Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations: ⚡Lightning Round⚡

let's go gays

Hello my pleasantly perfumed poufs! It’s time for another edition of Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations!

This is a recurring column where I answer some of your questions about perfume and offer up my best recommendations to help you smell hotter, richer, meaner, gayer – whatever you’re going for!

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If you’re new here and wondering why we’re talking about perfume, please check out my Why Perfume post, and then come back here, because I wanna whuffle your wrists like a bloodhound!

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Today, because the 💌Queer Perfume Mailbox💌 has become so jammed with questions that I’ve been opening it, getting overwhelmed, and closing it again without actually writing anything, we’re going to do something a little different: ⚡A Perfume Question Lighting Round!⚡

That’s right, baybee! I’m going to answer some of the questions I can answer quicker than others, just to spring-clean this gayass perfume inbox!

Ready?

1. ⚡Reader Question: “I am so sensitive to fragrances (but I do love a nice perfume.) Are there any light (not intense) perfumes for someone who usually goes the essential oil roll-on route?”⚡

- Broadening My Horizons Beyond Essential Oils

A: Fuck yes, there are, BMHBEO. Lots of people are:

• sensitive to fragrances and/or particular chemicals used in fragrance

• only interested in “natural” scents coming anywhere near their bodies.

Now, in the past, if you were the Venn diagram overlap of both kinds of people, you were pretty much shit outta luck. You wore nothing, or you wore co-op essential oils. Maybe a nice blend if you were being fancy (shout out to Aura Cacia’s Medieval Mix, Love Potion, and Dark Patchouli—we queers salute you for your many years of service.)

But what a great time it is to be alive, BMHBEO! Fragrantly speaking, that is. Now the scent-sensitive, natural-scent-seeking Venn diagram overlap is enormous, and perfume-makers are paying attention and doing as much as they can to get your dollars help you out!!

There are SO MANY options out there for people who are either sensitive, chemical-conscious, both, or simply trying to be more careful of what they wear around others while still wanting to smell great.

What kind of options?

WELL. If you like oils, then my god, may I recommend Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab? Goth and mystical-feeling as hell, not terribly expensive, and at this game for years and years, BPAL makes some goddamn good perfume oils, most of which are vegan, animal-friendly, and contain very few (none?) of the common perfume chemicals and ingredients people tend to struggle with. You can try some of their best-sellers here, and I can attest that I once wore Bastet out on a date, let my date sniff the tester vial I had in my purse and… never saw that vial again, because my date begged to keep it and also she and I had nothing in common!

If you’re wanting to leave essential oils behind completely, you could go here and have a blast but! Let’s start somewhere manageable—just dip our little toesies into the lightly fragrant water, eh?

Have you heard about Henry Rose? This is Michelle Pfeiffer’s (!) perfume brand. I was prepared to hate it, based on my hatred of most celebrity perfumes, but guess what? these are good. Cruelty-free, hypoallergenic, dermatologist-tested perfumes with 100% ingredient transparency, I was not prepared for these to also be fun, lovely, and decently priced, but they are.

I mean, BMHBEO, I am typing this to you in my house while the fumes of Henry Rose’s Torn radiate off of me, and I am happy and I smell great. (Torn is supposed to smell like vanilla and vetiver, but instead smells like the juice dripping off the sluttiest ripe melon you’ve ever tasted.) I haven’t yet smelled a Henry Rose perfume I haven’t liked, and most of them are light enough to (hopefully) fit your requirements.

Anyway! All this is to say: If you’re sensitive to fragrances and also still want to smell great, the world is your transparent ingredient list. Just google “100% natural perfume” and start sampling!

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2. ⚡Reader Question: “My favorite perfume is DS & Durga's “Bowmakers” and this is a huge fucking tragedy for me because it is expensive as shit and does not have great longevity or sillage (I would pay what it costs if a spritz on my wrists and my décolletage and my hair would stick anywhere through an eight-hour work day but it DOESN'T.)

Bowmakers smells like sexy Home Depot—like waking up way too early on a Saturday morning, before the sun has risen and as the dew is falling and going to the lumber section, not far from someone who maybe just came in for another can of polyurethane sealant and just smoked a cigarette. And then after you get back from Home Depot with your freshly cut lumber and whatever, you come home and have sex in a shed. It smells so good—like red-black mahogany and chemicals and I literally cannot find anything that scratches a similar itch. I have spent a frankly unreal amount of money looking for an alternative to a $210 bottle. I have tried Etsy perfumes, I have tried Demeter Fragrance Library, I have tried a good dozen things from ScentBird, I have tried SO much and I cannot find what I'm looking for. PLEASE can you help.”⚡

- This (Sexy) Old House

A: I am really sorry, This (Sexy) Old House, and you are going to hate this, but:

No. I cannot help you.

That’s because you have found The One. Bowmakers is your perfume. Just look how you describe it; how it makes you feel.

It’s yours. And I don’t believe in dupes when it comes to The One.

Now, is that an easy statement to make in economic times like these? It’s not! I am fully aware of how bad and privileged it sounds to say I don’t believe in dupes. But let me explain. I only don’t believe in dupes when it comes to your signature scent. Your one true love, if you’re lucky enough to ever stumble across it.

I’m not saying there are no good dupes. I’ve smelled some phenomenal dupes. But in your case, This (Sexy) Old House, you can’t find anything like Bowmakers because what you want is the real thing. Nothing is going to make you feel how Bowmakers does; anything that comes close is still going to just be a shadow of your memory of how you want to smell.

You’ve already spent a “frankly unreal” amount of money looking for pale imitations; why not save up and buy the real thing? Life is short! You have a limited time on this earth to be gay and alive, why not smell exactly like you just got back from Home Depot and had sex in a shed if you can possibly afford it?? Get the 100 ML bottle, which is a better value; get it here, on sale (i have a 50 ML bottle sitting next to me right now, which i bought during a monumental sale a couple years ago), and wear the hell out of it!

Spray it on your clothes to make it last; spray it into some unscented body lotion and rub that into your skin! So what if Bowmakers doesn’t last eight hours? Nobody’s perfect! Buy a travel perfume atomizer and do a little spritz in the afternoon and fall in unreasonable lumberyard love all over again! THE HEART WANTS WHAT IT WANTS!!!!

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3. ⚡Reader Question: “I am torn between wanting a “signature scent” that people will later smell in a room somewhere and be devastated by the memory of me—or trying all the scents. I probably have 200 sample size vials in my bathroom rn.”⚡

- Santal Slut

A: OK see, you get it, Santal Slut! You’ve just described the eternal conundrum: the reason I have become the homosexual perfume monster I’ve become.

As I see it, you only have three options:

1. Keep doing what you’re doing and try every perfume in the world. Eventually, when all your past and present loves smell a perfume—any perfume at all—they’ll think of you. And start weeping with longing!!!!

2. Pick a perfume and stick with it forever. You want to be Marilyn Monroe? (Chanel No. 5.) Madonna, Courtney Love, or Isabella Blow? (Fracas.) Rihanna? (Love, don’t be shy.) You can do it. But first you have to make the most serious decision of your entire life. So.

3. Have a few core-to-your-identity perfumes you adore and then try as many others as you want, while remaining in a committed relationship with your Top 5. (This is what I’m doing.) Your friends and lovers will probably only commit the names of a few of your perfumes to memory, but still: they won’t be able to smell your core scents without being devastated by the memory of you.

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4. ⚡Reader Question: “I’m mesmerized by Dolly Parton and I want to smell like her. What does Dolly smell like?”⚡

- Jasper Buttons

A: Like $60 for 100 MLs of fruity floral fun, that’s what! Jasper Buttons, hold onto your suspenders, because Dolly Parton recently made her own perfume, and it’s called Scent From Above. And I know I said in the first answer that I don’t usually like celebrity fragrances (before going on to rec a celebrity fragrance line) but IGNORE ME AGAIN, because god help me, I love Dolly’s perfume.

Most celebrities aren’t all that involved when it comes to slapping their name on a bottle of perfume. But Dolly is different! She was hugely involved in the creation of Scent From Above, stating that, “It's a combination of bath oils, powders and perfumes that have become my 'signature' and is known everywhere I go.”

Do you hear what I’m saying, Jasper Buttons? There is a perfume designed by Dolly Parton to smell like Dolly Parton. And it smells good.

Very (very) sweet, but good. According to the website, up top, we’ve got mandarin and pear and peony. There’s jasmine and vanilla in the heart of this one, and sandalwood, tonka bean, fir, and musk in the base. But really? This is a candied fruity floral, young-smelling, with enough citrus in the opening to give it a little twang. It pretty much embodies a pink fluffy marabou stage jacket, and the whole shebang comes in a pink bottle with a pink “crystal” (plastic) butterfly on top.

My friend Marie sent me Scent From Above as a present when it first came out. It is ridiculous, and over-the-top, and the second I sniffed it, I felt in my soul that Dolly was telling us the truth: This is what she smells like.

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That’s it for this ⚡Lightning Round⚡ edition of Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations! I’ll be back next time to answer more questions.

In the meantime…

Do YOU have a perfume question?

Ask me here on this form that is linked right here!

Byeeee!