Fragrance is a go-to gift at Christmas, but it can be risky. Choosing the perfect scent for someone isn’t easy and you could end up wasting your time and money if you get it wrong.

And this year, it’s been made even more difficult by COVID-19 restrictions, closing non-essential shops and banning perfume sampling.

But don’t fret. To help you be scent-savvy this festive gifting season, the fragrance experts at Lifestyle Packaging have been busy analysing the designer perfumes residents in over 120 UK towns and cities have been Googling this year to find the nation’s favourites.

Yves Saint Laurent Libre beats Gucci Bamboo and the iconic Chanel No.5 to be crowned the most-loved designer perfume among UK women. Over half of all the locations analysed in the study Googled the YSL scent more than any other:

Libre, meaning “free” in French, was only released by YSL in 2019, but it’s fast become a scent staple with its sweet yet sultry notes. Surprisingly, Libre has overtaken Chanel No.5 as UK women’s favourite perfume with 9,929 online searches every month.

In second place is Gucci Bamboo with 7,740 Googles a month. Gucci Bamboo is a woody floral fragrance with an eye-catching art-deco style glass bottle that nods to the fashion house’s signature design. With over 80 fragrances under its name, it’s no surprise to see a Gucci scent in the top five.

Chanel No.5, created by Coco Chanel herself in the 1920s, is the third most searched-for female fragrance in the UK, with an average monthly search volume of 7,610. A long reigning favourite among women worldwide, Chanel No.5 is very much a timeless, legendary fragrance. But with a price tag of over £100 for 100ml, this Eau de Parfum is one of the most expensive on the shelves.

Marc Jacobs Decadence (6,619) and Dior Miss Dior (6,049) make up the rest of the top five favourite female fragrances in the UK.

In the men’s perfume category, the woody earthy scent of Dior Sauvage is the undisputed favourite across the country, ranking first in all 121 UK towns an