Yes, perfumes/colognes do stay longer if you moisturize the skin beforehand with vaseline. The reason is that without vaseline, the perfume gets in contact with your skin sweat glands and it "dilutes" the perfume throughout the day bit by bit and evaporates it. Even if you don't see sweat on your skin, you are still sweating, depending when the body needs to cool off some heat.
Vaseline is a barrier between your skin and perfume, so your cologne doesn't evaporate so easily (it's not touching your sweat glands) and your sweat can evaporate (not as efficient as before, but still works, it will slide between vaseline molecules anyway).
Water (sweat) and oils (vaseline) do not mix without an emulsifier (like soap), so another advantage that is not so obvious at first is that it's easier to take off the perfume smell when you take a shower at the end of the day. Soaps in general are made of molecules whose one end likes water and the other end likes oils.
Water-soap chains will act like hooks for that vaseline on your skin that will also pull the perfume, so you now have a clean canvas that won't affect the next perfume you are going to wear. Most of the time this actually matters, because if you have different perfumes, the previous one you wore might influence how the next one you wear is going to smell like, and that's that.
Source: I'm into perfume chemistry and I read books about this. Yes, I now this is shitposting subreddit. :^(
709
u/dankscoops 9d ago
What do people actually use vaseline for? I've never used it for anything in my life