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Notes01/20/2021
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...Bring it back, bring it back, don't take it away from me because you don't know, what it means to me... (Queen)
The older you get, the more past you automatically accumulate. This may sound mundane and often the past is also mundane, but since it is one's own past, it still touches. Some fragrances remind us of moments and phases of life. Depending on what those events and phases of life are, the fragrance then has a good or not so good chance with us.
I received Bryant Park by KingLui from the niche swap game. I had blindly bid on it, even though it was by no means certain that I would like it. After all, among the Bonds, there are wonderful ones for me as well as heinous ones.
This one was a hundred percent hit. For me, the expression still seems too weak: in Bryant Park, my past, my life so far, is condensed. I'm tempted to say: Bryant Park - this IS me.
As I took the first spray, it popped into my head: I know that one! I've even had that one before! I've even had that one for a long time! And then I pondered for days what scent Bryant Park reminded me of, because I definitely knew I'd never had that scent in my possession. Yet, it continued to feel like I had worn it regularly before.
It wasn't until yesterday, when I suddenly knew it reminded me of Tom Ford's White Patchouli, that the aha moment came like a series of toppling dominoes: Bryant Park is a scent condensation of my past from puberty to the present, and each domino a remembered scene.
Let me start with the first domino: Patchouli. The patchouli in my nose is exactly the patchouli from White Patchouli by Tom Ford. I really have this fragrance, but not for very long. What fascinates me about this patchouli is that on the scale of earthiness, it's right at the heavenly end: glistening bright. I know glistening bright patchouli from other fragrances I have, like Outageously Vibrant, and I love it there too, but nowhere is it as bright and also natural-feeling at the same time as it is in Tom Ford and now Bryant Park. So with this bright patchouli, I associate a lot of memories from the recent past, having not long discovered the Tom Ford with the perfect patchouli. Patchouli I've known, a little more earthy, but also since puberty. Many dominoes so...
In another of my comments, the one on Rosa Nectar by Dua Fragrances, I had already described J's tea shop in Hamburg. Bryant Park also reminds me of this shop and its atmosphere as well as Rosa Nectar. The notes of the two fragrances are very similar: patchouli, raspberry, rose and amber are what they have in common. I had written about the soft, natural and lush rose used in rose teas in my tea shop comment. And it's the same in Bryant Park: it reminds me of all the different occasions I bought and drank this tea with my first steady boyfriend, of our later apartment together, of college days. I still buy that tea, now at a different store, to this day. I am still friends with that boyfriend to this day, though we each have different partners now.
What fond memories!
In the Pink Nectar comment, I wrote that the musk, which reminded me of my Wild-Love-Nerval oil of yore, would have eventually become too much for me because it was too overpowering and repressive. The same note of wild-love musk is also found in Bryant Park, but much more subtly. Here it is obviously hidden under "amber". Wild-Love Musk, in retrospect, was my first signature scent. Memories go back to school days, classrooms, break halls, classmates, big breaks, forbidden leaving the school grounds for the ice cream parlor....
Raspberry. I have to say that what is meant to be raspberry here does not appear to be raspberry to my nose. I know this from some other scents as well. Fortunately, however, I also find the scent used here to be naturally fruity and not as pungently artificial as I've smelled elsewhere. The bright and slightly tart fruity note gives the scent a slight edge, which is also really needed to keep it from being too pleasing and thus perhaps boring - to others. In my nose, of course, my condensed past with its rattling dominoes is never boring.
The raspberry does the part that the jasmine does in Tom Ford's White Patchouli: the wake-up shaker. I have to say that the raspberry in Bryant Park manages this far more gently than the jasmine in White Patchouli. It's about the difference between an alarm clock with a beep and an alarm clock with a favorite song.
As we all know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and so I'd like to add one more note here: Soap.
I love soap. And of course, I've known soap my whole life, too. In Bryant Park, it's mild and scented in a pleasant way. I like to be freshly washed and then put on J.'s tea shop with rose tea, glistening, bright patchouli, some edgy, unraspberry raspberries and a hint of Wild Love.
This is me. The way I am. The way I've always been.
The final domino: Bryant Park. I was once on a student exchange in New York. I remember Central Park. Was I in Bryant Park then, too? I don't know. It was all a lot back then and I don't remember every name of the places I went. And already more dominoes are falling...I imagine I was there....
I'm going to keep Bryant Park. In fact, I did something I almost never do: I ordered a bunker bottle.
"Love of my Life, don't leave me...."
I received Bryant Park by KingLui from the niche swap game. I had blindly bid on it, even though it was by no means certain that I would like it. After all, among the Bonds, there are wonderful ones for me as well as heinous ones.
This one was a hundred percent hit. For me, the expression still seems too weak: in Bryant Park, my past, my life so far, is condensed. I'm tempted to say: Bryant Park - this IS me.
As I took the first spray, it popped into my head: I know that one! I've even had that one before! I've even had that one for a long time! And then I pondered for days what scent Bryant Park reminded me of, because I definitely knew I'd never had that scent in my possession. Yet, it continued to feel like I had worn it regularly before.
It wasn't until yesterday, when I suddenly knew it reminded me of Tom Ford's White Patchouli, that the aha moment came like a series of toppling dominoes: Bryant Park is a scent condensation of my past from puberty to the present, and each domino a remembered scene.
Let me start with the first domino: Patchouli. The patchouli in my nose is exactly the patchouli from White Patchouli by Tom Ford. I really have this fragrance, but not for very long. What fascinates me about this patchouli is that on the scale of earthiness, it's right at the heavenly end: glistening bright. I know glistening bright patchouli from other fragrances I have, like Outageously Vibrant, and I love it there too, but nowhere is it as bright and also natural-feeling at the same time as it is in Tom Ford and now Bryant Park. So with this bright patchouli, I associate a lot of memories from the recent past, having not long discovered the Tom Ford with the perfect patchouli. Patchouli I've known, a little more earthy, but also since puberty. Many dominoes so...
In another of my comments, the one on Rosa Nectar by Dua Fragrances, I had already described J's tea shop in Hamburg. Bryant Park also reminds me of this shop and its atmosphere as well as Rosa Nectar. The notes of the two fragrances are very similar: patchouli, raspberry, rose and amber are what they have in common. I had written about the soft, natural and lush rose used in rose teas in my tea shop comment. And it's the same in Bryant Park: it reminds me of all the different occasions I bought and drank this tea with my first steady boyfriend, of our later apartment together, of college days. I still buy that tea, now at a different store, to this day. I am still friends with that boyfriend to this day, though we each have different partners now.
What fond memories!
In the Pink Nectar comment, I wrote that the musk, which reminded me of my Wild-Love-Nerval oil of yore, would have eventually become too much for me because it was too overpowering and repressive. The same note of wild-love musk is also found in Bryant Park, but much more subtly. Here it is obviously hidden under "amber". Wild-Love Musk, in retrospect, was my first signature scent. Memories go back to school days, classrooms, break halls, classmates, big breaks, forbidden leaving the school grounds for the ice cream parlor....
Raspberry. I have to say that what is meant to be raspberry here does not appear to be raspberry to my nose. I know this from some other scents as well. Fortunately, however, I also find the scent used here to be naturally fruity and not as pungently artificial as I've smelled elsewhere. The bright and slightly tart fruity note gives the scent a slight edge, which is also really needed to keep it from being too pleasing and thus perhaps boring - to others. In my nose, of course, my condensed past with its rattling dominoes is never boring.
The raspberry does the part that the jasmine does in Tom Ford's White Patchouli: the wake-up shaker. I have to say that the raspberry in Bryant Park manages this far more gently than the jasmine in White Patchouli. It's about the difference between an alarm clock with a beep and an alarm clock with a favorite song.
As we all know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and so I'd like to add one more note here: Soap.
I love soap. And of course, I've known soap my whole life, too. In Bryant Park, it's mild and scented in a pleasant way. I like to be freshly washed and then put on J.'s tea shop with rose tea, glistening, bright patchouli, some edgy, unraspberry raspberries and a hint of Wild Love.
This is me. The way I am. The way I've always been.
The final domino: Bryant Park. I was once on a student exchange in New York. I remember Central Park. Was I in Bryant Park then, too? I don't know. It was all a lot back then and I don't remember every name of the places I went. And already more dominoes are falling...I imagine I was there....
I'm going to keep Bryant Park. In fact, I did something I almost never do: I ordered a bunker bottle.
"Love of my Life, don't leave me...."
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