I care about perfume. During lectures, I usually spend about half the time taking notes, and the other half browsing the Diptyque website. When in the midst of an essay crisis, instead of taking a coffee break or going for a run to reconnect with nature, I usually like to walk over to the Grand Arcade and haunt the perfume counters spraying samples on my wrists. The point I’m trying to make is that I really like smelling good, and I think most people do too.

For some reason, however, people don’t seem to think about fragrance the way they do about fashion. How come people will happily spend hours shopping for a May Ball dress or drop half their student loan on Vinted, but won’t even bother to pick out a signature scent? There are plenty of interesting, fashionable people in Cambridge – so why does everyone smell so boring?

“How you smell matters far more to people than how you dress or look”

In my opinion, people need to think about perfume the same way they think about clothes: as a style choice. How you dress is a physical reflection of your identity; perfume, too, allows you to project a specific persona to the world around you. Given the close associations of scent, emotion and memory, this is arguably much more relevant for fragrance. (There’s a reason you probably think Chanel No. 5 smells like your grandma!) The brain remembers olfactory stimuli far more intensely than visual or aural ones. Essentially, how you smell matters far more to people than how you dress or look; having a signature scent can give people a way to remember you, and give yourself a way to remember this specific time in your life – being an overworked Cambridge student in the mid 2020s.

“If you want to not smell like everyone else, you need to branch out”

The problem with using perfume as an expression of identity is that mainstream perfumes are usually designed to be inoffensive; they’re meant to smell good to the average person, and won’t have any ‘weird’ or typically unappealing notes in them. For example, a generic fruity rose or gourmand vanilla is what every perfume company in the world is making right now. They’re nice, because they’re designed to be, but they’re also boring, because they’re designed to be. It’s the fragrance equivalent of going out wearing jeans and a white top – classic, but uninteresting. If you want to not smell like everyone else, you need to branch out beyond whatever your favourite Instagram influencer is wearing at the moment.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily apply to more niche perfume houses - you may have heard of Toskovat’s ‘Inexcusable Evil’, which notoriously smells like blood, iodine, and concrete to evoke the smell of destruction, or Etat Libre d’Orange’s ‘Secretions Magnifiques’, which is intended to recall a genuinely upsetting range of bodily fluids. Realistically, though, airport duty-frees and shopping centres won’t carry fragrances like these; most of what you’ll find will be by big designers, like Mugler, Chanel, YSL, Tom Ford or Gucci, who are looking to maximise profit and make fragrances that will sell to as many people as possible.

“Perfume allows you to accessorise without changing anything about how you actually look”

Now, I’m not telling you that you should go out and buy a perfume that smells like the apocalypse or drop a small fortune on a niche scent which nobody else can afford to smell of. What I am saying is that it’s actually very easy to smell interesting (and pleasant) without breaking the bank, and that perfume can elevate your style in a way that normal accessorising can’t. For a cost-effective scent routine, you can consider layering body sprays with your more expensive scents, or looking for dupes of pricier fragrances by the same perfumer.

Perfume creates atmosphere – there’s a reason that aquatic and floral scents are so popular in spring and summer, and why warm, powdery gourmands are so popular in winter. The right fragrance can intensify the effect of an outfit and add an extra dimension to the mood your clothing creates; a harsh, conceptual fragrance with high sillage would complement a harsher, edgier style or makeup look, while wearing the same perfume with a pared-down outfit can add a certain invisible complexity to your style. At the same time, there is a place for the popular perfumes you’re likely to find on the shelf – something more inoffensive and simple, like a woody, gourmand vanilla – can soften the vibe of what you’re wearing and make a harsher look feel more approachable. Perfume allows you to accessorise without changing anything about how you actually look.

Ultimately, you have options when it comes to perfume – so there really is no excuse for smelling boring.