Review: Al-Araaf
Oddly enough, I don't have a dry lotus root and lilies icon, so I'll make do with a blue lotus for now, for
Al-Araaf
Description cadged from another review: Honeyed lilies, dry lotus root and fae flowers.
I got a little prezzie! Yay! I think!
First try:
Folks have been recommending honey scents to me, and I've heard wonderful things about Al-Araaf. Sampling it, though, I was surprised thaton the first sniff, wet, dry, and hours laterit was a uniform, generic perfume much like anything handed out on a department-store sniff card. Even with the scents I absolutely don't like (yes, you, De Sade), none of them were so uninteresting. I seriously considered just passing this along to somebody else on the forum.
Second try, a few days later:
In the vial: Honey and a hint of vanilla.
Wet: I'm wary of vanilla, but this is a boozy vanilla extract I can really get behind. I can't get enough of boozy scentsmy favourite part of drinking is being surrounded by the aroma of a really good, complex wine or liqueur.
Oops?: The description says nothing about vanilla. Where am I getting vanilla from?
Dry: The generic "I am perfume!" smell still hovers at the top, but beneath it is a creamy honey/vanilla mix. Weirdly, the perfumey smell is strong on my left wrist, and the honey/vanilla is more prominent on my right wrist.
Throw: I've had it on for about 6 hours, and all the while I've been sitting here at work I've been catching whiffs of this remarkable scent. It has not altered in any way except to get a bit fainter. It's a little dessert-y, like a nouvelle-cuisine confection of hand-milled ice cream, vanilla beans, and flan, under a delicate webwork of spun honey rising like a golden net above a white china plate. A small crystal glass of honey liqueur, something lighter and brighter than the sort of mead I would usually order, has no doubt been set beside the plate. The waiters here are very attentive.
Overall: It's a fascinating blend, distractingly delicious, and yet I'm not sure it's the "me" I want to project. But I'd wish for a big bottle of this just to be able to scent a bathing pool with it and soak in a bath of floating lotus flowers while Egyptian handmaidens tend me.
Al-Araaf
Description cadged from another review: Honeyed lilies, dry lotus root and fae flowers.
I got a little prezzie! Yay! I think!
First try:
Folks have been recommending honey scents to me, and I've heard wonderful things about Al-Araaf. Sampling it, though, I was surprised thaton the first sniff, wet, dry, and hours laterit was a uniform, generic perfume much like anything handed out on a department-store sniff card. Even with the scents I absolutely don't like (yes, you, De Sade), none of them were so uninteresting. I seriously considered just passing this along to somebody else on the forum.
Second try, a few days later:
In the vial: Honey and a hint of vanilla.
Wet: I'm wary of vanilla, but this is a boozy vanilla extract I can really get behind. I can't get enough of boozy scentsmy favourite part of drinking is being surrounded by the aroma of a really good, complex wine or liqueur.
Oops?: The description says nothing about vanilla. Where am I getting vanilla from?
Dry: The generic "I am perfume!" smell still hovers at the top, but beneath it is a creamy honey/vanilla mix. Weirdly, the perfumey smell is strong on my left wrist, and the honey/vanilla is more prominent on my right wrist.
Throw: I've had it on for about 6 hours, and all the while I've been sitting here at work I've been catching whiffs of this remarkable scent. It has not altered in any way except to get a bit fainter. It's a little dessert-y, like a nouvelle-cuisine confection of hand-milled ice cream, vanilla beans, and flan, under a delicate webwork of spun honey rising like a golden net above a white china plate. A small crystal glass of honey liqueur, something lighter and brighter than the sort of mead I would usually order, has no doubt been set beside the plate. The waiters here are very attentive.
Overall: It's a fascinating blend, distractingly delicious, and yet I'm not sure it's the "me" I want to project. But I'd wish for a big bottle of this just to be able to scent a bathing pool with it and soak in a bath of floating lotus flowers while Egyptian handmaidens tend me.