.

If the idea of a complementary perfume gift to tell her you love her—”JEU t’aime,” a playful nod to the game—tickles your fancy, the Pocket Quiz includes 120 cards with questions and answers to enrich your culture of the fifth sense while having fun. How about a game with your mum?

*: www.wikiparfum.com, https://www2.perfumist.fr

Collaborative article written by Hélène Sanchez & Anne-Laure Hennequin