If you know a lot about perfume and are very bold by nature, you can buy perfume unsmelled. The best way to do this is to read a bit about the perfume. Most sites will describe scents, so you should know generally if you're getting a fruity-floral or an Oriental or a light boy-or-girl kind of scent. That's never the full story of the perfume, but I find that if you like a family of fragrances in general, it can make it easy to buy a perfume untested.

Another good way to shop for perfumes you can't smell first is to read reviews. A lot of websites and blogs review perfumes. Sometimes the reviews tell you more about the personality of the writer than the perfume. The best reviews are ones that describe the scent and its attributes rather than offer subjective opinions like, "I like this" or "I hated that." I'm sure there are perfectly reasonable people who hate Chanel No. 5 but that does not make it a bad perfume.

If you are very fond of all kinds of perfumes, it's pretty easy to buy perfume online. The service is generally good, prices tend to be reasonable, even with shipping and handling, and you can get a much broader selection of products. If you know what you like and what to stay away from (maybe you hate perfumes that are overly floral-descriptions should help you avoid them), you can do pretty well.

And sometimes I find that perfumes that do not wow me with the first whiff from the bottle eventually become lifelong favorites. That's why I like taking the risk of buying untested perfumes. Sometimes the scents you would have never picked out for yourself turn out to be the very best ones for you.

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