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Belvedere Rabbit@belvedererabbit

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Scent addiction? Pursuit of a signature scent—perhaps an obsession. Am I alone?

  • #signature_scent
  • #storytime
  • #unpopular_opinion

So, I started my fragrance journey June 2025. I bought a Mancera discovery kit on Amazon. Then I started looking for recommendations or suggestions with that brand by reading Reddit. I’ve also always been interested in personal style and I have always been fascinated by studying pop culture biographies and specific ephemera of Frank Sinatra, the late Prince Phillip, and his son, King Charles III, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, John Steinbeck, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, and Jackie Gleason.

It’s a weird hodgepodge, I get it.

Anyhow, that took me down the rabbit hole of trying to find out what their signature scents were: favorite colognes, etc. (Frank liked Yardley’s English Lavender and also Bois du Portugal; Prince Phillip and the former Prince Charles enjoyed Penhaligan’s Blenheim Bouquet and Dior Eau Sauvage; Nixon liked Aramis, and even Anthony Hopkins had a cheap celebrity cologne made a few years ago.) Am I too on the nose—can you tell I’m a Theatre Arts and Humanities teacher?

Well, a bit of context, I started on a GLP one in October 2025 and ended up losing 125 pounds by June 2026. However there is a weird phenomenon that I have read about that is associated with “addiction/obsession” of people on a GLP drug: fragrance addiction.

My collection of juice blossomed from five to about 212 bottles, and maybe another fifty or so travel size decants. I absolutely crave olfactory stimulation since starting Zepbound. And now, I’ve recognized that I have had this weird sort of “manic” goal of trying to identify my own “signature scent,” inspired of course by those famous names I mentioned earlier.

I feel I’m on some weird journey to locate the perfect scent that really captures my charisma and personality, and a scent people (friends/family/associates/students) will remember and identify positively with me. LOL. Are there any other crazy people out there like me? 

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Comments6

  1. Lychee@lycheetea

    There's often suggested theory that when (mostly women) are under pressure to lose weight, women's beauty products start pushing dessert scents and words like "nourishing". Starve the body, sublimate into chocolate body butter and gourmand perfume. GLP-1s are supposed to decrease pleasure from eating, and I have wondered if this trend is people's bodies resorting to seeking food stimulation from elsewhere. In any case... I have been looking for a signature scent for thirty years. Like you I love the idea of it, the way I associate my mother with L'Air du Temps and my MIL with Rive Gauche... But how to ever narrow it down? There are so many options, how do you ever go This One? Not to mention the ever present spectre of discontinuation (ah, Womanity and Rochas Femme, you were candidates!)

    1. Curlyhen@curlyhen

      This is such and interesting take. I’ve seen quite a lot of posts about people on GLP-1s and becoming addicted to perfumes. I pondered on it because I thought there was research to suggest that GLP-1s might help with other addictions, not just food, such as gambling etc because it suppresses that ‘desire’. But your thoughts are landing for me.

  2. Meg@oh.no.but.why

    Oof, signature scent is hard — especially when I feel like my tastes shift everyday! I think at the end of the day, my one constant is an endless hunger for variety, so my current rotation is more a selection of samples & travel sizes I hanker after more, with the occasional well-loved bottle for a season or so.

  3. Curlyhen@curlyhen

    That’s a lot of bottles in one year. And I’m not saying this to rain on your parade, but just be careful! Take a pause and think about what you want to achieve. I know, personally with ADHD, I can take a go hard or go home approach with hobbies so I have to put boundaries in place. Firstly, I don’t need to own a bottle of everything I love. If I did, I would have more perfume to last me a lifetime (and I’m probably already there🙈). But samples, decants and travels. I now spend over a year with a scent before I consider a full bottle (unless it’s a special purchase). In terms of signature .. think of other things in your life that you feel capture you. You don’t wear the exact same outfit everyday, you don’t have every room in your house looking exactly the same. So a single perfume that defines you isn’t necessarily what a signature is. It could be a variety of signatures for different occasions (for example, I have a ‘family’ signature, a black tie event signature, a hiking signature

    1. Curlyhen@curlyhen

      @belvedererabbit .. ran out of characters lol.. anyway, if your happy then carry on.. but just thought I’d share a few tips .. incase your hobby tips into an addiction that feels overwhelming rather than fun. 🤗

  4. Frank Intense@frankintense

    It’s fascinating. https://neurograd.uchicago.edu/news-events/glp-1-users-are-reporting-unexpected-side-effect-obsession-perfume

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