Meilily Featured Shop: The Perfumed Court

Friday, December 12th, 2008 | Featured Shops, Fragrance, Stores

Meilily Featured Shop: The Perfumed Court

Meilily Featured Shop: The Perfumed Court

If you are familiar with the power that scents have to transform a mood, lift the spirits, or brighten a day, then you will understand my latest obsession with perfumes and fragrances. It is not an obsession with just any and all fragrances, but an obsession with finding just the right fragrance to trigger that “ahhhh” response.

Here is where a particular online shop comes in handy: The Perfumed Court is an online fragrance shop that really helps me pursue my fragrance search (a.k.a. obsession) without breaking the bank. The Perfumed Court features a mind-blowing array of international fragrances, including niche fragrances that are harder to find and also fragrances that are not available in the United States. The special part about The Perfumed Court is that they sell decants, taking original fragrances and carefully transferring them into smaller containers for resale.

Since I have always had a hard time justifying shelling out a bunch of money for a full-size bottle of perfume that I would only wear a few times, buying perfume had become for me simply impractical until recently. After finding and trying fragrance decants from The Perfumed Court, I have become a decant convert. Now, I will never buy a regular size bottle of fragrance again, unless it is affordable and unless I also love it.

More about my experience with The Perfumed Court

The Perfumed Court currently sells decants in a nice variety of sizes, ranging from 1 ml sample vials to 30 ml containers. You can select a fragrance and choose a size and dispenser type (ie. spray or rollerball). Prices vary based on the size of the decant and the scent that you choose, but on average, a 5 ml rollerball decant has cost me about US$15. While having the original fragrance bottle is nice, I am primarily interested in the beauty and complexity of the fragrance itself. Therefore, I am very happy purchasing smaller-size fragrance decants for much less.

Though the price-per-ml may be higher with decants, because I don’t tend to use very much of each fragrance, it is really the price per bottle that I am concerned with. For example, when choosing between spending US$140 on a full size (50 ml) bottle of Serge Lutens Bois de Violette perfume or US$7 on a sample size (1 ml) vial of the very same perfume, I would probably go with the latter, unless I were to win the lottery or something.

Also, since I am all about the subtle wearing of scents as opposed to the wafting-for-miles scent drenching methods practiced by some, purchasing decants from The Perfumed Court gives me the option to purchase fragrances in useful 5ml glass rollerball bottles. I find that the travel-size rollerball dispensers are easier to use than spray mist dispensers, and they let me control the amount of scent I use and the exact location where I want to place it.

Even though some perfume houses have started selling their own affordable rollerball or petite fragrance sizes, this practice is still not prevalent enough to keep me from purchasing decants. For now, The Perfumed Court is the best way for me to try and buy fragrances of all kinds, without spending a lot for a full-size bottle.

Meilily Shop Summary: The Perfumed Court

Website Usability: Very good. The site is simple and easily searched.
Website Features: The wishlist feature is great, and the shopping cart remembers items when you return. [Update Feb. 6 ’09: the shopping cart no longer remembers items as it once did, boo hoo!]
Selection: Excellent. Amazing selection includes fragrances normally unavailable in the US.
Product Descriptions: Quite good (although practically everything sounds good). You can learn a lot about perfume from this site.
Ordering Process: Very Easy.
Customer Service: Excellent. Still feels personal.
Discounts & Specials: Pretty decent. Check out the Specials section. They offer discounts on larger orders, but for the most part I usually don’t spend enough to qualify for those discounts, aside from any per-item special pricing.
Shipping: Flat rate USPS. Items may arrive from 2 or 3 different shipping locations, but they arrive pretty quickly.