14
Top Review
Surreal Scent Roulette - or: SOS, the medicine cabinet has fallen off the wall!
No idea. I really don’t know. How am I supposed to accurately convey this scent, these many, many scents at different stages of the fragrance evolution? I am overwhelmed.
Okay, let’s first take a look at the community’s fragrance type classification below.
This scent has received an incredible number of different opinions! Looking at the somewhat hidden radar chart, even more. And that’s pretty much how I feel about Sparkling Sand!
Sparkling Sand is like... what was it called in Game of Thrones? Shade of the Evening, the drink of the sorcerers that tastes like everything you’ve ever tasted and more. Sparkling Sand is everything and nothing at the same time. Leather? Yes and no. Wood? Yes and no. Apricot? You see where I’m going with this..?!
I’ll give it another try and describe the scent from the very beginning:
Opening: Scratchy lemon, very fresh and sour with a minimal herbal touch. It could almost have been a summer scent. Within a few minutes, the illusion shifts, it smells smokier. At the same time, it’s as if you’re in a closed room where herbal tea is being brewed. Not as if you’re smelling directly from the cup, but as if this heavy steam from the tea is in the air - probably it’s the chamomile. Later on, the fresh lemon has been processed, and there’s a bitter lemon zest in the tea, the fruit has been discarded. The scent becomes warm and heavy, I smell strong cedarwood. Since cedar can quickly smell leathery, an association with leather is also possible, but no, not authentic leather. Look, grandma has come out of the bathroom and sits down with her tea. She smells overwhelmingly of her skin cream, which is very sweet, very creamy, very powdery, and very synthetic. Like heavily perfumed chemicals. From a distance, one might recognize iris and vanilla, but only faintly. I complain about the strong scent, and she means well and sprays an air freshener. A dull cloud of "apricot" fills the room. It came from a spray bottle, what can you expect: no, that’s not an authentic apricot, it’s too dull and not zesty or fruity enough. I get a headache, what a mess! But that’s just the scent in the first 10 minutes.
The next stage of the scent becomes even more difficult. Grandma’s skin cream and the air freshener fade, they linger faintly in the air, or my nose has simply gotten used to it. It smells woody-leathery, neither of which is really recognizable as such. It would be misleading to call the scent woody; it only goes in that direction. Rather, it is dark and smoky. A green component joins in, which is equally dark. Bitter, scratchy herbs without any hint of freshness. If the herbs were something like sage or lavender, they would be barbershop-fresh and invigorating. These are dead, like weeds with dirt still clinging to them. Through the smokiness, one might also think it’s an absurd tobacco blend for grandpa’s pipe. Let’s add the remaining hints of skin cream and air freshener, more like an even more absurd mix from the shisha bar.
Later on, the herbal aspect is much more pronounced, without losing the diabetic sweetness in the background. It smells sharply medicinal. Grandpa is tasting his favorite herbal liqueur, and the one I’m talking to has an unpleasant breath of ammonium pastilles. One would claim it smells as if the well-stocked medicine cabinet had fallen off the wall and crashed into the home bar. Yuck, this is how traditional pharmacies must have smelled a few hundred years ago! In the late drydown, I perceive it as cooler and dusty. Is this the namesake sand? I don’t think so; it smells more like dusty air after drilling into a wall. In summary, the scent was very sweet for most of the time, subtly fruity, and therefore more feminine for me. But with all this fuss and a bit of everything, what does feminine even mean anymore?
And with that, we’ve really covered just about every scent and fragrance direction, everything and nothing at the same time: fruity, ashy, citrusy, leathery-woody, warm, powdery, herbal, green, vanillic, smoky, dark, fresh, heavy, tea, chamomile, spicy, bitter, medicinal, dusty, cool. What on earth is this?
Yes, this perfume is unique. One of a kind. Rare. Incomparable.
But is it good as an overall composition? For me, it’s really everything but a poem!
There are perfumes that are so bad that you can’t even call them perfume anymore. I can’t say that about Sparkling Sand; it still smells "intentional" and like perfume. In that sense: No, not a complete scent disaster, but certainly a surreal scent roulette!
Okay, let’s first take a look at the community’s fragrance type classification below.
This scent has received an incredible number of different opinions! Looking at the somewhat hidden radar chart, even more. And that’s pretty much how I feel about Sparkling Sand!
Sparkling Sand is like... what was it called in Game of Thrones? Shade of the Evening, the drink of the sorcerers that tastes like everything you’ve ever tasted and more. Sparkling Sand is everything and nothing at the same time. Leather? Yes and no. Wood? Yes and no. Apricot? You see where I’m going with this..?!
I’ll give it another try and describe the scent from the very beginning:
Opening: Scratchy lemon, very fresh and sour with a minimal herbal touch. It could almost have been a summer scent. Within a few minutes, the illusion shifts, it smells smokier. At the same time, it’s as if you’re in a closed room where herbal tea is being brewed. Not as if you’re smelling directly from the cup, but as if this heavy steam from the tea is in the air - probably it’s the chamomile. Later on, the fresh lemon has been processed, and there’s a bitter lemon zest in the tea, the fruit has been discarded. The scent becomes warm and heavy, I smell strong cedarwood. Since cedar can quickly smell leathery, an association with leather is also possible, but no, not authentic leather. Look, grandma has come out of the bathroom and sits down with her tea. She smells overwhelmingly of her skin cream, which is very sweet, very creamy, very powdery, and very synthetic. Like heavily perfumed chemicals. From a distance, one might recognize iris and vanilla, but only faintly. I complain about the strong scent, and she means well and sprays an air freshener. A dull cloud of "apricot" fills the room. It came from a spray bottle, what can you expect: no, that’s not an authentic apricot, it’s too dull and not zesty or fruity enough. I get a headache, what a mess! But that’s just the scent in the first 10 minutes.
The next stage of the scent becomes even more difficult. Grandma’s skin cream and the air freshener fade, they linger faintly in the air, or my nose has simply gotten used to it. It smells woody-leathery, neither of which is really recognizable as such. It would be misleading to call the scent woody; it only goes in that direction. Rather, it is dark and smoky. A green component joins in, which is equally dark. Bitter, scratchy herbs without any hint of freshness. If the herbs were something like sage or lavender, they would be barbershop-fresh and invigorating. These are dead, like weeds with dirt still clinging to them. Through the smokiness, one might also think it’s an absurd tobacco blend for grandpa’s pipe. Let’s add the remaining hints of skin cream and air freshener, more like an even more absurd mix from the shisha bar.
Later on, the herbal aspect is much more pronounced, without losing the diabetic sweetness in the background. It smells sharply medicinal. Grandpa is tasting his favorite herbal liqueur, and the one I’m talking to has an unpleasant breath of ammonium pastilles. One would claim it smells as if the well-stocked medicine cabinet had fallen off the wall and crashed into the home bar. Yuck, this is how traditional pharmacies must have smelled a few hundred years ago! In the late drydown, I perceive it as cooler and dusty. Is this the namesake sand? I don’t think so; it smells more like dusty air after drilling into a wall. In summary, the scent was very sweet for most of the time, subtly fruity, and therefore more feminine for me. But with all this fuss and a bit of everything, what does feminine even mean anymore?
And with that, we’ve really covered just about every scent and fragrance direction, everything and nothing at the same time: fruity, ashy, citrusy, leathery-woody, warm, powdery, herbal, green, vanillic, smoky, dark, fresh, heavy, tea, chamomile, spicy, bitter, medicinal, dusty, cool. What on earth is this?
Yes, this perfume is unique. One of a kind. Rare. Incomparable.
But is it good as an overall composition? For me, it’s really everything but a poem!
There are perfumes that are so bad that you can’t even call them perfume anymore. I can’t say that about Sparkling Sand; it still smells "intentional" and like perfume. In that sense: No, not a complete scent disaster, but certainly a surreal scent roulette!
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9 Comments
Don't get confused! Just let it be, it works like that.
Even if it has nothing to do with "sparkling sand."
Our perceptions are so different.