As I mentioned earlier (dis) Bath & Body Works were having a “Buy 2, Get 3 Free” promo going on, at the beginning of August.
Between the “Buy 3, Get 3 Free” promo over at Boots (dis) and the “Buy 2, Get 3 Free” promo over at B&BW, I wasn’t sure what was going on (is this even Kuwait?), but I strongly approved! Since I’d just recently decluttered my bathroom (dis), I figured I had room for some new clutter (logic!)
Also at Mishref Fair Grounds, while paying for Black Feather Eau de Parfum (haulage here) by the local brand Al Mudaires, the guy manning the cash register spritzed Al Jalila Eau de Parfum by the brand Al Battash Luxury on the fragrance-tester (strip of paper) and handed it to me in the hopes of enticing me into purchasing it. Spoiler Alert: it worked.
In case you were wondering, many of the booths at Mishref Fair Grounds didn’t have their own cash register (for whatever reason), which was why certain cash registers were designated for use with several booths (very chaotic ergo very Kuwaity).
While paying for my Al Mudaires purchase at one of those cash registers, I ended up actually liking the scent on the fragrance-tester that the guy had given me! The bottle was gaudy AF, but the scent was nice and fruity! The gentleman further enticed me, by saying it had been reduced from KD20+ to now only KD5! I’ve never heard of Al Battash Luxury before either, but since the Perfume was so inexpensive, I figured why not? He even tossed in a handful of perfume samples!
Nordstrom was having yet another promo and just like it says on the sticker, with every $135 Fragrance Purchase (which converts to around KD 40) you qualified for the pack of fragrance samples (as shown)! Most of them were tiny spray samples, but there were several adorable mini perfume bottles and even an actual candle! Not only that, but they were all either from designer or niche brands! A lot of them were relatively new fragrances too! Best of all, included was a sample of Delina by Parfums de Marly (which I’ve been dying to try)!!!!
This particular promo could not have come at a better time, especially since as I’ve already demonstrated (haulage here), I was more than willing to spend my money on samples. Funny how only a few months prior, I would’ve barely glanced at this promo, but now that I’m obsessed with perfumes, I was giddy with excitement, practically salivating, at the prospect of playing around with all those perfume samples!
I was at Sephora shopping for a birthday present for someone who was extremely difficult to shop for. While there, I hunted down a few of the Perfumes on my list that I’ve been dying to sniff (mostly Lancome). On a whim, I decided to check out some of the “private” and “exclusive” luxury fragrances (Tom Ford and Armani Prive and Maison Lancome and Geurlain and so on) and accidentally stumbled upon Kilian! I don’t know if an invisibility spell was cast on the display, but somehow I’ve never ever noticed it before! As per usual, there were no sales assistants designated to any of the displays and customers were just left to their own devices. I searched for Back to Black (because frag-heads on YouTube rave about it all the time) but couldn’t find it. I did however find my new favorite Perfume of life, but more on that towards the end of this post…
So my obsession with Perfumes was at its peak. However, I didn’t want to purchase them locally because they’d be more expensive and I wouldn’t receive anything else with them (as a gift with purchase or loyalty points or whatever else) no matter how extortionate the price was, and and I wouldn’t know if I was getting an older batch (potentially expired) and worst of all, I wouldn’t know if they were fake or not, but mostly I was anxious about purchasing locally because of this (Perfume Fail). If I bought them online, they’d be new, less expensive and more often than not, I’d receive a gift with purchase or samples or something. However, I wouldn’t be able to give them a sniff beforehand, and based on previous experience, I’m not really the luckiest when it comes to blind-buys.
Even though I’d love to, I couldn’t sign up for those monthly subscription boxes (such as Scentbird and the like) because the cost of shipping to Kuwait via Aramex, would add up to something ridiculous. In comes MyPerfumeSamples.com which was exactly what it sounded like! You pick out the scents that you wanted and the sizes that you preferred (with the pricing varying from scent to scent) and they’d ship them over. Up on the website, each scent had the fragrance notes and the year it was released and so on, listed next to it. I purchased a handful, in varied sizes.
– Sample Vials: smallest size and cheapest, comes with a dip-stick applicator (I only got 1)
– Pocket Sprays: bit bigger, comes with a spray mechanism and a cap (I got 5)
– Travel Sprays: substantially larger, comes with a spray mechanism and a cap, wider spread (I purchased 6 but only 5 arrived)
Each sample came in a plastic sachet of it’s own, with the name of the scent printed on the actual sample (so handy!) and they were all packed together in a bubble-wrapped package within a package. Since looking at plain samples can get boring, I decided to add photos of the actual perfume bottles as well. Now on to the Perfumes (samples) that I’d ordered…
Wakanda Forever
… or at least, that’s what comes to mind whenever I see the panther on the perfume bottle lol
