Where can I try several colognes? (Other than department stores; L.A. area)

Where can I find a place to try out several colognes? The only places I know are department stores. Most of the stuff they carry is the typical youn, urban, hip stuff. I don't want to smell like the guys going to clubs. I also don't want to smell like my dad, classic Aramis.

I want to try some different scents. When I talk to Charles Roberts, he recommended some of the ones he carries. But the problem is that I live in Los Angeles, so I can't really try it out before dropping $50 on a bottle.

Any recommendations? Again, I'm in the Los Angeles area.

Also, as far as smells, I'm not sure what I like. But I would like something a little more unique and not so Polo, or Drakkar, etc. You know, i recently washed my hands with some Spearmint Eucalyptus soap from bath and Body Works, and I flipped out at the smell. i loved it. It was practically erotic. I couldn't stop smelling my hands. lol, I know. But I like smells like that. I don't know if that would work as a gentleman's cologne, but I liked it.

There are quite a few sites that sell samples and decants of scents at reasonable prices. Order from one and go nuts!

Sephora and Nordstrom usually carry stuff for everyone (young, old, in between)

Excellent question. I've been using Aqua di Gio for wayyyy too long, so I told my lady to buy me a bottle of whatever she liked for Christmas. She ended up getting my Dolche and Gabbana - Light Blue. I enjoy it.

However, I want to have more than a few colognes on hand, so I went to sephora.com and looked around. I ended up buying this. It's got 12 descent size samples in it, along with some shave cream. The best part is that it also comes with a gift certificate that you can trade in for a full size bottle of any cologne in the sample pack once you decide what you like. Not to mention you get 3 free samples for ordering. So I also got some shaving, oil, and balm from The Art of Shaving, as well as 2 other cologne samples. Also, free shipping. All in all I figured it was a hell of a deal.

This thread was about where to buy general shaving gear and products in the L.A. area, but most of the recommended stores carry fragrances as well.

For stores that carry a good selection of scents, try these:

• Neiman Marcus (full line of Creed, men's niche & designer frags)
• Sak's Fifth Avenue (some Creed, men's niche & designer frags)
• Macy's (men's designer frags)
• L'Occitane (house brand, but well thought of by many here)

For decants of a huge variety of scents, try the following links:

• Rorschuck's Badger Decants - Decent selection at the best prices I've found so far, and Rorschuck is a member here. I've purchased samples from him and he offers quick service.

• Crystal Flacon - Very nice selection at great prices. I placed an order with Mudassir a couple days ago and expect the decant to arrive today or tomorrow.

• Luckyscent - Huge selection at okay prices. Haven't tried them myself.

• The Perfumed Court - Giant selection - the biggest by far, but expensive. However, they have all sorts of sampler sets you can try for specific notes, award winners, designers, houses, gender, etc. Haven't tried them myself.

Another good place for testing scents would be "Blue Mercury" - they have a huge variety of fragrances (like the whole lines of Creed, Diptyque, L'Artisans Parfumeur, Serge Lutens etc). I think they have stores in CA
http://www.bluemercury.com/category/fragrance+and+candles/all+scents.do?sortby=shortAscend

WhosYerBob said:

For stores that carry a good selection of scents, try these:

• Neiman Marcus (full line of Creed, men's niche & designer frags)
• Sak's Fifth Avenue (some Creed, men's niche & designer frags)
• Macy's (men's designer frags)
• L'Occitane (house brand, but well thought of by many here)

For decants of a huge variety of scents, try the following links:

• Rorschuck's Badger Decants - Decent selection at the best prices I've found so far, and Rorschuck is a member here. I've purchased samples from him and he offers quick service.

• Crystal Flacon - Very nice selection at great prices. I placed an order with Mudassir a couple days ago and expect the decant to arrive today or tomorrow.

• Luckyscent - Huge selection at okay prices. Haven't tried them myself.

• The Perfumed Court - Giant selection - the biggest by far, but expensive. However, they have all sorts of sampler sets you can try for specific notes, award winners, designers, houses, gender, etc. Haven't tried them myself.

Click to expand...

Great list.

Also, since he's in LA, Lucky Scent has a retail "scent bar" in Hollywood where you can try their stuff. http://www.luckyscent.com/scentbar/
I wish that I could go there.

C.O Bigelow has quite a good selection of testers.

Los Angeles has a ton of places to sample.

Rodeo Drive area in Beverly Hills- park and hike around.

Pretty much all the big designer names have a shop that carries their fragrance line: YSL, Channel, Boss, etc.

Then too, Barney's, Saks and Nieman Marcus are in walking distance.

There is a also a little known shop on Wilshire roughly across the street from Barney's. It's called Beverly Hills Perfumery. It's an old family owned store that sells of a ton of older scents much discussed in here that are hard to find. Prices are usually reasonable. I'd say it's a must visit for you, especially if you're in the price range of $50.

Then on Beverly Boulevard about 1/4 mile east of Beverly Center is the only brick and mortar outlet for the web site LuckyScent.com. I can't imagine there are many stores, if any, that house that many niche frags in one place. They do not carry any of the "department store" scents. It's overload to go in there- so do some research before hand. It's the only place I've found here that carries all the Penhaligons. Most of the niche offerings are quite pricey if $50 is your desired spending level.

I think LuckScent's scent bar must make LA a uniquely great place to sample scents.

cstrother said:

I think LuckScent's scent bar must make LA a uniquely great place to sample scents.

Click to expand...

It's either heaven or hell cs...depending on how the ADs are acting.

I drive by it twice a day and it's usually easy to park. A couple of attractive and knowledgeable SAs ain't helping me keep driving either. I dont' think anyone carries more niche in one small store than they do. They carry Creed now too.

I indulge more in sampling than buying these days though and it is nice if I read/hear about a new scent to pop in.

That store I mentioned above in Beverly Hills is very cool too. They have some discontinued and hard to find stuff. Only place I've ever seen out here that carries the Carons.

StylinLA said:

It's either heaven or hell cs...depending on how the ADs are acting.

I drive by it twice a day and it's usually easy to park. A couple of attractive and knowledgeable SAs ain't helping me keep driving either. I dont' think anyone carries more niche in one small store than they do. They carry Creed now too.

I indulge more in sampling than buying these days though and it is nice if I read/hear about a new scent to pop in.

That store I mentioned above in Beverly Hills is very cool too. They have some discontinued and hard to find stuff. Only place I've ever seen out here that carries the Carons.

Click to expand...

<It's either heaven or hell cs...depending on how the ADs are acting.>

Yeah, that is an interesting point. I do not usually seem very driven to buy a whole bottle of anything--although this Pen's sale is getting to me! And I was thinking that if I could just drop in and try anything I wanted to try I would not even be all that interested in buying a bunch of decants. But I do not know how I would react if my choices were an immediate on the spot spray sample, but nothing usually to take home (which I take it is the deal), an immdiate full retail price bottle, or, say, ordering up a decant at a fairly significant delay (or I suppose, spending some time and getting a deal on a full bottle or a nearly full bottle). I usuall like to get at least a few mls in a decant of something that I want to try so that I can put in on mutliple times whenever I wanted. Something like Lucky Scent might actually make me to buy more bottles.

Which Carons do you mean? 3d Man, Pour Homme, Yatagan (sp?). I guess I had not thought about not seeing them at brick and motar stores. There are some great prices on those on-line though.

I got my Carons pretty much from fragrancex.com and its affiliate perfumeoverstock.com. I know those places have a horrible reputation over at basenotes.com, but I had not gotten burned yet and their prices and frankly service have been amazing! In this paricular case they were so inexpensive I did get full bottles. The BH Mom and Pop place sounds great!

The BH store has all the main Carons: Pour Un Homme, L'Anarchiste, Yatagan, Third Man. I've never seen them at any department stores or Sephora.

Once Scent Bar people know you, they'll give you a little 1 ML vial sample- not just a spray. But if I walked in and wanted 10 different 1ML samples, well...who knows.

My gut is they'd work with people on a couple if they were new customers.
Once they know you're a "buyer" and not just a "looker," they'll cut you a bit of slack.

I think I'm a bit like you with some frags, I really need to test wear a couple of times. I buy a fair amount of 5 or 8 ML decants from TPC.

StylinLA said:

The BH store has all the main Carons: Pour Un Homme, L'Anarchiste, Yatagan, Third Man. I've never seen them at any department stores or Sephora.

Once Scent Bar people know you, they'll give you a little 1 ML vial sample- not just a spray. But if I walked in and wanted 10 different 1ML samples, well...who knows.

My gut is they'd work with people on a couple if they were new customers.
Once they know you're a "buyer" and not just a "looker," they'll cut you a bit of slack.

I think I'm a bit like you with some frags, I really need to test wear a couple of times. I buy a fair amount of 5 or 8 ML decants from TPC.

Click to expand...

Hope we are not stealing the thread! That is nice that the LS scent folks are willing to hand out some samples. I am afraid I would be more a looker than a buyer--actually I "would hope" I would be more a looker than a buyer, I am actuallly afraid I would be a buyer!

<I buy a fair amount of 5 or 8 ML decants from TPC.>

Wow. I find TPC pretty pricey, but no one can touch TPC's selection. When you buy 5 to 8 ml is it to "use" or to "test"? I can probably squeeze by on 2 ml if it is just to test, but, say, 4 ml or so is really better. I also find a big difference between just putting some on the inside of my arm and sniffing it from time to time and actually wearing the scent.

As far as repeated trying scents out, from something like Chandler Burr's "The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York," the real pros at making scents, come back to them again and again over long stretches of time even when they are not actively tweaking them to try to figure how they feel about them. Now most of us on this forum are not creating and marketing big time scents at French scent houses, but neither do we likely have the incredibly refined noses those folks have. If they have to come back again and again, and their impressions change over time, I do not think I am going to be able to give something a quick once over. I swear I think that there is something in a scent that alters something in the way one smells that changes things a bit for the next time around. That somehow our (or at least my) actuall perception of a scent canbe altered by repeatedly smelling it over time. That is not just that I am noticing parts of the scent differently, etc.! "The Pefect Scent" is a really good read on lots off levels, by the way, even if Chandler B seems a bit too drawn to only the most expensive scents and sometimes seems to be too much into the celebrity hem clucking for my taste. Still he writes very nicely, is very knowledgeable it seems, and has obtained amazing access to some people with amazing talent.

<The BH store has all the main Carons: Pour Un Homme, L'Anarchiste, Yatagan, Third Man. I've never seen them at any department stores or Sephora.>

I have not tried L'Anarchiste, but I sure like the other three. Reall quality/original scents, made by a quality French House, that do not break the bank even at full retail. They are all currently sold in the market, at least world wide, as far as I know. I do not think I have ever seen them in a department store or at a place like Sephora, but you know I think I have seen them at those perfume kiosks and cramped "store fronts" that seem to be in every major suburban shopping mall these days!

If I buy 5ml at TPC it's because I want to give it at least a couple of test wears and think I might like it. It is pricey, yes, but not as pricey as blowing the change on a full bottle of something I don't like.

If I buy 8ml it's because I'm sure i will like it, but won't wear it often enough to merit a full bottle.

The Caron's are masterful. It's just odd they seem to have a disorganized distribution network. I too have seen them at the kiosks and carts.

Yeah revisiting scents is interesting. I just swapped for Kouros which I never thought I would like after first small sample. But tried it again and think I can pull it off.

The "forums" section of Basenotes has an area devoted to shopping sites around the world, and includes at least one thread on the LA area at http://www.basenotes.net/threads/177427-Los-Angeles-County