SOTD: biehl parfumkunstwerke hb01

I may have found my orange blossom.

I've compared orange blossom to a continuous soundtrack of Shirley Temple laughing--delightful for about fifteen seconds, and then I want to run away, holding my ears. Or in the case of orange blossom, my nose.

But hb01 may be the exception. It's lower pitched than most orange blossom fragrances, tangy without being shrill, creamy shifting to powdery rather than transparent. There's a vaguely foody element that's probably the fruit and vanilla, but I don't actually perceive any fruit.

The notes list does sound pretty good for my nose:

orange flower, black currant, peach, green leaves, bergamot, rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, iris, tuberose, ylang, vanilla, cedar wood, sandalwood, musk

If a fragrance must have fruit, black currant and peach are some of the best fruits to have. Vanilla and cedar and sandalwood seem good for countering shrill flowers. The bergamot and "green leaves" could add that tangy, green edge. And all those other flowers are presumably crowding around the orange blossom, distracting it out of its annoying ways.

So, it's good. And it's feminine, terribly feminine, in a grown-up way--while it's perfectly respectable and wouldn't seem improper on a teenager, it would nevertheless seem odd, as if that teenager were wearing a Balenciaga suit. It wants me to dress and groom to live up to it, and I suspect that it's less flexible on that issue than sweet tolerant Jasmine White Moss.

The only flaw is the drydown. Not that I don't like the drydown--I love it. It's a beautiful creamy remnant of the vanilla and sandalwood and the mellowest parts of the flowers. But it's just a little too close to the drydown of Serge Lutens Un Lys, already in my collection, so I may conclude that it's redundant.

But it is so very lovely that I may, instead, conclude that I don't care.

I forgot the Review Roundup! PereDePierre and Basenotes and Fragrantica and surely there must be more?

SOTD: biehl parfumkunstwerke al01

So who is this company? What have they got against capital letters? What does that long word mean? I've wondered this for a while, but never got around to reading the Luckyscent profile page, much less researching any further. The notes list for biehl parfumkunstwerke's al01 finally dragged me out of my apathy--while I'm dubious about the fruity notes, the presence of galbanum, bergamot, ylang ylang, sandalwood, and oakmoss, plus Luckyscent's assurance that it qualifies as a chypre, made it a scent that I wanted to try.

So I read the profile, and it failed to answer my questions about the capital letters. And Babelfish failed me on the long word. So, on to the perfume.

Which was fine. Just fine. Not cloying, not dull, not eager to please, not over-weird, not conventional, not a single bad thing. But, sadly, while there was nothing wrong with it, there was also not a lot of excitement. I think that I'd agree with the chypre designation, yes, but it's one without much bite. Many of the reviews on Luckyscent complained that it smells like an old lady scent, which I, of course, considered to be a plus. But it's not old lady enough. I was underwhelmed.

However, the problem may be seasonal. What I find vaguely sweet and with no bite now may be crisp, cool magic in the summer. I will try it again.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and Fragrantica and the gloss.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.