Asphaltblume

Another blind buy, this time I was seduced by reviews speaking of hazelnut. A quick application, and yes, the nuts are there from the start, but make no mistake, this is not a gourmand fragrance!

The hazelnut is not roasted and not sweet, it's certainly no nougat, it's just nuts fresh from the shrub, still soft and moist and maybe even a bit green. Hazelnut forms the base to a clean, floral-fruity and a bit bland fragrance that is spiced up by very noticeable chilli. The chilli bites in the nose a bit and that for quite long.

The juice has potential, though. I soon notice plums and roses, but the black currant that is listed for the top note doesn't come out at all. Not now, not later either. The plum, indecisive at first, becomes plummier with time, including detours into stewed plums and plum butter. Almondblossom and lily-of-the-valley are too shy to come out as well; I smell lilac instead. Maybe lily-of-the-valley and almondblossom combined smells like lilac? Rose is still present as well.
The woody base shows up reluctantly and stays in the background. I know sandalwood, but I have no idea of the scent of mahogany. To my relief Escada S is not a musky fragrance.
Sadly there are episodes inbetween where I find S unpleasant: The sandalwood is unpleasantly scratchy for a time, maybe the chilli has a pod in it again.
Later on the fragrance turned unpleasantly synthetic: The lilac smells like a cheap drugstore room freshener, the sandalwood smells cheap and the hazelnut artificial. This doesn't hold on for long, luckily, and then the fragrance is a pleasure again.

Escada S's drydown I find utterly charming, a delicate, soft, slightly powdery rose is spacing out. Wood and hazelnut are now only a warm presence in the background. If there is musk in it, it is subordinated and serves to support or round out other scents: I can't detect it at all. The drydown reminds me of a sweet baby powder I know from the past, but I can't put a brand name to it. More likely Bebe than Penaten, I'd say.

My guess is that spring or summer are the best times for this fragrance. Not because it is particularly fresh or cool, but the fruity notes, the lilac and chilli are better suited to warmer days. I have worn and liked it in winter as well, though, and was complimented on it (which is unusual in Berlin and in my social environment).

Escada S is no typical Escada fragrance as it's not a sugary sweet fruit cocktail but quite wilful and comparatively acerbic. No, not acerbic but rather a bit headstrong and feisty and not particularly sweet.

Obsession is a real blast, no doubt about that. Intensive, unmistakable, loud. And beautiful, too.
On my skin it develops as a mixture of musk, spices, amber and musk that is vibrantly erotic. Did I mention musk? And spices?
Obsession is obviously no current fragrance but a child of its time - and even then, back in the 80s it was a loud and unmistakable fragrance. And immensely popular.
Insofar it is dated, more retro than classic and it can certainly feel fusty, regardless of its vibrant eroticity: It depends entirely of its wearer's bearing which way it turns out.

Because Obsession is so immensely potent and projecting I strongly recommend to use it sparingly. It's supposed to be breathtaking, yes - but not suffocating in the way that requires an emergency doctor.
This might sound negative but I don't mean it that way! Applied carefully and delicately on the right person it's a truly wonderful fragrance!

"My Queen" didn't make it easy for me. I bought it blind, driven by the tempting reviews on the German parfumo site and because I like the flanker "My Queen Light Mist" I bought earlier.
But the first spray was a disappointment as I could smell nothing of the promised joy of a fluffy gourmand fragrance on my skin. Almonds or marzipan? Negative.

I smelled a lot of pencilly cedarwood and a scratchy shrubby chaos of green scents and a disorientated violet. It needed about half an hour to sort out into fragrancy.
By now I believe my nose had to learn this fragrance, because nowadays the contrariness lasts only a couple of minutes before reaching the comfort zone.

The first thing I smell now after spraying is still cedar and an acidic tart green woody note like newly crushed branches and shrubs. This is a mutuality of "My Queen" and its flanker "My Queen Light Mist" which I also own and love and have reviewed as well. Both of them play on the violet note, but it is more pronounced here.
The tart shrubby note is soon smoothed over with warm and floral hues, and now is the only moment I would call gourmand: A breath of caramel and marzipan uniting with powderysweet violet and heliotrope.
The sweetness is mostly the delicately spicy sweetness of amber and it quickly shuts out caramel and and marzipan. This is a queen to kiss but not to lick. Violet and heliotrope are accompanied by rather shy orange blossoms and especially by iris.

Iris and amber gang up to retrieve the cedar that has been softened in the meantime by a very gentle patchouli and equally gentle vetiver. These two are weaving a dark warmth into the fragrance and underline the base note's powdery wood note. Above floats a warm, soft and slightly nostalgic heart made of violet, heliotrope and orange blossom. Other white flowers no more than weave a delicate veil in the background. I get a hint of tuberose, maybe an idea of jasmin, of rose and freesia, but truly only as a delicate veil of airy and elegant florality.

In the base note "My Queen" looses some of its florality to a delicately spicy powder note. The slightly cherrylike, woody hay and vanilla scent of heliotrope is replaced by real vanilla which stays in the background ans serves to give the sweetly spicy and woody powder base a soft and cuddly roundness.

This spicy and woody dry sweetness reminds me a little of the base of some fragrances by Sophia Grojsman, for instance "Sotto Voce", "Sun Moon Stars" or even the brash and loud "Exçla-ma'tion". Of their base only, mind.
And then it also reminds me of the scent that hangs in the air of the musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. Had they sold it in the museum's shop I'd have bought it, even if it had come in the form of a potpourri, and I detest potpourris.
"My Queen" has become my favourite fragrance for autumn and winter. It is a rather quiet scent, softly powdery, warm and mildly spicy and woody. A bit nostalgic but not old-fashioned.
I am my Queen's loyal subject...

This was another blind buy - I recalled vaguely that back when they were new I quite liked the Les Belles de Ricci fragrances, but not enough to buy one. I also liked the reviews I found on the web for this one. And the weird flacons, half cat half turd but colourful and with a coronet...
Well, but there was somerthing I overlooked when I shopped this blindly: The smallprint on the covering box said "recharge vaporisateur"... so when I returned home with my loot and opened the box I thought indignantly: Scandal! Fraud! this is a fake!", when what I lifted from its casing was no bright blue turd with crown, but a naked glass bottle with just an ugly little plastic sticker telling of its content. But no, there is "Nina Ricci" coined into the bottom of it. It's supposed to be like that, I hadn't read the smallprint.

So, on to the contents. The atomizer is great, an even, rich and very fine cloud of scent settles on my underarm and reeked of booze. Hootch.
After that had evaporated I could smell citric notes and the pencilly scent of cedarwood. This might only be good enough to eat for compulsive gnawers of pencils. Nothing sweet, creamy, almondy here. The prelude is not even really juicy. Sour fruit and pencil shavings, ain't that great.
But then a sweet redolence is blazing a trail to my expectant nose! Peach, sweet and velvety and with a hint of hydrogen cyanide in its pit. Prunus persica. And it brought kinfolk along - Prunus dulcis and Prunus avium, almond and cherry. The slightly bitter gean or wild cherry, though.

Now this is nice, marzipan with the related stone fruits. Sweet, juicy, delicious. Of course there is a vein of vanilla running through it as well, only I tend to mix it in with the marzipan.
After that there isn't much more to come. The marzipan scent becomes more pronounced and then just coasts along until it fades away. It takes it sweet time for that, still projecting after 8 hours, after 12 it's detectable only from up close.

This is a rather simple but really friendly gourmand fragrance. Peachy :-)

I had read all those enthusiastic reviews of this fragrance on the web, so I had to test it as well. To cut it short: I wanted to run away from my own wrist as it smelled strongly and persistently of charred plastic and extremely artificial vanilla flavouring.
Nothing of warm and cuddly for me, instead I run the risk of someone smelling cable fire and calling the fire brigade.
It takes ages, hours anyway, until Casmir has faded almost completely in fact, for it to smell in any way appealing to me. Appealing if you like joss sticks that is.
They are really good joss sticks, too, but I'd much prefer them without the vanillaed cable fire as a first course. And I'd like them a tad more over the odour detection threshold, please.