Gardenia, Again | Perfume Posse
First off a bit if news: Last week I wrote about Sarah Horowitz’ new scent Super Bloom and hoped she would add it to her line for keeps. Well, looks like she did! Great news!
Well having tried one of Neela Vermeire’s creations I shuffled off to Surrender to Chance to try more. I only found one, and being loathe to just content myself with a single (and one could argue, having the attention span of a fruit fly) I added a couple more. So it’s Gardenia day here at the Posse. Just call me Joel Cairo..
Neela Vermeire Bombay Bling is much more than just gardenia- as a matter of fact gardenia doesn’t even make an appearance until midway through the development. It opens bright with fruits that are grounded by spices: they list mango, lychee, blackcurrant, cardamom, and cumin and as hard as it is to get one’s mind around that combo it’s even kind of harder to admit how well it works. I’ve been convinced for years that mango = monster and lychee should be left in the syrup (except at dinner at a retro Chinese restaurant) but I have to write that I really liked it. The white flowers come in at the mid with the patchouli base but this never becomes one of those dreaded fruitcholi things that were so pervasive a decade or so ago. Like a Bollywood musical, it’s bright, a little strange, and ultimately a lot of fun. StC is out of samples of this, but LuckyScent sells them for $6. 60ML is $260 also at the NV site.
Flora by Gucci Gorgeous Gardenia is a little bit if a let-down after the technicolor dance of Bombay Bling. It’s also a fruity-floral, opening with pear and red berries, gardenia and frangipani in the middle, and patch in the base. It’s perfectly nice. Completely inoffensive. If you’d told me it was released in 1912 rather than 2012 I would totally believe it. It still wouldn’t make me buy a full bottle, but.. Well, a full bottle this can be had for $50 at Walmart (as of this writing) so you could do a lot worse..
Caswell Massey NYBG Gardenia is, conversely, a lot more in-your-face that the Gucci and even a bit more than Bombay Bling (at least as far as the gardenia.) NYBG is for New York Botanical Garden, which is where the blooms that inspire this scent come from. And this is all-gardenia-all-the-time. Sparkling with bright greens and citrus and slightly woody, it’s a spring garden in a bottle. Joel Cairo would have loved it. I do to. 7.5ML is $30 and 60ML is $125 at Caswell Massey.
Have you tried any of these? Are you a gardenia fan? Recommendations? Let us know in the comments.
Images: My iPhone, Pexels, Wikimedia Commons, and YouTube. My samples are from Surrender to Chance
Related