Perfume & Incense in Mount Dora, FL

This is the part of the shop people are most surprised by. Roughly 380 lines of fragrance — mostly Arabian houses — sitting alongside the glass and the vapes. It is one of the biggest selections in Lake County and almost nobody outside Mount Dora knows it’s here.

Perfume

Lattafa, Emper, Armaf, Afnan, Maison Alhambra, Rasasi, Milestone. If those names mean something to you, you already know why they’re worth a drive. If they don’t: these are Middle Eastern and Indian houses that build on oud, amber, musk, rose and saffron, and several of them do close interpretations of very expensive European fragrances at a fraction of the price.

Eau de parfum in bottles, plus concentrated oils in the small vials — alcohol-free, applied to the skin directly, and they last considerably longer than a spray.

You can smell every one of them before you buy. That is the entire argument for buying fragrance in person, and it is not a small one — perfume behaves differently on different skin, and a description is close to useless.

Incense

Wild Berry on the stand in the middle of the floor — the tall rack of jars, usually the first thing people notice walking in. Over a hundred scents, sold by the stick so you can try one before committing to a pack.

Also cones, resin, charcoal discs and burners, plus bakhoor on the Arabian side.

Picking one

Spray it on skin, not on a card, and wait ten minutes. The opening notes of almost any fragrance are the least representative part of it. Whoever is at the counter will hand you a blotter and let you walk around with it.

Oils are stronger than they smell in the bottle. Start with less than you think.

Ask what’s new in. Fragrance is the fastest-moving shelf in the shop and the stock changes more than any other section.

Come and smell them

There is no way to do this over a website and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. The stand is near the front, the counter is behind it, and nobody will rush you.