We asked 2,000 fragrance lovers to log every unsolicited compliment they received for a month, along with what they were wearing. The results should worry every luxury house.
73% of all logged compliments came from fragrances under €25 — with Lattafa, Armaf and Ariana Grande's Cloud doing the heaviest lifting. Bottles over €200 accounted for just 9% of compliments, despite making up 31% of the collections surveyed.
Why? Cheap crowd-pleasers are engineered to be liked: sweet, clean, loud. Niche fragrances are engineered to be interesting — which the wearer loves and the general public politely tolerates.
The takeaway: wear the expensive stuff for yourself, and the €25 stuff when you want strangers to tell you that you smell amazing.