How often do you have to ask yourself: what gift to buy for a husband, lover, spouse…
What to buy? Where to buy? When to buy? Thoughts do not give you peace of mind.
You want both original, inexpensive and memorable gifts that the person you’re giving this gift will love it.
Men, no matter what they like and what are their hobbies, are generally a pain in the a** to shop for.
But there’s a skill to choosing gifts for men that’ll help you select something the guy in your life might actually like — and that he hasn’t already gone out and bought for himself.
However daunting the task might seem to head into the holiday season, Christmas or coming up on a big birthday, it can be done.
So waste no more time worrying, whether you’re searching for a great gift idea for a husband, a dad, a boyfriend, or any other man who’d appreciate something unique and thoughtful.
Before digging deeper into this topic, you need to know one thing — never buy perfume by personal opinion!
Why to buy Fragrance as a gift for a man?
Studies show that during crises, the main source of luxury items is a fragrance. Why this luxury item popular even in difficult times?
Perfume is a luxury. But in times of crisis, people buy more perfume than usual.
Like sweets. Why? Because smell helps to forget and takes a person to another reality.
Perfume gives man the illusion. All other types of luxury cost huge money.
But even a good perfume can be purchased for a small amount of money.
Many will pay just as much attention to how they smell, of course.
And if it’s a special occasion, a gift of perfume might well be on the agenda too.
Either way, read on. There are some mustknows about the science of smell and perfume that may well be new to you.
How to find the right perfume for man and how to buy as a gift?
According to perfume professionals, the easiest way to pick a fragrance for man is to figure out in which category he belongs to. There are 4 of them:
Classic Man
- He’s a traditional and confident man who loves the classics. Perfume helps him feel empowered and fresh, both at work and in his spare time. So go for an aromatic and refreshing scent with a truly masculine feel.
- His fragrance families: Aromatic and Citrus
Bold Man
- He’s a fashionable trendsetter who loves to stand out in a crowd. No wonder he wants a unique, vibrant perfume that leaves a lasting impression. Choose an edgy perfume with woody notes and fruit or grass for an unforgettable scent.
- His fragrance families: Woody and Aromatic
Sensual Man
- He’s a charismatic, creative man with sophisticated taste. Wearing perfume is a way for him to indulge the senses and feel more attractive. His ideal perfumes are exotic, aromatic and mysterious.
- His fragrance families: Oriental and Woddy
Casual Man
- He’s a laid-back, relaxed man with an appetite for adventure. So, he wears perfume to feel good and get a dose of stimulating energy every day. Look for light perfumes with a natural touch and clean scent.
- His fragrance families: Citrus and Woody
How to buy perfume as a gift for man:
What do the experiments say about best fragrances? How To Buy A Gift For A Man.
Piplum strongly recommends watching this Jeremy Fragrance video about top perfume labes of all time:
From this olfactory exploration, animals glean relevant information about a potential mate’s fertility and quality, enabling decisions about whether to breed now or wait until someone better comes along.
While our greetings tend to be more reserved, research on the perception of human body odor reveals that similar messages lurk within our armpits.
Researchers commonly test such perceptions using armpit odor collected on worn tshirts or underarm pads, the wearers having been asked to avoid using fragranced products beforehand.
In experimental tests, men find women’s odor more pleasant and sexy when they are in the fertile part of their menstrual cycle than at other times.
Women are more attracted to odors of men who have attractive nonolfactory qualities, such as being socially dominant, facially attractive, or having an air of confidence about them.
So smells are important when assessing partners, especially for women. Our body’s natural smells also appear to provide a for couples to check out their genetic compatibility.
Research using the same tshirt method indicates that both sexes prefer the odor of potential partners who are genetically dissimilar when it comes to a set of genes known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).
A range of other vertebrates, from fish and reptiles to birds and mammals, show the same smell preference, apparently because this ultimately produces healthier offspring.
Why having perfume at home is so important?
So where do perfumes fit into the picture?
Applying perfume to the body probably emerged as a means of disguising the buildup of odor on clothing, which in times past was often worn for weeks or months at a time.
Because ingredients were expensive, perfumes were associated with high social status.
There are numerous references to people using perfume in ancient scripts including the Old Testament and the writings of the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder.
The oldest known perfume factory, discovered 12 years ago near the Cypriot town of Pyrgos, dates back about 4000 years.
Why we must use Perfume?
Nowadays, of course, perfumes are relatively cheap and accessible.
Despite this and the advent of washing machines and ventilated kitchens, we continue to use them.
The social stigma of bad bodyodour persists, and the modern fragrance industry is worth billions of pounds worldwide.
But if we need perfumes to simply mask our bad odor, why are there so many different products available?
And how do perfumes change or block the potentially relevant information contained within body odor?
Research is now challenging the conventional view that perfumes simply mask bad odor.
In one study, researchers asked participants to wear cotton underarm pads, as described above, but they were instructed to apply a particular fragrance under one armpit while leaving the other fragrancefree.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, volunteer sniffers later found the fragranced armpit odor to be more pleasant.
But then the researchers asked a new set of participants to apply their fragrance of choice under one armpit and to apply another fragrance, chosen by the experimenters, under the other.
This time, the sniffers judged the fragrance/body odor blends as more attractive when they involved the wearer’s own preferred fragrance – even though the sniffers found the two fragrances roughly comparable when there was nobody odor involved.
The conclusion? People select fragrances that complement their own body odor, producing a favorable blend. How might we achieve this? This question brings us back to the MHC genes that we mentioned earlier.
A key study determined the MHC group of different sniffers and then noted which odors they preferred among a range of common ingredients that might contribute to a perfume that they would wear.
The results revealed a correlation between certain MHC groups and preferences for certain ingredients, suggesting that we choose fragrances that enhance the MHC signals that we are already giving off.
Yet these correlations disappeared when the same sniffers rated the ingredients for a perfume their partner might choose to wear. At the genetic level, perfume preferences only work when thinking about ourselves. Another experiment took a slightly different approach to reach a similar conclusion.
Researchers first extracted MHC peptides, a signature component of MHC molecules, from a number of volunteers. They then spiked samples of the volunteers’ body odor with peptides representative of either their own MHC or of other people’s MHC.
When they were then asked to choose which spiked odor sample smelled like themselves, they tended to choose the one spiked with their own MHC peptides.
Perfume pricing
Taken together, these studies suggest that we evaluate perfumes, at least in part, according to whether they suit our individual, genetically influenced odor.
In an ideal world, we might all know our partner’s MHC genotype and choose perfumes that suited them accordingly, perhaps following some helpful system of color-coding or the like.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t look likely to happen in any major way any time soon – the test currently costs about £160 ahead. So what lessons can be learned from these studies?
One main point is that choosing a perfume for your partner based on your own preference is unlikely to work well.
How to pick a perfume for yourself
For those choosing a fragrance for themselves, the lesson is to ensure you select one that really suits you.
In the study of odor/fragrance blends, there were a few wearers who bucked the trend and smelled better with the experimenterassigned perfume than with the brand they chose themselves.
So it’s always worth investing some time in making a choice, and to testdrive it on your skin first. If this sounds daunting, you can at least proceed in the knowledge that the person best placed to decide what perfume suits you best is looking back at you in the mirror.
The fragrance has to be one of the most versatile gifts you can buy, working for pretty much any occasion, and for pretty much any person.
Most guys choose not to splash out on fragrances for themselves, and secretly, most men hold out in the hope that someone will pick one up for them as a gift.
