6 years ago
Fragrances that interest me are (for whatever reason!) mostly not available in stores to test, and I have to decide to take the risk or not. I had always done lots of 'blind buys' without knowing this expression, I suppose it was just another 'mail ordering' for me.
In the past, I couldn't imagine much from the listed
fragrance notes and completely relied on some 'intuition' (and luck) based on the ad and bottle picture. Curiously, I never had a 'failed' blind purchase back then, and this left me in a blissful state of even not knowing such things exist.
After I had begun reading reviews of other people and started letting my attention lead to those I wouldn't have looked at myself (in order to 'broaden my horizon'), I collected a mass of 'missed' blind buys. Of course, I felt frustrated to discover that I seemed to be in the 3% minority to perceive a fragrance differently than the 97% who praised and wrote glowing words, more so if someone just wrote misleading, eloquent 'reviews' which, in reality, were fabricated without ever testing and received many applauding thumb-ups as to confirm their credibility (note: not on this site).
Some cases were rather 'against better knowing' or the lack of the ability to imagine anything, trying to persuade myself to give it a chance, just for the sake of giving people's sentiments more credit than my own feeling, and therefore, my own fault. It's not much different than with people, I suppose. And these also belong to my worst blind purchases.
Very nice finds were partly surprising, partly anticipated. Funny that "Fancy Nights" mentioned earlier belongs to one of my nicer blind buys, based on my impression of the bottle alone, and the description 'old, books', without ever knowing what patchouli smelt like or if I liked it. I just saw it was a controversial fragrance (at that point, there were more negative feedbacks) which didn't keep me from trying