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Sherapop
Top Review
8
Perfect for women who wear purple houndstooth boiled wool suits and pink hats
Bond no 9 CENTRAL PARK WEST is a *very* strong floral perfume. That's right: perfume, not eau de toilette or eau de parfum. So that's the first important point. I have worn this creation now about four times but have barely made any inroads at all into my purse spray. I'm not complaining, mind you. In an age of dilute juice with cologne longevity being fobbed off as eau de parfum, Bond no 9 is providing lots of big sillage and excellent longevity.
These are only welcome, however, in the case of CENTRAL PARK WEST, if you happen to appreciate Big Fat Floral Fragrances. This is not a joke. If you have any issue with white flowers or big sillage, you'll want to stay very far away. You'd be much better off with your genteel Jo Malones and L'Artisan Parfumeurs, all traces of which evaporate within the course of two hours (at least on my skin...).
I initially did not like this perfume. It seemed like a product of Lego perfumery--perhaps a mixture of SAKS FOR HER and HARRODS ROSE. The flowers here are so strong individually: gardenia and narcissus loom very large, but there's also jasmine and ylang. Not for the faint-hearted. This almost has a 1980s vibe, in fact.
CENTRAL PARK WEST is about as far from CENTRAL PARK as a composition could possibly be, but when I look at the bottle in which CENTRAL PARK WEST is housed, it all begins to make sense. Doesn't that purple houndstooth smack of middle-aged women of leisure sporting St. John or Chanel suits? Think about it. And then there's the pink hat, which goes perfectly as a topper to those boiled wool jackets.
Now that I've figured out how strong this perfume is, I am more favorably disposed toward it. But it is very floral and there is a kind of yellowish powdery feeling, imparted perhaps by the narcissus. I love narcissus, but here it is really ramped up by the gardenia to an almost megaphonic level.
This creation is a part of a recent cluster of überfloral perfumes launched by Bond no 9, and it fits in well with I LOVE NY FOR EARTH DAY, which, against my expectations, is a big powdery tuberose perfume (how many guys bought that one, thinking that it would be something along the lines of CENTRAL PARK? I wonder...). SAG HARBOR, too, is a part of this bunch, packing a mighty punch of peony.
At this stage, I think that it's safe to say that I'm still somewhat ambivalent about CENTRAL PARK WEST. The more I think about it, there is almost a Giorgio-esque quality to this bouquet of superstrong flowers--although I do find that they smell natural here.
I'll try CENTRAL PARK WEST again in the fall or wintertime...
