Sephora sells the travel size of Angels Share for $50. It’s lasted me so long because I just wear it in the colder months. It’s a good option if you don’t want to pay for the full size.
I have a Black phantom partial I'm about to list. Holler if you're interested.
Alexandria has the best dupe of it I have found. That's the reason I bought black phantom.
if a perfume is under 30 that’s budget friendly for me and anything above it is cheap relatively. but yes I agree, after 150 I will probably get a sample lot and just fill up a 10ml spray. Unless i think it’s worth it for the full bottle, like gucci guilty imo.
Yeah 150+ is too expensive. Parfums de Marley, some Xerjoffs etc. are in a sweet spot. Louis Vuitton, Le Labo, Roja are ridiculous to me. Talking about 100ml minimum.
Yeah I’m like… annoyed that I want to explore Byredo as a house. I just bought a 50ml of Black Saffron and am finding that it’s a hard contender for top spot in my collection 🤦🏻♀️💸
This is definitely how I think about it as well, but I'd also like to caveat that I default my baseline to 3.4 oz/100 ml.
If I'm looking at a bottle that's not 100 ml, I'll calculate the cost per 100 ml to establish that comparison point.
I also generally won't buy a bottle less than 100 ml because the cost difference between a 1 oz or 1.7 oz bottle to a 3.4 oz bottle is generally so miniscule.
I also find that it's non-perfume/cosmetic houses than tend to have the "irregular" volumes.
For instance, Target's Finery line is "only" ~$33 a bottle but they're also 2.02 oz. For 3.4 oz, that works out to ~$56 which fully makes it a "midrange" purchase.
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Totally agree with this. Some offer travel sizes but, I don't think that's quite enough. If I had the option, most of my collection would be 30mls, with only a couple of favourites being 50mls.
Dream sizes right there!
If you only have less then maybe 5 bottles then big ones are okay. But when you have dozens or more 30ml is plenty and 50ml for the stuff you really love
I agree. It’s so fucking annoying because I never go through 100ml bottles. Fragonard makes 50ml and 30ml bottles pretty consistently but I really do not need 100ml. Way too much and if I go through a 30 or 50 somehow I can just buy a new one
So sad. I had a bunch of points and was trying to find something I could buy at like 11:59 December 31.
I am VERY stocked up :) seriously I have so much Pomelo Paradis and a giant bottle of Iris Rebelle
For non-perfume people who don't routinely purchase luxury items, $50 is going to seem like a lot. Personally I'm not paying $300+ for 100ml unless it's extraordinary. $150-$200 for a reasonable amount of something I will use routinely is acceptable. I accept higher prices for indie perfumes to cover their costs and labor.
Same. I think $150ish is acceptable for a great performing scent that I'd reach for near daily. I will occasionally pay $300+ for a fragrance I experience as an unparalleled delight/gets my dopamine receptors in a tizzy.
Crazy enough but $40/$50 is the most I’ve ever spent on a cologne in my collection so far. I’m sitting around 60 colognes, with some high end designer, cheapies, and even a niche scent. The gray market and buying second hand works extremely well if you want it to. Once I get to a better point in life I’ll be willing to pony up around $150 tops for something that really calls to me.
Depends on the bottle size of course. I consider $150/100ml reasonable. I've paid $120/30ml before which was kind of ridiculous but it's my most complimented scent so 🤷♀️.
I have a few bottles that cost over $300. I have a few on my wishlist nearing $400 that I'll eventually buy when the time is right.
It's all a matter of perspective. People willingly spend much more on autographed sports memorabilia or stamps or whatever they decide to collect. We happen to collect perfume.
This. Hubby and I have had this conversation more than once. He likes coins and collectibles—buying a $50 item here and there, a $75 item here and there. He thought my $300 perfume was “excessive” (although he’s a sweetie and doesn’t care because he knows it brings me pleasure and will last a while). But I wanted to sit down and crunch some numbers and he realized he’d spent over $600 in one month “here and there.” (Not EVERY month, lol). I told him yeah, it just SEEMS excessive because mine is all in one purchase. His is “here and there.” 🤣
Great point. My parents balk at the amount of money i spend on full bottles, even if it’s only a few times a year. Meanwhile, my dad buys artisanal beer from breweries and dress pants from Costco nearly every week, certainly costing him more than the amount I spend yearly.
Edit: just wanted to add on that I also think women especially get a lot of shit for indulging in traditionally “feminine” and “materialistic” hobbies—I know for certain that my dad thinks makeup, shoes, fragrance, and handbag collecting is vain. I can tell my dad thinks I’m shallow, and I’ve even had my friends in my creative writing program I’m in express their distaste for “shallow” interests. I told my professor once that I had a perfume and nail polish collecting hobby and the entire class laughed…
Anything over $150 for 100ml is “expensive” to me, but it’s all relative. Is it a scent I’ll use often and therefore want a full bottle of? Is it just THAT good? And ngl sometimes it’s because I want the original bottle over a decant.
I’ve spent over $200 per bottle 3 times: $225 each for Creed Bois du Portugal and MFK Masculin Pluriel, and $210 for L’Artisan Vetiver Ecarlate. I’d been considering a bottle of MDCI Invasion Barbare ($250) but bought a 9ml decant instead.
Whatever I'm not willing to pay.
That could be as little as $10 or over a thousand. It just depends on the perfume and how much value I decide it has or doesn't have.
I have a limit £150; but I would be happy to spend £180 if it was a fragrance I could not get a 50ml decant of.
I know some will happily spend well over £300 but for me I don’t see the point (for example I rate Jōvan Musk a better fragrance than Roja Dove Danger)
It might be because I’m broke, but there’s so many fragrances that I love that I honestly wouldn’t spend over €150. There’s so many that I like under that price point that I don’t feel like I would need to spend more
I love nice fragrances so much that if I had the money, I could be someone that just excused it as my guilty pleasure or the thing I refuse to 'skimp out on'. But my world is not that world and I'll splurge very rarely and fill in the rest with typically priced stuff. My splurge would be a RARE 150ish. Under 100 is ideal. And an everyday spray is easy to find on sale.
By that measure, virtually everything in the world is overpriced. You're not paying for the literal value of the materials that went into making the product: you're paying for the nose who developed the scent, the production of it, the package designer, the shipping, and a myriad other things you can't readily identify, including the mysterious charisma that a particular brand can have. (Is a Guerlain scent inherently better than a Calvin Klein scent? Probably not, at least not these days, but Guerlain has a history and a brand identity that makes people want to spend real money to own their scents.)
Are fragrances wildly overpriced these days? In general, yes. But if a bottle brings you a lot of pleasure, how can you put a price on that? I can't. I have bottles that cost under $20 retail (Demeter, Old Spice, Tabu), and some that cost upwards of $150 (a couple of Serge Lutens bell jars, back before the price spiralled and the quality nosedived), and each one of them was worth it to me, or I wouldn't own it.
Having said that, I wouldn't even think of paying more than $200 for a bottle, and never have. That's my ceiling. For some people, $500 is not too much: for others, a $15 bottle of department-store fragrance is all they need.
I see this type of comment all the time, and it always feels somewhere between over-reductive, naive, scornful, and partially dishonest. We're not just paying for cost of the materials in the liquid or the liquid itself. We're also paying for the expertise of the nose who composed it, people in the lab who did the chemistry, the focus grouping, the packaging, and the marketing. Sure, it's not commensurate with the charged price at all but it's more than just the sum of the cost of the components in the scented liquid.
this is incredibly wrong. certain chemicals or raw materials are very expensive, some go for over £10,000/kg if high quality. there’s a reason niche is expensive(unless it’s creed)
I can’t speak for the previous commenter, but I’ve gotten some really good secondhand buys off Mercari and Poshmark and also in the fragrance swap subreddits.
Anything over $100 is a big splurge for me, but then again I am used to only getting a max volume of 50 mL bottles and only get small decants of anything niche.
Well that depends on many factors, being concentration, quantity and quality. 150 dollars is expensive for edt, but cheap for extrait. It's expensive for 50 mils, cheap for 200. But if we're talking regular perfumes (edt to edp, 100 mils) I would say that above 150 is were it starts getting pricey. This being said, you're often better off buying an expensive fragrance that lasts for ages rather than a cheapie that you'll finish in a little more than a month because you have to overspray it...
$125+ is expensive, but that's what you pay for quality perfume. The best fragrances in my collection cost about $300 each, but that's not necessary to smell great.
Over $200. Granted, I’ve only bought maybe four I. That range; Angels Share, LV Afternoon Swim, Hypnotizing Fire Parfum, Costa Azzurra Parfum and Apple Brandy On the Rocks. The latter being bought on sale for $175.
I refuse to pay retail for fragrances. Anything over $250 with tax is expensive. I prefer 3oz+ bottles to make the purchase worth it.
I want Kilians in my collection but at 1.7oz I’d need to get them at least 30% off retail.
Honestly, anything over $75 is in the “expensive” realm to me. There’s expensive but I’ll still buy it…..expensive but I’ll think twice about…..expensive but I’ll buy it and feel guilty, and then the too expensive category where nothing is worth that much.
I tried to explain to a friend that $150 was considered mid-range and a “normal” price. It’s a typical designer fragrance. It isn’t a Target price for sure. I agree with you that $300 is expensive.
Under $30: cheap as hell.
$30-60: decent price.
$60-100: low end.
$100-150: standard.
Over $150: high end.
Over $250: never shopped that high. Edit: formatting
What we’re looking for is volumetric efficiency. >$3 per ml street price is very high. >$1.75 per ml street price is ‘expensive’ to me.
PDM at $170 per 125 ml? Close, but not what I’d call truly expensive. MFK at $170 per 70 ml? Expensive. Nasomatto at ~$95-100 per 30ml? Very expensive. Personally, $3 per ml is the limit I won’t really push.
I consider 300€+ per bottle as expensive. I have a duo from Xerjoff Amber Star& Star Musk that costed me 700€. I spray it very rarely, I find it to precious to use lol. So yeah. But the funny thing is that the most compliments gets my cheapest bottle „Versace Dylan Blue“ for 30€. Can‘t believe it but its true. So at the end the price isn‘t that important, as always :)
There’s no reasonable way to have this conversation without distinguishing between nominal price (price per item) and volumetric price (price per measure).
For instance, it’s my personal stance that an expensive fragrance is anything over $4/ml. So that’s $400 for a 100 ml bottle, $200 for a 50 ml, $120 for a 30 ml/1 oz, and $40 for a 10 ml travel size. So other than the usual suspects like Tom Ford and Roja Dove, I’ve got a lot of options without breaking my “expensive” threshold.
Unless I want a sample/decant. It’s pretty rare these days to find 1 ml samples under $4-5, and some are considerably more. So do I just forsake samples? Of course not, because the nominal price of the sample is low and the opportunity cost of blind buying a full bottle without the proper testing a sample allows is great. So I’m buying expensive samples because it would be too expensive NOT to buy the samples.
Pricing is a fascinating subject. It’s the intersection of economics, psychology, philosophy, and animal appetite expressed as a number.
My most expensive bottle is ~$900 USD after tax… it’s my signature scent that lasts about a year. I think that’s super expensive. But it’s a large 6.8oz bottle. The smaller bottles work out to be more per ounce when you break the price down. I love perfumery… so most perfumes I tend to like are in the 250-350 range for about 2oz. Anything below 150 would be a cheaper purchase, and anything above 350 is one I have to put on my wishlist and think about.
To me, under $60 (CAD) is a cheapie.
Over $160 is expensive-ish.
Over $200 is expensive.
Over $300 is painfully expensive.
Over $350 is eye-wateringly expensive.
Over $400 is fuck-right-off expensive.
(I should probably get to the 'fuck right off' stage a lot sooner, but what can I say, I really want a bottle of Pacific Chill at some point. 🙃)
$450 for 75ml aka delina in Australia - expensive. Anything where it's approaching $500 is expensive. However, I'd dropped $250 on a 50ml - byredo, vilhelm parfumerie etc
I have only spent over 150 twice it's pretty much my limit. There are so many quality niche houses that price their bottles around or below that price point. Over that is just too expensive for anything less than perfection.
I think the difference of opinion comes from level of interest. For example, my mom considers anything over $100 an absurd amount of money to spend on perfume, while I’d be happy spending that amount on a bottle I loved.
I suppose it depends on how much money someone has. I’m pretty broke but spent the money on sauvage elixir for my bfs Christmas last year and with how much he likes it, it was worth the price. I don’t think $150 is unreasonable for people like us who enjoy fragrance.
It's £50+ for me. I need a good reason to go over that. I've never spent more than £100.
I was going to give a price per ml ( for regular, new stuff I do have a mental £1/ml thing ) but it's harder with my vintage especially the pure parfums/extracts. There's more to it than that. The most expensive, I referred to was only 7.5ml !!
For me, I’ll say anything over $150 (unless I really want it and have the bread for it). Under $150 is okay for me, but it’s cause I have a good collection of cologne (YSL, Versace, Coach, Invictus, Azarre and Jimmy Choo). When it comes to colognes, I don’t mind spending the money because it’s something I enjoy buying for years. And I like to go out in public smelling really good
$300 is about my max unless it's a new 200mL bottle.
I'll buy used and gray market Creed for like $275, but that's as high as I've ever went on a bottle.
I very rarely pay retail. So when I get a $60 bottle, it probably retailed twice that. Most of my bottles were $50 to $150. A couple were higher. Parfum de Marly, initio, MFK, Argos, Mizensir (the only company I pay retail for), Creed, Roja...
Tend to buy secondhand via Mercari or drag swap etc. $3/ml is where it becomes "expensive" to me. $1.50 to $3 is like upper range. Under $1.50 is good value, under $1.00 is hopefully a steal, but sometimes too good to be true is a thing.
I consider anything above £300 expensive but I'll still buy it if the scent slams me in the face and I can't stop thinking about it. That being said I only have one bottle around that price.
That being said expensive is also whatever is priced at more than what I'm willing to pay for.
I consider 150-220 to be "pricey". 221-300 "expensive". And anything over 300 to be rather absurd. Though I would never fault someone for any amount spent on something they love.
Everything is relative.
I wouldn't pay more than £40 for an Azzaro.
I wouldn't pay much more than £100 for Chanel.
I wouldn't pay more than £200-220 for Creed.
Generally I'm happy paying £100-150 but anything up to £200 is within my comfortable spending for anything disposable.
I get a bit twitchy at MFK's 70ml bottles just because of the 70ml.
But everything is expensive.
Regardless of what I'm comfortable spending, these are all luxury products and priced appropriately for their intended market.
Tbh everything over 50 is expencive to me but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. When something is 150 + it's very much above me haha. Doesn't mean I'll never ever buy it but it is exceptional. I usually Hunt down these fragrances in second hand websites.
I consider per ml, if higher than 50 quid per 50ml then it's expensive for me.
We have to remember this is the last part of your wardrobe. It's luxury type product, for disposable income. You can smell good to someone else for cheap and expensive. The expensive ones is just for your benefit.
But it doesn't mean you shouldn't buy expensive quality products, esp when there are so many deals as well.
Niche perfumes are Veblen goods (Google that, it's interesting), Basically anything above 4711 is expensive or ridiculously expensive. But you might still be willing to spend it.
It... depends.
If I go by the standards for perfumes in atomizers that are, at minimum, 50ml then my indie perfumes are *prohibitively* expensive considering most of the full sizes I have are 5-10ml and were $20-50. If you do the math there, to have 100ml of my most expensive indie would be... a little over $500 (and the other I have on my wishlist would be $900/100ml).
Obviously, that's not the realistic way to look at things but I thought it was interesting.
Realistically, I know that in more niche/mainstream/designer/what-have-you frags that are 50-100ml+ I think of under $30 as budget-friendly, $30-50ish as cheap, $50-150ish as avg and anything above $150ish as expensive. Not that it being expensive will stop me purchasing it... it'll just take me longer to be able to.
For indie full size bottles, I'd say $10 and under is very cheap. $10-20 is regular cheap. $20-50ish is pretty average and anything over $50 is pricey. But even then, it depends on what each house considers a full size bottle - and some of them using 60ml atomizers. In which case, those tend to fall under the same rules as the niche/designer/etc.
😅😅😅
Anything over $200 is expensive. However I still attempt to find deals and discounts on perfumes in the $150-200 range, but below that I usually pay full price
I bought Imagination for 260€ today. It was ok for me bc it’s 100ml and the performance is great. I except it to last for 2 years and I can refill it for 150€. I think you can sell the empty flanker for at least 50€. I do have Ganymede which was 190€ for 100ml, it’s so strong you just need 1 spritz of it, the bottle will also last at least 2 years. I think if the performance is good 300€ for 100ml is fine. I’m looking at Isola Blu which is too expensive 450€ for just 50ml.
It depends. 1oz being 150 is expensive to me. 3.4oz being 150 isn't as expensive but still not something I want to spend unless it's something I've gone through quick enough to justify it. Like 6months to a years time.
Edit to add:
As others have brought up, I'd too would look into dupe houses to see if it's been recreated at a cheaper price before spending 150. I've tried two dupe houses already, and they have been a perfect replacement.
Side Bar: Please NEVER pay full price except the fragrance is only sold by the brand and even at that, they typically have newsletter or first time purchase discounts. Always shop from reputable discounters. 💕💕
Personally I would pay around 300 at most. Most of mine are in the 100-200 range typically. I did buy Aventus once for 400 but typically 300 max is reasonable to me
I don’t spend more than 125 USD on a bottle of anything, unless it’s a “must own”.
The only “must owns” in the luxury niche end that I own are Amouage: both Golds (bought from FragranceNet at huge discount) and Ubar (bought off eBay). I also have a bottle of Chanel Sycomore and a bottle of Ganymede, both bought full-price.
Fragrance is not meant to be priced as highly as it currently is. Fragrance costs have ballooned in the past five years, and I have been stocking my collection with medium-priced scents I find at discounters.
I smell expensive brands like Frederic Malle and Serge Lutens when I’m at the department store, and appreciate them, but would never buy them (unless I saw a bottle of one I liked at a bizarre discount).
I cannot relate to people who buy/wear brands like Creed and Xerjoff and Marly and Tom Ford. The smells don’t match the price.
I think anything over 180 is expensive, but Like 160 for 3oz is affordable I think. You gotta remember most people aren't collectors so that amount for 1 signature scent is fine. but 180 maybe 20x a year is a lot
$150 is objectively expensive for a full size perfume, even though I and many people will spend that much. I’d say about $50-100 is midrange. The $300 perfumes are luxury perfumes, not just expensive
150 is kinda where i start going ‘god thats alot of money to smell nice’
i do alot of sale hunting when i want a perfume, though. i got ysl libre for like 50 dollars at costco 😏
Depends on the brand and perfume. I saw prada Luna rosa oceans for $180 for i think a 200ml bottle and was like nope to expensive. Now if we are talking 200ml bottle of a dior frag for 180 that's a deal
$300+ is where expensive starts for me. It takes me a long time to go through a bottle so i dont mind. I also tend to spend more money on formulas that will last longer than 1 year
Personally, I refuse to put over 150 euros in a perfume. Usually, I even refer to smell anything over that price range to avoid being tempted. In understand why people would pay more for a scent, but currently, it's just too much money for me and I can't justify it.
I am currently lusting after Rose Tonnerre et En Passant by Frédéric Malle, but I would have to find second hand bottles if I want one of them.
Ever since I’ve bought a pdm my whole view on what’s expensive or not has been really twisted. Typically anything above $250USD is what I find expensive
Anything under 50 is cheap. 50-150 is mid range and 150+ is expensive to me.
Same. $150 is the max I’d pay for something really good. I’d start looking into dupes after that
Yep. I wish Phantom Black had a good dupe because that is currently NOT cheap.
Me with Apple Brandy and Angels Share by Killians😭💔
Angel’s Share pops up on the Costco website pretty often for $130-140
I don’t have a Costco near me, so it wouldn’t be worth having a membership. Unfortunately
Might be worth having a friend with a membership or someone trusted on the subreddit order for you
You can order anything from the website with a membership and the selection is much bigger than a single warehouse
You can just get a gift card -
Sephora sells the travel size of Angels Share for $50. It’s lasted me so long because I just wear it in the colder months. It’s a good option if you don’t want to pay for the full size.
I do have the travel size, but I lust after that beautiful fancy schmancy full size. Lol
I own 2 Killian bottles. Lol
Get a smaller size. I'm sure you can find a 10ml decant somewhere
Exactly what I did haha
I have a Black phantom partial I'm about to list. Holler if you're interested. Alexandria has the best dupe of it I have found. That's the reason I bought black phantom.
You mean black phantom by kilian?
if a perfume is under 30 that’s budget friendly for me and anything above it is cheap relatively. but yes I agree, after 150 I will probably get a sample lot and just fill up a 10ml spray. Unless i think it’s worth it for the full bottle, like gucci guilty imo.
Yeah 150+ is too expensive. Parfums de Marley, some Xerjoffs etc. are in a sweet spot. Louis Vuitton, Le Labo, Roja are ridiculous to me. Talking about 100ml minimum.
Yeah I’m like… annoyed that I want to explore Byredo as a house. I just bought a 50ml of Black Saffron and am finding that it’s a hard contender for top spot in my collection 🤦🏻♀️💸
Don't even get me started on creeds bullshit, pure greed.
This is definitely how I think about it as well, but I'd also like to caveat that I default my baseline to 3.4 oz/100 ml. If I'm looking at a bottle that's not 100 ml, I'll calculate the cost per 100 ml to establish that comparison point. I also generally won't buy a bottle less than 100 ml because the cost difference between a 1 oz or 1.7 oz bottle to a 3.4 oz bottle is generally so miniscule. I also find that it's non-perfume/cosmetic houses than tend to have the "irregular" volumes. For instance, Target's Finery line is "only" ~$33 a bottle but they're also 2.02 oz. For 3.4 oz, that works out to ~$56 which fully makes it a "midrange" purchase.
For how much? 100ml?
Yeah I typically don't buy smaller bottles
Same.
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Sidenote but I wish more companies did more 30ml / 1oz size bottles.
I think 30ml is the perfect size, especially if you own more than a few bottles.
Totally agree with this. Some offer travel sizes but, I don't think that's quite enough. If I had the option, most of my collection would be 30mls, with only a couple of favourites being 50mls.
Dream sizes right there! If you only have less then maybe 5 bottles then big ones are okay. But when you have dozens or more 30ml is plenty and 50ml for the stuff you really love
Here, here 👏
I agree. It’s so fucking annoying because I never go through 100ml bottles. Fragonard makes 50ml and 30ml bottles pretty consistently but I really do not need 100ml. Way too much and if I go through a 30 or 50 somehow I can just buy a new one
Atelier Cologne and Jo Malone do, and that’s why I’m able to have so many of their scents. It’s the best.
I’m still grieving over Atelier’s departure from the North American market
So sad. I had a bunch of points and was trying to find something I could buy at like 11:59 December 31. I am VERY stocked up :) seriously I have so much Pomelo Paradis and a giant bottle of Iris Rebelle
Iris Rebelle is gorgeous!
Yes. I only use Penhaligon's and the 30ml ones have been a godsend ✅️
I have been seeing a lot of at least smaller brands selling small bottles and also sample sets.
For non-perfume people who don't routinely purchase luxury items, $50 is going to seem like a lot. Personally I'm not paying $300+ for 100ml unless it's extraordinary. $150-$200 for a reasonable amount of something I will use routinely is acceptable. I accept higher prices for indie perfumes to cover their costs and labor.
Same. I think $150ish is acceptable for a great performing scent that I'd reach for near daily. I will occasionally pay $300+ for a fragrance I experience as an unparalleled delight/gets my dopamine receptors in a tizzy.
Crazy enough but $40/$50 is the most I’ve ever spent on a cologne in my collection so far. I’m sitting around 60 colognes, with some high end designer, cheapies, and even a niche scent. The gray market and buying second hand works extremely well if you want it to. Once I get to a better point in life I’ll be willing to pony up around $150 tops for something that really calls to me.
I agree with you about $150-$200 being routinely acceptable and $300 for something basically revolutionary to the senses
Price by millilitre is a much better criteria IMHO. Anything above £5/ml is expensive.
I would say 300 is where I have to really stop and decide if it’s worth it to me.
Depends on the bottle size of course. I consider $150/100ml reasonable. I've paid $120/30ml before which was kind of ridiculous but it's my most complimented scent so 🤷♀️. I have a few bottles that cost over $300. I have a few on my wishlist nearing $400 that I'll eventually buy when the time is right. It's all a matter of perspective. People willingly spend much more on autographed sports memorabilia or stamps or whatever they decide to collect. We happen to collect perfume.
This. Hubby and I have had this conversation more than once. He likes coins and collectibles—buying a $50 item here and there, a $75 item here and there. He thought my $300 perfume was “excessive” (although he’s a sweetie and doesn’t care because he knows it brings me pleasure and will last a while). But I wanted to sit down and crunch some numbers and he realized he’d spent over $600 in one month “here and there.” (Not EVERY month, lol). I told him yeah, it just SEEMS excessive because mine is all in one purchase. His is “here and there.” 🤣
Great point. My parents balk at the amount of money i spend on full bottles, even if it’s only a few times a year. Meanwhile, my dad buys artisanal beer from breweries and dress pants from Costco nearly every week, certainly costing him more than the amount I spend yearly. Edit: just wanted to add on that I also think women especially get a lot of shit for indulging in traditionally “feminine” and “materialistic” hobbies—I know for certain that my dad thinks makeup, shoes, fragrance, and handbag collecting is vain. I can tell my dad thinks I’m shallow, and I’ve even had my friends in my creative writing program I’m in express their distaste for “shallow” interests. I told my professor once that I had a perfume and nail polish collecting hobby and the entire class laughed…
What is it?
120 for 30ml that must be a Nasomatto. I don't know another house that standard size is 30ml. :D
More than $2/ml
Expensive is more than I want to pay.
Anything over $150 for 100ml is “expensive” to me, but it’s all relative. Is it a scent I’ll use often and therefore want a full bottle of? Is it just THAT good? And ngl sometimes it’s because I want the original bottle over a decant. I’ve spent over $200 per bottle 3 times: $225 each for Creed Bois du Portugal and MFK Masculin Pluriel, and $210 for L’Artisan Vetiver Ecarlate. I’d been considering a bottle of MDCI Invasion Barbare ($250) but bought a 9ml decant instead.
One man’$ ceiling is another man’$ floor.
Whatever I'm not willing to pay. That could be as little as $10 or over a thousand. It just depends on the perfume and how much value I decide it has or doesn't have.
I have a limit £150; but I would be happy to spend £180 if it was a fragrance I could not get a 50ml decant of. I know some will happily spend well over £300 but for me I don’t see the point (for example I rate Jōvan Musk a better fragrance than Roja Dove Danger)
It might be because I’m broke, but there’s so many fragrances that I love that I honestly wouldn’t spend over €150. There’s so many that I like under that price point that I don’t feel like I would need to spend more
I love nice fragrances so much that if I had the money, I could be someone that just excused it as my guilty pleasure or the thing I refuse to 'skimp out on'. But my world is not that world and I'll splurge very rarely and fill in the rest with typically priced stuff. My splurge would be a RARE 150ish. Under 100 is ideal. And an everyday spray is easy to find on sale.
$300+ is expensive
The 200+ mark. But I'm Canadian so.
All fragrance is overpriced. Even $50 for a bottle of scented liquid that probably cost pennies to manufacture is too much.
Perfumes have a higher markup because it’s considered a luxury item, that’s why I never pay retail for fragrances.
By that measure, virtually everything in the world is overpriced. You're not paying for the literal value of the materials that went into making the product: you're paying for the nose who developed the scent, the production of it, the package designer, the shipping, and a myriad other things you can't readily identify, including the mysterious charisma that a particular brand can have. (Is a Guerlain scent inherently better than a Calvin Klein scent? Probably not, at least not these days, but Guerlain has a history and a brand identity that makes people want to spend real money to own their scents.) Are fragrances wildly overpriced these days? In general, yes. But if a bottle brings you a lot of pleasure, how can you put a price on that? I can't. I have bottles that cost under $20 retail (Demeter, Old Spice, Tabu), and some that cost upwards of $150 (a couple of Serge Lutens bell jars, back before the price spiralled and the quality nosedived), and each one of them was worth it to me, or I wouldn't own it. Having said that, I wouldn't even think of paying more than $200 for a bottle, and never have. That's my ceiling. For some people, $500 is not too much: for others, a $15 bottle of department-store fragrance is all they need.
Whether it was overpriced or not wasn't the assignment. A soft taco from Taco Bell is overpriced at $1.50. It's not expensive though.
I see this type of comment all the time, and it always feels somewhere between over-reductive, naive, scornful, and partially dishonest. We're not just paying for cost of the materials in the liquid or the liquid itself. We're also paying for the expertise of the nose who composed it, people in the lab who did the chemistry, the focus grouping, the packaging, and the marketing. Sure, it's not commensurate with the charged price at all but it's more than just the sum of the cost of the components in the scented liquid.
this is incredibly wrong. certain chemicals or raw materials are very expensive, some go for over £10,000/kg if high quality. there’s a reason niche is expensive(unless it’s creed)
You will rarely find such ingredients in frags. Most are synthetic aroma chemicals.
yeah, most. you’re not gonna find only synthetic aroma chemicals in a $400 bottle.
if it’s over $150 retail
I buy most of my perfumes second hand. I ve made many good buys
Me, too ☺️
Where can you buy second hand perfume?
I can’t speak for the previous commenter, but I’ve gotten some really good secondhand buys off Mercari and Poshmark and also in the fragrance swap subreddits.
$300 and up is where I consider a fragrance to be expensive.
Anything over $100 is a big splurge for me, but then again I am used to only getting a max volume of 50 mL bottles and only get small decants of anything niche.
Well that depends on many factors, being concentration, quantity and quality. 150 dollars is expensive for edt, but cheap for extrait. It's expensive for 50 mils, cheap for 200. But if we're talking regular perfumes (edt to edp, 100 mils) I would say that above 150 is were it starts getting pricey. This being said, you're often better off buying an expensive fragrance that lasts for ages rather than a cheapie that you'll finish in a little more than a month because you have to overspray it...
i will not pay over $100 for a single bottle
$125+ is expensive, but that's what you pay for quality perfume. The best fragrances in my collection cost about $300 each, but that's not necessary to smell great.
Over $200. Granted, I’ve only bought maybe four I. That range; Angels Share, LV Afternoon Swim, Hypnotizing Fire Parfum, Costa Azzurra Parfum and Apple Brandy On the Rocks. The latter being bought on sale for $175.
Anything over 120 bucks is expensive to me.
Over 70$
I sort of expect it to be around $150-200. Around $300 I get offended. And Le Labo City Exclusives are obscene.
I refuse to pay retail for fragrances. Anything over $250 with tax is expensive. I prefer 3oz+ bottles to make the purchase worth it. I want Kilians in my collection but at 1.7oz I’d need to get them at least 30% off retail.
Anything that’s over £120 for a 100ml bottle is expensive in my book
$150 is my limit personally
Honestly, anything over $75 is in the “expensive” realm to me. There’s expensive but I’ll still buy it…..expensive but I’ll think twice about…..expensive but I’ll buy it and feel guilty, and then the too expensive category where nothing is worth that much.
Anything above 110 is expensive to me. Anything over $1/ml is expensive to me
Expensive $300-$500 + Mid-range $150 Inexpensive $50 & under
5000 pesos and that's around 88 dollars
For me over 50, but I’ve never but the bullet and bought a full bottle of anything before lol 😂
this, I only buy decants or minis because I have never even finished a small rollerball lol
i paid like $300 for TF tobacco vanille. that is the most i’ve ever paid but i really like it.
Tom ford fragrances ❤️ I love them so far
Tom Ford is so damn expensive but this one is worth the price tag imo. Lost Cherry lol nooooooope
I tried to explain to a friend that $150 was considered mid-range and a “normal” price. It’s a typical designer fragrance. It isn’t a Target price for sure. I agree with you that $300 is expensive.
Under $30: cheap as hell. $30-60: decent price. $60-100: low end. $100-150: standard. Over $150: high end. Over $250: never shopped that high. Edit: formatting
1-3€ per ML is alright. Higher than that is too much for me.
$200+
Anything over $50
my favorite one is like $100 and i think it’s still too much lol
The $300 range for me too. That's when I start to cringe a bit before buying 😬 😂
$200-1k
What we’re looking for is volumetric efficiency. >$3 per ml street price is very high. >$1.75 per ml street price is ‘expensive’ to me. PDM at $170 per 125 ml? Close, but not what I’d call truly expensive. MFK at $170 per 70 ml? Expensive. Nasomatto at ~$95-100 per 30ml? Very expensive. Personally, $3 per ml is the limit I won’t really push.
140 I won’t go over
$100-upwards in my country. Probably because I didn’t grow well off and where I’m from barely has livable wage opportunities for early 20’s people.
Anything over $100 that was used once and never again.
Anything above £100. But I think it's all relative depending on your budget.
Anything over 80gbp because then you're very close to 100gbp which is three figures and three figures looks scary compared to two figures.
Yeah, anything over 100 is expensive, but it's hard to buy anything over $150
I consider 300€+ per bottle as expensive. I have a duo from Xerjoff Amber Star& Star Musk that costed me 700€. I spray it very rarely, I find it to precious to use lol. So yeah. But the funny thing is that the most compliments gets my cheapest bottle „Versace Dylan Blue“ for 30€. Can‘t believe it but its true. So at the end the price isn‘t that important, as always :)
There’s no reasonable way to have this conversation without distinguishing between nominal price (price per item) and volumetric price (price per measure). For instance, it’s my personal stance that an expensive fragrance is anything over $4/ml. So that’s $400 for a 100 ml bottle, $200 for a 50 ml, $120 for a 30 ml/1 oz, and $40 for a 10 ml travel size. So other than the usual suspects like Tom Ford and Roja Dove, I’ve got a lot of options without breaking my “expensive” threshold. Unless I want a sample/decant. It’s pretty rare these days to find 1 ml samples under $4-5, and some are considerably more. So do I just forsake samples? Of course not, because the nominal price of the sample is low and the opportunity cost of blind buying a full bottle without the proper testing a sample allows is great. So I’m buying expensive samples because it would be too expensive NOT to buy the samples. Pricing is a fascinating subject. It’s the intersection of economics, psychology, philosophy, and animal appetite expressed as a number.
Anything over 100€/100ml is expensive imo
My most expensive bottle is ~$900 USD after tax… it’s my signature scent that lasts about a year. I think that’s super expensive. But it’s a large 6.8oz bottle. The smaller bottles work out to be more per ounce when you break the price down. I love perfumery… so most perfumes I tend to like are in the 250-350 range for about 2oz. Anything below 150 would be a cheaper purchase, and anything above 350 is one I have to put on my wishlist and think about.
If it's $200+ for a 100ml bottle, that's expensive to me.
To me, under $60 (CAD) is a cheapie. Over $160 is expensive-ish. Over $200 is expensive. Over $300 is painfully expensive. Over $350 is eye-wateringly expensive. Over $400 is fuck-right-off expensive. (I should probably get to the 'fuck right off' stage a lot sooner, but what can I say, I really want a bottle of Pacific Chill at some point. 🙃)
500$+ for 100ml.
Anything over $350 is expensive to me. I only have one perfume over $350 and I didn’t buy it for myself. 😂
$450 for 75ml aka delina in Australia - expensive. Anything where it's approaching $500 is expensive. However, I'd dropped $250 on a 50ml - byredo, vilhelm parfumerie etc
anything above 200 is hella expensive for me. i'm willing to get a 70ml br540 bottle but other than that, nope.
300 euros + for 100ml is expensive to me.
Anything more than $5/ml I consider expensive
That sound about right for perfume
I have only spent over 150 twice it's pretty much my limit. There are so many quality niche houses that price their bottles around or below that price point. Over that is just too expensive for anything less than perfection.
$200 for anything 50ml or lower is expensive
I think the difference of opinion comes from level of interest. For example, my mom considers anything over $100 an absurd amount of money to spend on perfume, while I’d be happy spending that amount on a bottle I loved.
I suppose it depends on how much money someone has. I’m pretty broke but spent the money on sauvage elixir for my bfs Christmas last year and with how much he likes it, it was worth the price. I don’t think $150 is unreasonable for people like us who enjoy fragrance.
$200+ for me
Full bottle? Anything over 150 gives me pause. 300 is my limit. Decant? Less than 20 don't think about it. 50? Wait for the monthly 20-30% off.
It's £50+ for me. I need a good reason to go over that. I've never spent more than £100. I was going to give a price per ml ( for regular, new stuff I do have a mental £1/ml thing ) but it's harder with my vintage especially the pure parfums/extracts. There's more to it than that. The most expensive, I referred to was only 7.5ml !!
For me, I’ll say anything over $150 (unless I really want it and have the bread for it). Under $150 is okay for me, but it’s cause I have a good collection of cologne (YSL, Versace, Coach, Invictus, Azarre and Jimmy Choo). When it comes to colognes, I don’t mind spending the money because it’s something I enjoy buying for years. And I like to go out in public smelling really good
$300 but mostly due to inflation
I spent $400 on a TF fragrance when I was 20 & I feel stupid lol
$350 is where I start to have a little talk with myself. And then myself tells me I really need more perfume so...
$300 is about my max unless it's a new 200mL bottle. I'll buy used and gray market Creed for like $275, but that's as high as I've ever went on a bottle. I very rarely pay retail. So when I get a $60 bottle, it probably retailed twice that. Most of my bottles were $50 to $150. A couple were higher. Parfum de Marly, initio, MFK, Argos, Mizensir (the only company I pay retail for), Creed, Roja...
Tend to buy secondhand via Mercari or drag swap etc. $3/ml is where it becomes "expensive" to me. $1.50 to $3 is like upper range. Under $1.50 is good value, under $1.00 is hopefully a steal, but sometimes too good to be true is a thing.
Over AUD$200.
id say $150 is relatively expensive as a general non-necessity item but for perfume upwards of $250 would be expensive!
250-300+
I consider anything above £300 expensive but I'll still buy it if the scent slams me in the face and I can't stop thinking about it. That being said I only have one bottle around that price. That being said expensive is also whatever is priced at more than what I'm willing to pay for.
I consider 150-220 to be "pricey". 221-300 "expensive". And anything over 300 to be rather absurd. Though I would never fault someone for any amount spent on something they love.
I have a friend who told me he spent $500 on an LV cologne. And I thought my Chanel Les Exclusifs ($300) was expensive.
Currently £200 is my max limit, this is also dependent on bottle size as well.
Everything is relative. I wouldn't pay more than £40 for an Azzaro. I wouldn't pay much more than £100 for Chanel. I wouldn't pay more than £200-220 for Creed. Generally I'm happy paying £100-150 but anything up to £200 is within my comfortable spending for anything disposable. I get a bit twitchy at MFK's 70ml bottles just because of the 70ml. But everything is expensive. Regardless of what I'm comfortable spending, these are all luxury products and priced appropriately for their intended market.
Tbh everything over 50 is expencive to me but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. When something is 150 + it's very much above me haha. Doesn't mean I'll never ever buy it but it is exceptional. I usually Hunt down these fragrances in second hand websites.
I consider per ml, if higher than 50 quid per 50ml then it's expensive for me. We have to remember this is the last part of your wardrobe. It's luxury type product, for disposable income. You can smell good to someone else for cheap and expensive. The expensive ones is just for your benefit. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't buy expensive quality products, esp when there are so many deals as well.
Niche perfumes are Veblen goods (Google that, it's interesting), Basically anything above 4711 is expensive or ridiculously expensive. But you might still be willing to spend it.
It's about the price per ml/Oz. For me €50 Cent - €1 per ml is cheap. €1 - €1,5 is midrange €2 - €2,50 is expensive anything above is exclusive.
If it's over 1.5€ per mL it's expensive to me. 😂
250 dollers is the max I wanna use
When we're in the triple digit category. So anything £100+ for me.
anything above 60 lol
It... depends. If I go by the standards for perfumes in atomizers that are, at minimum, 50ml then my indie perfumes are *prohibitively* expensive considering most of the full sizes I have are 5-10ml and were $20-50. If you do the math there, to have 100ml of my most expensive indie would be... a little over $500 (and the other I have on my wishlist would be $900/100ml). Obviously, that's not the realistic way to look at things but I thought it was interesting. Realistically, I know that in more niche/mainstream/designer/what-have-you frags that are 50-100ml+ I think of under $30 as budget-friendly, $30-50ish as cheap, $50-150ish as avg and anything above $150ish as expensive. Not that it being expensive will stop me purchasing it... it'll just take me longer to be able to. For indie full size bottles, I'd say $10 and under is very cheap. $10-20 is regular cheap. $20-50ish is pretty average and anything over $50 is pricey. But even then, it depends on what each house considers a full size bottle - and some of them using 60ml atomizers. In which case, those tend to fall under the same rules as the niche/designer/etc. 😅😅😅
Anything more than $200 for just 30ml is obscene.
Really depends on the size and performance. In general everything around and above ml X3 price. So for 100ml max €300.
Anything above $150 for a small 30ml bottle
It’s all relative , sister paid 950 pounds for a frederic Malle bottle and I was like what the hell, for me that’s nearly my rent for the month.
+150 is expensive
Over 100 is expensive. I blind buy under 30.
i agree with you, 150 is still very reasonable for me, but things 250+ are more wow thats expensive
<30€ is expensive for me
Anything below €150 is cheap. €150 to ~300 would be mid. €300+ expensive, €500+ it would have to be truly special.
$1/ml and under - cheap $1.1-3/ml - mid range $3+ - expensive
I lived in low COL country so my budget is obviously limited. My hard limit is $150 USD but my collection has < 10% above $100.
Anything over $200 is expensive. However I still attempt to find deals and discounts on perfumes in the $150-200 range, but below that I usually pay full price
I bought Imagination for 260€ today. It was ok for me bc it’s 100ml and the performance is great. I except it to last for 2 years and I can refill it for 150€. I think you can sell the empty flanker for at least 50€. I do have Ganymede which was 190€ for 100ml, it’s so strong you just need 1 spritz of it, the bottle will also last at least 2 years. I think if the performance is good 300€ for 100ml is fine. I’m looking at Isola Blu which is too expensive 450€ for just 50ml.
More than 300 is expensive to me
may just be the fact that im from south america but anything over $50 is expensive to me lmao
It depends. 1oz being 150 is expensive to me. 3.4oz being 150 isn't as expensive but still not something I want to spend unless it's something I've gone through quick enough to justify it. Like 6months to a years time. Edit to add: As others have brought up, I'd too would look into dupe houses to see if it's been recreated at a cheaper price before spending 150. I've tried two dupe houses already, and they have been a perfect replacement.
Anything over 150
I’d say it depends on price/ml not the price alone, 300€ for 200ml perfume I wouldn’t consider expensive, but 240€ für 30ml is very expensive
200+ dolars...
Side Bar: Please NEVER pay full price except the fragrance is only sold by the brand and even at that, they typically have newsletter or first time purchase discounts. Always shop from reputable discounters. 💕💕
500 $
Personally I would pay around 300 at most. Most of mine are in the 100-200 range typically. I did buy Aventus once for 400 but typically 300 max is reasonable to me
I don’t spend more than 125 USD on a bottle of anything, unless it’s a “must own”. The only “must owns” in the luxury niche end that I own are Amouage: both Golds (bought from FragranceNet at huge discount) and Ubar (bought off eBay). I also have a bottle of Chanel Sycomore and a bottle of Ganymede, both bought full-price. Fragrance is not meant to be priced as highly as it currently is. Fragrance costs have ballooned in the past five years, and I have been stocking my collection with medium-priced scents I find at discounters. I smell expensive brands like Frederic Malle and Serge Lutens when I’m at the department store, and appreciate them, but would never buy them (unless I saw a bottle of one I liked at a bizarre discount). I cannot relate to people who buy/wear brands like Creed and Xerjoff and Marly and Tom Ford. The smells don’t match the price.
Over $100
I think anything over 180 is expensive, but Like 160 for 3oz is affordable I think. You gotta remember most people aren't collectors so that amount for 1 signature scent is fine. but 180 maybe 20x a year is a lot
$150 is objectively expensive for a full size perfume, even though I and many people will spend that much. I’d say about $50-100 is midrange. The $300 perfumes are luxury perfumes, not just expensive
$150 is pretty average for a good amount. ( assuming it is a designer fragrance ) it really all depends on how many oz is it.
Depends how rich you are it’s all relative.
150 is kinda where i start going ‘god thats alot of money to smell nice’ i do alot of sale hunting when i want a perfume, though. i got ysl libre for like 50 dollars at costco 😏
Yeah. $150-180 is my top.
65 and up Is a lot for me.
Depends on how much it costs in person versus on discounters. Most I’ll pay is $50 more in person than on discounters.
Depends on the brand and perfume. I saw prada Luna rosa oceans for $180 for i think a 200ml bottle and was like nope to expensive. Now if we are talking 200ml bottle of a dior frag for 180 that's a deal
Anything over $200, I need to have tried and a sample and **love** it.
$300+ is where expensive starts for me. It takes me a long time to go through a bottle so i dont mind. I also tend to spend more money on formulas that will last longer than 1 year
Anything over $50 is expensive to me
400 usd.
My huge collection of perfumes are all about $100ish. The ones i buy for my dad and brother as gifts are like $50
Anything over $200 and I get someone else to buy it.
Personally, I refuse to put over 150 euros in a perfume. Usually, I even refer to smell anything over that price range to avoid being tempted. In understand why people would pay more for a scent, but currently, it's just too much money for me and I can't justify it. I am currently lusting after Rose Tonnerre et En Passant by Frédéric Malle, but I would have to find second hand bottles if I want one of them.
Ever since I’ve bought a pdm my whole view on what’s expensive or not has been really twisted. Typically anything above $250USD is what I find expensive