Whips and Roses Kerosene 2012

John Pegg, the perfumer of Kerosene, has a huge fan club, and the hype which precedes his perfumes naturally sets up expectations. He has been hailed as some sort of Wunderkind self-taught perfumer who began working out of his garage. I believe that when he first got started, this was an edgy, cool and exceptional thing to do. These days, not so much so. Today, "self-taught" perfumers are sporing like mushrooms, as though to prove that anyone can mix essential and fragrance oils together. And of course they can: there's certainly no law against it!

WHIPS AND ROSES to my nose is closer to THORNS AND HYACINTH. The opening smells decidedly of tea rose without the petals, as though the "rose stems"--listed thus among the notes--were thrown into a blender and pureed, the petals having been reserved perhaps for the production of an independent batch of rose water or soap.

As this perfume dries down, it smacks more and more of hyacinth and less and less of even the green part of roses. Moreover, the expansive hyacinth-like note (which may be mimicked in perfumery through the use of the very same molecules used to produce the scent of rose stems, for all I know!) mutes all of the other alleged notes of the composition.

Not a rose perfume, not a leather perfume. There is a slight powdery wood in here somewhere, but overall I find WHIPS AND ROSES to be a rather cold and sterile, muted-floral green.