Breath of God (2007)
by B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful

A hearty meal of a fragrance that ensures the turning of heads and sentimental sniffs of clothing you leave behind.

Smokey and deeply fulfilling at the base whilst remaining tantilisingly fresh and spicy at the top.

Buy it, wear it and turn yourself on to a truly outstanding world of scent.

21st January, 2012.

When I first sniffed this in the Lush department I said "no" thank you! but my fingertips where already infected with this juice, because it is kind of resinous and oily. After a few minutes I could not stop rubbing my fingers on the tip of my nose, it was amazing, I had never experienced anything like it before. I could not help to think I had finally found a scent that described me soooo well, that fit my personalilty so good. As my relationship with it developed, I found that this was a huge compliment to myself because it is a "Grand" fragrance. In the beginning it is a serious mess, there is no way of describing any one note, they all clashed with each other in a rumble but immediately it begins to develop and the notes then start to come away from each other and can then be identify, mind you, don't think for one second that rumble had nothing to do with this delicious explosion, on the contrary this clash had everything to do with it. to say that the staying power is poor is to insult this lovely juice but if you learn to appreciate it from the moment it starts to develop to end you'll understand that it is meant to be this way and only last this long. like a great love affair!

12nd January, 2012.

Did this wonderful stuff actually once come in the interesting bottle we see at the top of the page ? It would seem so, along with the other fragrances in the other interesting bottles shown.

The ones that remain have all been transferred to Lush's dreadfully generic containers, but Breath of God is still what it is ; a controversial fragrance that one either loves or hates.

Count me among those who love it.

It takes all kinds, and all noses I guess.

3rd December, 2011.

Breath of God blends Lush’s previous scents, Exhale and Inhale, and as those two left me with contrary impressions, I was curious to experience the combination. Exhale is an austere blend of smoky leather, vetiver, and musk, in a style reminiscent of Chanel’s Sycomore or L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Dzongkha. I enjoy it enough to keep a bottle. Inhale is a sweet artificial fruit fragrance with chemical overtones that are more unpleasant than interesting. I find it at once crass and incomplete. Their unlikely alliance in Breath of God is touted as one of the oddest structures in contemporary fragrance, but as much as I enjoy them together, Inhale and Exhale combined yield what seems to me a more conventional scent than either alone.

To wit, Inhale’s citrus and amber atop Exhale’s vetiver and woods amount to a sweet, resinous oriental fragrance with antecedents as far back as Shalimar and Habanita. It’s good, but nowhere as peculiar as either of it’s components. On the plus side, what smelled truncated and grating in Inhale finds needed support in Exhale’s base notes. Yet if the result is much more gratifying than Inhale alone, when wearing Breath of God I miss the dramatically gaunt profile and stark chiaroscuro that make Exhale so compelling. Forced to choose between these three offerings, I’d take Exhale, but as it’s no longer being offered I the US, I’ll settle for endorsing Breath of God.

23rd August, 2011.

Well it started off like Juniper schnapps, and then turned into a smoky violet fruit salad with wood in it. I read a review that said "a lawn mower with freshly mown grass on it in a cool garage," and I can see that. This is weird and I like it although my husband does not particularly. Indeed some people find it vile, but I own the 30ml vial and do wear it. Take a sample out side the wall of scent of Lush, and see for yourself.

28th July, 2011. (Last Edited: 12nd September, 2011.)

Review of the re-issue in 2010 by Gorilla Perfume, previously B Never Too Busy Be Beautiful:

Breaths come in pairs, except for two times in our lives – the beginning and the end. Happily, Simon Constantine here keeps them coupled and Breath of God is a living, breathing, monument of perfumery, alternating with the unpredictable rhythms of respiration between Inhale's fruity florals and Exhale's smoky woods. Sometimes the transitions are imperceptible; lemon bleeds into cedar, watermelon fuses with vetiver, grapefruit mates with cade oil. Other times fantastic collisions ensue: it can be simultaneously cool as a cucumber and feverishly incensed; watermelon soppy yet charcoal parched. And if this is the Breath of God he must've just brushed his teeth, for the fragrance is mentholated throughout with a mint note that delicately straddles all of these surreal, hybridized sensations.

True, it could be awkward finding oneself wearing Breath of God in a queue at the post office, or stuck in an elevator. This stuff spurns the trivial and anonymous with its unrestrained imagination – but this is likewise the wellspring of its strange genius.

19th July, 2011.