Whether a post-lockdown habit or simply a matter of convenience, like the rest of the world, you’ve probably started buying the majority of your beauty merchandise online, inspired by recommendations from your favourite influencers, content creators, editors, and industry experts.
Nine times out of ten, it’s failsafe, and you end up with a lipstick or moisturiser that you adore. But when it comes to shopping online for perfume, things can be a little more hit and miss. We’ve all been there, you’ve read the scent notes, trawled through reviews, and watched countless TikToks — enough to convince you to purchase, and leaving you confident that you’ve found your new signature scent. Until—wait for it—you actually smell it. If you, like so many of us, have experienced that remorseful “What the hell?” moment post-perfume purchase, then you’ve come to the right place.
Even though we do our best to never lead you astray when it comes to describing fragrance here on Who What Wear UK, perfume is probably the most personal and polarising product you can buy within the beauty arena. You might hate what your best friend loves, and something that smells good on your sister might make you smell like a rotting corpse. That’s not me being dramatic—that’s me telling you what I smell like when wearing some of my friends’ favourites.
Since we’re not psychic, we can’t always recommend your most perfect perfume, but what we can do is point you in the direction of some of our all-time favourite brands that have a ridiculously impressive number of delicious, best-smelling perfumes, and tell you to buy their discovery sets. From there, you can test drive an array of options and land on a personal favourite. Oh, and we’d also highly recommend this strategy if you’re planning on gifting perfume, since the one thing harder than buying fragrance for yourself is buying fragrance for someone else…
Sound like a plan? Great, because 17 of the best perfume discovery sets on the market (plus our top scent from each) are just below. Keep scrolling!