CB I Hate Perfume

I've sniffed the whole line on scent strips, tried a liquid sample of the Narcissus and have a bottle of The Fir Tree.

The CB scent I know best is The Fir Tree, and I do love it. It is exactly as the description indicates: fir trees with a bit of snow and just a hint of earth. I think of it as my It's a Charlie Brown Christmas scent (every time I wear this I hear the "Christmas tiiiiiime is hereagaaaain...." song from the animated movie) - quite lovely, just like having a fir in your living room and inhaling deeply.

These scents do not have a great deal of sillage, staying very close to the skin. The Fir Tree lasts for a couple of hours on me, gradually fading and melting into the skin. I think one of these would make a fantastic addition to a fragrance wardrobe - it really is a way to create a wearable scent-experience around yourself that is meant not to exude a perfumed aura as much as create a scentspace that allows you to live or relive a kind of experience - much more longlasting than most of the Demeters, though lasting power is not the strong suit of the CB line as far as I can tell. Again, my experience with the liquids is limited to The Fir Tree.

I love the creativity that went into this line, and will be purchasing a bottle of Mr. Hulot's Holiday and probably the Summer Kitchen scent. The website seems to indicate that there will be a sample program coming soon, so you can probably wait to test these in liquid form (my scent strips were from scent-systems in the UK) rather soon - ?

Ah - for what it's worth, I only tested my vial of Narcissus once but it was WAY too acridly floral for my taste - something about the flower and the acquatic notes came off as very unpleasantly high-pitched and I only made it through 10 minutes before washing it off. But I can see others loving it and it's probably worth a retest...

Hope that helps!,
Carla

Hard to get an accurate sense of how this would be on the skin from just the scent strip, but I really liked it -- think the opening of Tea for Two with a peek of wood and without as much smokiness (or the honey). It was nice...but it didn't jump out at me conceptually the way some others did (Fir Tree [ok, maybe not as conceptually daring but I have a weakness for fir trees], Summer Kitchen & Hulot were much more original). Pleasant. Not a stand-out.

What I'd do:

To Buy:
-You're really in the market for a tea scent, you want to add a tea fragrance to your collection.
-You have a personal weakness for Russian Caravan Tea, good associations, etc. The best summer of your life was spent sipping Russian Caravan tea in a cottage with Ms. so-and-so. That kind of thing.

Not to Buy:
-You're curious about the CB line and want to purchase one of them (this is not the stand-out; I'd go with one of the others I mentioned)
-Tea scents that are basically linear bore you

I love reading Ovid (so much fun), so I had high hopes for the Narcissus (the first in a line that's supposed to be Metamorphoses-themed) - I hope there are more along these lines to come!

Hope this helps - I'm about to go get me some of Mr. Hulot so I can report in detail about that one later,

Be well,
Carla

Carla! I just wanted to say I don't even know this line, but Brava for such a terrific write-up!

Thanks, Mark! You're a sweetie.
My Hulot won't be here for a week or so but do PM me if you'd like to experiment with this line!

Carla

That's a funny name for a perfume! [smiley=lolk.gif]

Funny you should mention CB I-H-P, just went to his website the other day and think he's a very interesting person and perfumer.

Thanks for the great write-up Carla. I'm hoping to try some of these fragrances at some point soon. You sold me on The Fir Tree- especially if it catches that cold, snow covered feel. Wow!