Parfümlein

I'm sad. REALLY sad.
Nobody likes me. Nobody wants to be with me.
I feel really left out, ignored, overlooked. Like I'm air.
And yes: it hurts. After all, I'm just a kid. An AI-HIND!!!
Just eight years old. And the future already gone.
At the same time, I don't understand: why doesn't anyone like me? That other stupid Jasmine doesn't have those problems either, the beast. Yes, probably because she has friends in Shanghai. Soooo cool! Always wears red. And me? I SEE red when I think about her. She has 159 friends! And me? Just 97 want to have something to do with me.... Wahaaahaaaa.... By the way, the only really nice one is that thingy.... Wait... what's her name? Comes from Udaipur... Is definitely my big role model.
Let me get this straight. What's everyone got against me? I don't smell good, they say. HELLO???? I smell very good! Usually just a little fresh, but it passes quickly, then it's me. And only me. Me, the jasmine. The happy one. The one who's always in a good mood. In a good mood. How come nobody notices that?
Synthetic me? And how is that supposed to work, huh? Maybe I'm not directly sprung from the nearest natural oil store, but I'm also a bit more modern. And I really don't annoy anyone, I usually don't stay that long. If I visit someone, it's four or five hours at the most. That's okay, isn't it? Why do you always have to have a marathon meeting? I like to go out sometimes. So what? As long as I'm there, I'm present, anyway, not like others who do big and then shut up the whole time and take a powder as soon as they can.
If I had to put it this way, what qualities I have, I would say:
Super figure. Super friendly freshness. Super cheerful presence. Decent, but not excessive, stamina. Love tangerines. Like to wear a blossom or two in my hair. But am not that kind of girl, not that pink, not that sweet. And everything I've been told isn't true. I don't HAVE a girlfriend named Tuberosa. And I would never do anything with that patchouli, it's such a douche. And I don't have too much wood. No! At least nowhere near as much as certain other subjects whose names I won't even mention here. That's a BULLSHIT! So mean! Why don't you get to know me before you judge! Although... if you go on much longer... maybe one day I won't even be here! Maybe I'll run away! Serves you right!

As if I had guessed that a fragrance with a pseudo-fantasy name can't compete with its big brothers "Malibù - Party in the Bay" and "Leisure in Paradise" and "Deep Island"...

No, it really can't.
"Sunplosion" is for me quite subjectively: a fragrance disaster.
How often have I read on Parfumo of the evil tuberose gum and could not discover it.
How many times of fruit plörre. Sweet sugar stuff. And wondered, because I myself felt some scents quite different.

"Sunplosion", however, combines all these embarrassing characteristics. There is really nothing that could make this fragrance pleasing to me - except for the bottle and my extremely friendly Sharing organizer.
Immediately at the beginning / In the beginning / In the opening / recently also: Initial assaults me with elemental force a brutal wave of the most artificial bubble gum aromas. The whole world of HubbaBubba in one fragrance. Even my Flav Drops smell much more natural. But I suspect that fruit condoms smell exactly like that; I saw them the day before yesterday at real,- in the banana-raspberry-strawberry combination. Because the bubblegum aroma in "Sunplosion" is so completely, unreservedly artificial, there is of course something artistic about it. "Create a fragrance that smells like fruit, but in which you can't identify a single tiny little fruit" - that must have been the clearly formulated brief. And it's been done first-rate. This artificial fruit soup is a bit nauseating on the skin, mainly because it's so gummy. But there may be lovers of such scents, such as fruit farm interns, who are really sick of the healthy stuff. They might want something like this. Or people with fruit allergies. Or dieters who remember all the cream yogurts they've eaten and crave a touch of nostalgia. Cream yogurts smell a lot better, though, honestly.

Here that is: nix.
Wood aroma? Even after two hours, this is probably only perceptible to advanced fantasists. The fragrance is just artificial-artificial-fruity-elegant-sweet. That was it. Also with the commentary. (Hub)By(Bub)By!

Admittedly: The name of this fragrance raises considerable doubts about whether they're actually still quite crispy in the marketing department. "Déclaration Love" - what kind of failed bilingual drama queen is hiding behind something like that? Worse, they seem to like this neologism so much that they've named an entire line after it. Two fragrances have appeared in the series so far, and other than the unifying element of declaring love, there's little in common. "Tyrannique" in a deep red transparent bottle puts the focus on tuberose, "Coco Love" in an opaque creamy white bottle on coconut. To call a perfume "Coco Love" - that takes a lot of courage, for all the love of love and its various declarations.

BUT:
I like this scent, I'm slowly getting to know it, but I already perceive it as very pleasant, and that makes up for the strange naming. What I like so much about Coco Love: the fragrance has nothing of the Caribbean feeling, which so many coconut fragrances such as the very beloved by me "Leisure in Paradise" come up, and certainly nothing of the sugary sweetness, with which others such as "Coco Extrême" come up. Not that I don't like the Caribbean ones. I love the pina colada feel, I really like pineapple, lime and coconut in combination, even better without pineapple. But I find a fragrance that doesn't serve this cliché for once and takes on the theme of "coconut" in a new and innovative way very exciting and stimulating.

Coco Love, the coconut fragrance with the silly name, first makes you think: What am I smelling? Why do I have so little idea? Why is perfumology not taught in school, would have been a great LK?
What I perceive above all, is a quite magical, incredibly beautiful creaminess, a creamy softness that makes me immediately and without detours think of how lustful-delicious the first teaspoon of coconut cream is, how fantastically smooth it melts on the tongue, before I put the rest of the can in the Mulligatawny. Coconut is one of the types of nuts whose creamy, creamy taste I really appreciate, unlike, say, chestnut, which I can't do anything with, or even hazelnut. The smooth Coco-Love cream lays itself on the skin like a protective film and is so typically "coconut-like". For my feeling, an authentic, little artificial coco tone, although I can be wrong here, of course.

The special effect is now on the one hand, that right at the beginning quite strong woody notes accompany this creaminess. "Coco Love" is to coconut fragrances what "Mitsio Vanille" by Les Soeurs de Noé is to vanilla fragrances: part of the sweetness is deleted here without replacement and replaced by a woody note. That will be the cypriol, nagarmotha or also Cyprus grass, which is extracted in India and apparently gives fragrances a special durability. I didn't know that, but it's exactly right! I kept a trace of two sprays of Coco Love in my nose throughout the long afternoon. A soft woody creamy breeze blew around me at every turn. These woody tones combined with the creamy coconut scent evoke associations of a piece of fresh coconut flesh with the inner, dark brown husk still attached. If you've ever eaten this thin inner skin beneath the thick husk while DIY-opening-coconuts-with-an-axe, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about: juicy, creamy flesh with woody accompanying notes. That's Coco Love.

The other nice effect is precisely that the scent is only slightly sweet, at least to my subjective, gourmand-spoiled (or jaded?) perfume nose. The associations that develop based on the pyramid - cream and vanilla, how yummy! - are not confirmed at all when wearing the fragrance: only a very light, pleasant sweetness, which supports the specific coconut scent, blows around me, but I really feel it as very restrained, as if only the natural residual sweetness of the coconut is included.

Of course, that would almost be too good to be true. I'm not quite sure what else I detect besides wood and minimal sweetness. I'm sure there will be critics who find the scent over-sugared or artificial, as always. Personally, I find it strange, not very sweet, and beautiful. This is how I like to smell. The creamy note is a bit reminiscent of coconut sunscreen as well, but I see more of the edible coconut cream based on the scent experience in front of me. Yes, to be precise: I see myself under palm trees. Kissed by lips that just ate coconut meat. Yes, I am a drama queen. That's why Coco Love suits me so well

A lemon has moved into the apartment of my nephew and his not-wife. It lives with them now. A small round lemon, at least for the moment, which in the next few months will at least grow to the size of a honeydew melon, hopefully not reach the weight of a watermelon, and then eventually shed its lemon identity as a good-smelling, soft, delicate little something and become a real Londoner or a real Londoner (?). Until then, it's still a few months away. The little lemon will have four citizenships: her father's German and English, and her mother's American and Caribbean. That's how blatant it is with the British. Lemons, once they make it to the surface of the fruit salad, get ALL the citizenships available right away. And because the lemon dad works for a posh law firm and the lemon mum has just done her weather doctor, they will then give up their cool lemon dorm in the hipest part of town (ok, I'm not mentioning that one for anonymity's sake, but what do you think is the hipest in London? ) and move to Kensington. Because Kensington is the lemon hothouse of London, so to speak: there are little gardens and garden fences, Laura Ashley sofas and nannies. It's just beautiful here. But not in a silly, stuffy way. It's fine, English. It's a place where you can make a home for the little fruit. And if you're ever house-hunting in Kensington, you should definitely do it now, in winter: That's when you can wear Penhaligon's Kensington Amber. This dream of cinnamon and amber. This wonderfully soft, unobtrusive, understated semi-gourmand. Semi, because:

Kensington Amber is not a true gourmand, heaven forbid. Upon spraying on, a light citrusy radiant cloud of cinnamon escapes the gorgeous bottle, which after a few minutes is soft and round, not sharp and pungent, spicy but gentle, and hardly sweet at all. No rice pudding associations, no roasted almonds. This is pure spice, the same as used in Indian curry, and no one thinks of rice pudding. It's a magical cinnamon, I love this prelude that lulls me into a spicy winter dream. Perfectly suited to the chill of this time of year, I use it first thing in the morning - just so I have the opportunity to enjoy its fantastic progression throughout the day. Because the radiant cinnamon opens up to other notes after a while: the resinous, soft, woody, and sweet ones.

The finest suits the cinnamon is the amber note caused by the labdanum, and surely that is why the fragrance bears this name: This Amberton namely carries the cinnamon in the truest sense of the word; he joins after about twenty minutes and then no longer leaves the cinnamon out of sight. It takes the childishness out of the cinnamon, and what the cinnamon pleasantly lacked in gourmand sweetness is now added by a light base sweetness of vanilla and tonka - you can already feel it: not a flat sugar sweetness, but a deep, many-facetted spicy sweetness. Everything fits together perfectly. It's simply an extraordinary and yet, I must clearly emphasize, very, very understated and unobtrusive fragrance: British understatement incarnate. And come to think of it, the minimal tangy-citrusy opening is caused by a cute little bergamot, I think to myself that this little citrus would probably get along perfectly with my nephew's little lemon. I'm seriously considering having Penhaligon's send Kensington Amber directly to them as a gift. That would close the Kensington lemon circle beautifully, wouldn't it?

What perfumers and perfumas in general have in common is a diffuse feeling of "I could use that" or at least "I could actually use that" or, very ascetically, "I wouldn't push it off the edge of the bed". A not inconsiderable amount of precious free time goes by for perfume enthusiasts with Parfumo, and there, in turn, many spend a not inconsiderable amount of that time buying and reselling and lucky swapping perfume. As long as one still has all the cups in the cupboard, one usually has the unpleasant awareness that one's own collection is quite large after all, the reassuring feeling that other people's are even worse (for this, of course, one looks very carefully at the comparative collections, because unfortunately there are always many sensible people who have eleven flacons less, which is very embarrassing for oneself), and the urgent need to at least keep an eye on the size of one's own collection. Still, there's no way you'd want to give up either trying fragrances or at least getting them in bottlings for that purpose. If you were to seriously consider this, you might as well unsubscribe from Parfumo - this hobby thrives on testing countless fragrances, and somehow you have to get your hands on the stuff. So, even if the exchange of 2 ml AFs is the first choice among experts, sometimes you have no choice but to buy. Not for nothing is perfume a luxury good and the problems one has with it are, much to the moral chagrin of most here, by definition only luxury problems.
This, in turn, is the reason for the lists I also very much favor: the lists for the four seasons (and the search for the perfume that combines the four seasons like a pizza ai quattro stagioni), for the different occasions, for the different scents. All of these forms of organization testify to the need to indulge in the illusion that one can artificially reduce a collection that has grown by always keeping in mind only a morsel, a forty-seventh of the actual total collection. The absolute front-runner is therefore the top ten of the individual perfume collection: you try to imagine what it would be like if you had to spend a summer in Newfoundland all alone with a few raspberries and blueberries. You get swept up in a vision of a harrowing house fire that only a few bottles would survive, or, better yet, you hallucinate a jealousy drama and hear the corrections officer whisper, "You're only allowed three fragrances in custody, decide quickly or that's it."
I know you know what I mean. The many different coping strategies of a very morally unpleasant feeling of excess speak volumes of this. Lying to yourself about lists never hurt anyone else. And mostly, a pleasant side effect, increase one's plan godchildren count at the end of a buying perfumo year. I could ramble on forever, but:

Shall I finally get to the subject of this comment? Yes, I shall. So: IF I were only allowed to keep three fragrances in this lifetime. IF I had to choose. I know it for a fact: Khaltat Night would be there. I'd know I had it all in one scent: a top-notch gourmand. The best cherry in a fragrance in the world. An oriental that most others can't compete with. A feeling of velvety tenderness that few scents can match. And cinnamon in abundance. And complete freedom from any obtrusiveness, nothing distracting, nothing annoying. Not too much sweetness. Not too much spice. Not too much powder. Not too much nothing. I would have that one perfect scent and add to it something floral, fresh, because Khaltat Night doesn't offer that, and my signature scent. And I would be happy and satisfied forever. And if my bottle of Khaltat Night was empty, I would spare no effort to have it shipped to me again from the faraway Orient, because that way I would get a little adventure for free. Because the question of whether the order has arrived at Attar Collection is exciting in itself. It's even more exciting to see how and when it will get across the ocean. Khaltat Night is the egg-laying lizard among perfumes and yet so unmistakable. So soft, so balanced, so velvety. The development is fabulous: from the initial impression of a warm, full, sunlit cinnamon, which in no way comes across as spiky or spicy as it actually does everywhere else, a cherry slowly and deliberately peels out, as if you were trying to slowly strip the cinnamon all around from the cherry it was dusted on with a cake fork. The cherry is juicy, and it's velvety-marzipan, smooth, supple, and soft. It's always hard to deliver valid synaesthetic descriptions, but there's no other way to put it: Khaltat Night smells like a marzipan cherry made of purple velvet would feel. This wonderful impression of perfection then slowly fades over many hours into a warm, rich base, which in turn is a wonderful blend of earthy and vanilla and resinous tones. That Khaltat is really called "blends" amazes me. It's as prosaic as it is accurate. Most of all, it sounds like: 1001 Nights.