Reviews of Tea for Two (2000)
by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Gourmand for a tea scent. Smoky sweet Lapsang Souchong tea with a dense slab of moist gingerbread leaning against the cup, inhaling the vapors of it all. It smells entirely pleasant but it's not something I'd really want to wear. It is a bit straightforward and lacking the complexity that turns good fragrances into wardrobe staples, yet the simplicity is what makes this a cozy and comfortable scent. It requires no dissection or analysis, it simply cradles your sense of smell. Ideal for cooler weather.

Neutral but leaning toward a thumbs up.

Smoky lapsang souchong and a burning roll up cigarette, with hints of vanilla and amber in the background. Really liked the opening but got bored quickly.

Does smell a lot like tea -- milky and very sweet tea, at that. But I find I don't really want to smell this much like tea, so can't enjoy it as a perfume. Moreover, many L'Artisan perfumes seem to have some element in the base that refuses to blend with my skin, so that the dry-downs never become the sweet skin scents I love in my favorite perfumes. This one just sits there on my skin smelling like tea, tea, tea.

Phew! What a gourmand scent this is! If it were food, I would eat it but alas it is a fragrance and I think it is simply too overpowering and too gourmand-ish for a fragrance. It certainly is inappropriate in the hot and humid conditions of Singapore where I live.

I have to give props to its uniqueness though.

I am an avid tea lover, have teas from the world over, this however dois not tickle my 'taste' buds. It definitely has an aura of nice quality Lapsang Souchong, but the smoky quality is sometimes so overpowering it is disreptive to the overall impression; as if I had enjoyed a cup of tea in a burning tea house, not my favorite way to enjoy a cup of tea;).

Ginger bread and smoky tea, with milk and honey. Sounds great - doesn't smell so great. I'm an avid tea drinker, with a cupboard full of organic teas from all around the world; yet Tea for Two doesn't do much for me. It's a little too sweet on the honey, and I don't enjoy walking around smelling like ginger bread cookies either. If you've never smelled Lapsang Souchong tea (like in T42), I might help you guess how T42 smells by telling you that T42 is reminiscent of a very sweet Chai Latte with honey.

Although the tea note is nice, it goes off into the background pretty fast as the honey and ginger bread notes take over into the dry-down, ironically making me lose my appetite. If you love tea, you should try this, but don't bother if you don't like lots of honey in your black tea.

6/10

The first 15-20 minutes are a very accurate olfactory representation of loose roll-up tobacco (specifically: Golden Virginia, which is slightly honeyed).

It then dries to more of a gingery/sweet/perfume scent, which is very pleasant.

However, I find the roll-up tobacco element interesting and unsettling at the same time, so I have to say that Tea for Two is not "my cup of tea". (Haha).

An astoundingly good recreation of smoky, spiced tea. This was designed to smell like tea and it absolutely delivers in that regard. I guess this could be considered the British version of Mugler's Pure Coffee. It also has surprisingly good longevity. It's really a lovely scent.

But...

Do you really want to walk around smelling like a fresh cup of tea? I'm not so sure I do. I feel as though the standard reaction people would give you is not "oh, you smell nice", but rather "who's making tea?" This could smell amazing on the right person, but I think it would be better off as a scent for the room (L'Artisan actually makes something close to this as a candle/room scent called The Et Pain D'Epices).

I really really wanted to love this, as I, like the heroine of a Barbara Pym novel, believe that no problem life cannot be solved with hot milky drinks. Namely, tea! I favor the Yorkshire Gold with a good splash of whole milk, but I also love chai, green tea with honey, Laspsang Suchon, Oolong, you name it -- I love tea. And I would love to have a good tea scent be my "signature." Tommy Girl is more fruit and flower than tea to me but still very good. As I said I thought this would be better, but I just didn't care for it much. It is quite strong and pipe tobacco/smoky in the beginning, and after a while it turns into a soapy smell, like the little strong-smelling soaps you find in good hotel rooms. Something like that and quite harsh to my nose. However, I may try it again and let it dry down more to see. Hopefully, more perfumers will try to get tea right. Serge Lutens 5 O'Clock Au Gingembre is sort of tea with gingerbread-ish and nicer than this, I think. Still, not negative, just neutral now.

As others have noted, this is a remarkably accurate rendering of Lapsang suochong tea. Unfortunately for me, Lapsang suochong (along with Vietnamese lotus tea, which tastes like postage stamp glue) is one of the rare tea varieties that I don't care for that much. I'm still waiting for the perfect recreation of a great Earl Gray (please PM me if you know of one!).

It takes a couple of hours for the lapsang to settle down enough for this to become enjoyable to my nose. The base is quite nice, a bit like Burberry London for men but richer, smokier, and less synthetic. If I could just get the base I'd probably buy a bottle of this, but at this point I don't think it's worth enduring the opening for. This is one of those fragrances, though, that I can imagine myself changing my opinion about over the course of a few years.

First off, I am a tea fanatic. I drink a lot of it, and I order the fancy imported stuff online. So naturally I love the smell of this fragrance. I would rarely want to smell like it though. I would never wear it to work or even out of the house. This would be a good fragrance for a nice lazy Sunday at home with a warm sweater on, a fire going, a comfortable chair, and a nice book. Sideways thumb because the longevity is horrible on me. Seriously, I just pour it on and in 30 minutes it is mostly gone. As nice as it smells, I can't recommend a fragrance with such poor longevity.