Stealing Again: Clue Perfumery With The Candlestick, The Point, and Tom Ford Lost Cherry

Okay, so yeah. I am once again riding the coattails of my pals here on the Posse. But can you blame me? As much as you are incited to try after reading their takes on things, think of poor me. I have to come up with content here and it’s frankly easier to armchair it and order samples sent after they point the way than to go all the way to ScentBar (through the snowdrifts, uphill each way, while being chased by wild dogs and maybe cats.)

So there you are. Portia wrote about With the Candlestick and off to Surrender to Chance I went. I also added in one other in the line, as well as a Tom Ford that featured cherry, just because.

With the Candlestick. Something about the Blood of Christ on a hot iron? Now I was raised (barely) Catholic, albeit in the post Vatican II, nun-with-a-guitar no Latin mass era. So a lot of the references just don’t resonate with me. I don’t find this as weird as Portia did. I get a little smack of Cherry Heering in the opening, then the scent somewhat like a dusty candle being lit, then a really good simulacrum of a candle being extinguished. I can definitely see the ex-cathedra portion of the program, and I applaud it. I am just not in a place where I would need a full bottle of it.

The Point. Well, you have to hand it to them for naming it that, since you know that some wag out there will be writing “there isn’t one” or something like that. The notes (from The Clue website) are listed as “Jasmine Tea, Crushed Porcelain, Honey-Soaked Patchouli, Ocean Water, Ambergris, Wet Sand” which is fairly eye-rolling for something which is simply a lovely and quite wearable slightly salty, slightly sweet scent that really does smell like delicious jasmine tea. I love jasmine tea and neer thought of it as something that I would be drinking in a beach chair on a summer day, say at the Hotel Coronado, but to each their own hyperbole.

Lost Cherry I threw into the mix because A) StC only had the two clues and 2) I vaguely thought I would include something cherry, maybe comparing the other to SL Rahat Loukoum, which I happen to own. Well, Candlestick’s cherry note is fairly fleeting and the Tom Ford has it front and center. Patty gave it a deep-dive in 2020 and I don’t have much to add. It meanders between maraschino and Luden’s Lozenges with a few stops at Cavendish pipe tobacco. Leaning more at the latter as is wears. I actually prefer the oddness of the SL (alert the media! whoda thunk it?) with the touch of celery and almond and the cherry that goes from actual cherry to cherry confection. The TF version seems more like a stunt than a scent, something that I suppose could be written about the Clue scents, except somehow coming from them it doesn’t bug me. Much.

With the Candlestick and The Point are available for $140 for 30ML at LuckyScent or the Clue website. Tom Ford Lost Cherry can be had for as little as $85 for a beensy 10ML, more (lots more) for larger sizes, at his website. My samples were from Surrender to Chance.

Photos: My iPhone, Pexels, and Wikimedia Commons

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