I don’t normally post on weekends, but this post was all done and ready to go, and I haven’t posted much lately.
In the wee hours of the night, I stay up with my two-and-a-half month old daughter and try not to do any online shopping. Therefore, I end up doing silly things like dissecting nine different versions of a Middle Eastern cookie recipe to create one über-recipe or compiling long lists of things that probably only I care about.
Recently, I’ve had perfume and handbags on the brain—which makes more sense than you’d think, since so many fashion houses necessarily have their own lines of perfume, as well. What do Narciso Rodriguez, Stella McCartney, and Juicy Couture know about perfume? But everyone from Michael Bublé, David Beckham, Zara, and the Kardashians to Donald Trump, Ferrari, Minions, and 24 (yes, the TV show) has a perfume line, so really, none of it makes sense anymore.
(I don’t wish to seem like I’m slamming any non-perfumers’ perfumes—some of my favorites are celebrity scents! I just really wanted to mention the Minions again.)

The perfume and handbags combination then got me thinking about the design of perfume bottles, as surely fashion houses would care deeply about their products’ aesthetics. I’ve seen many bottles that are straight-up hideous and others that are sublimely lovely. It’s never really affected my purchasing behavior, as it’s what’s inside the bottle that really counts: I’m not toting my perfume around with me and wearing it around my neck. But still, I like pretty things, and there are some fragrances with bottles I’ve admired but I haven’t gotten around to adding them to my collection for one reason or another. Here are the top 12 perfumes I want just for the bottle (in alphabetical order):

1
I love everything about this perfume, except for the way it smells. I felt that Florabotanica didn’t smell like very much at all, like a generic, vaguely scented bath product. Everything else about the fragrance—the name, the bottle, the notes (mint, carnation, rose, and vetiver, all of which I enjoy)—is screaming Buy me! so I feel I should probably revisit it. Perhaps—and I hope—my nose was just having an off day.

2
It’s the world’s most iconic perfume bottle. (See the Andy Warhol painting above.) The fragrance itself isn’t to my taste, however. I’ve tried the eau de toilette—it opens like ginger ale, then sours like a lemon on my skin. Perhaps I’ll try the eau de parfum one day, but I do have and love 2007’s N°5 Eau Première, and that’s probably enough N°5 for me, even though its bottle is not quite the same gorgeous, chunky style.
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