Aliana

There isn't much to say, but certainly longer than a short statement.

The scent is one of the worst I have ever smelled. And it's not a single ingredient that ruins everything. No. They are actually good ingredients that are poorly mixed together. At least that's my impression.
This is the third perfume from Ricarda M. that I am testing, and it's the worst on top of that. The other two were/are not my thing either, but this one I really did not like at all.
It smells stale and musty, like laundry in a basement that hangs for days but doesn't dry. I can't pick out and name anything that bothers me. Of course, about 90% of the aromas in a perfume are not disclosed, so it is absolutely possible that a single component ruins the whole thing. However, I believe it is more about the interplay.
Either way - I absolutely do not like the perfume, and I washed it off after about 15 minutes because I feared I would get a headache.

The problem was that I have a friend who gifts me the Ricarda M. perfumes. Since I didn't want to disappoint her, I didn't say anything the first and second time. Now, however, I have almost panicked that she might gradually gift me the entire range. I mustered up the courage and told her openly that the perfumes from this brand are apparently not for me, even though I really like the cosmetics and they are wonderfully compatible.
She was not thrilled. She was embarrassed and apologized several times. It became awkward, and I apologized too. It was a very apologetic afternoon :)
I returned the bottle to her, and she can send it back now - because with this company, that is possible. I really think that's great! Just like the bottle itself - the new one is really beautiful.

So much for Ricarda M. fragrances. For now, this chapter is closed.

I ordered this perfume blind.
I had read what Centifolia had written about it, and something told me - "DO IT"! I have never been able to resist that inner voice for long. I almost call it my intuition in a apologetic and justifying way, and most of the time I am right on the money. This time was no different.

How glad I am to have given in this time and now to hold this perfume in my hands!

First, the bottle! Oh, it is beautiful!
Were bottles important to me until now? I have no answer. But this one is a different story. So noble, playful. The delicate gold wire around the fragile glass bottle. The Plexiglas walls at the front and back, both on the bottle and on the cap, seem to support and protect the precious, golden core. Modern-elegant, inventive, high-quality.

My unmanicured fingers pulling the cap off feel almost like a disrespect to the little, almost bodiless luxury.

And then the first spray!
What is happening to me? Can one become so enamored with a scent that one gazes at it completely uncritically? Apparently so. I smell it, and following my breath, it slips into my soul as if I were a given for it. It’s that simple.

It must be the plum.
How could I forget how much I love plum?
The plum here is not a sluggish winter plum in cinnamon sauce, warming its wrinkled bottom by the wood fire.

Here it is summery-bright, delicate, plump, splashing in the sunny juice of a tangerine. Drops of juice sparkle on its lashes, breaking and shimmering in the light. It sinks into the midday silence, in the hum of a bee, in the enjoyment of the moment.
Then it elegantly rises from the juice bath, carefully pats itself dry, and strolls carefree to the flower bed. Without regret, it snaps off the stems of the most beautiful, lush flowers, picks a huge bouquet, and carries it away lightly. In front of its mirror, it places the flowers and blossoms in its hair - one after the other, closely together, like a wreath around its features, like a crown of ephemeral beauty. With flowers in its hair, the sweet plum admires itself in the mirror. Well done! The flowers complement its own fruity scent and give it even more presence. They do not overshadow it; they only refine it. The plum shakes its curly hair and innocently strikes a few flirtatious poses in front of the mirror. Yes, how beautiful plum can be when it knows how to present itself! Quickly, it pins a casual bun with a few pine needles, rubs some vanilla on its neck, and sticks a patchouli stem behind its ear - and voilà! Beauty in perfection!
It spins in a pirouette, almost making the flowers fly out of its hair! Everything around it is drenched in a scent that is delicate, captivating, disarming, and seductive. It laughs at its reflection, and its laughter sparkles golden and fragrant away.

Oriental Essences - Sultan de Muscat: My next supposed men's fragrance that I bought for myself. Because I find it exceptionally feminine - mine. Not sweetly feminine, not delicately feminine, but fully feminine, with spirit, character, and will.

Strangely, with this scent, I can't even say what I'm smelling. Sure, there is a fragrance pyramid and I could somehow sing it down. But that would be a lie, because I can't pick out anything that is written there. At least not at the beginning. Because at the start, I believe I'm smelling a flower that is as large as a lily and has the same juicy, fleshy texture. I think my nose would be covered in pollen if I were to stick it into this flower cup. And a new scent would present itself to me, one I had never known before.
What Whadelse89 wrote, I can understand. What he smelled, I can also smell if I imagine it firmly. If one somehow comes to carrots, one could also smell them, perhaps also tempted by the color of the perfume.
But for me, it is not carrots, but an unknown scent that is juicy, sweet, and spicy, but not floral in the conventional sense of the word. Whoever creates such a new experience from nutmeg and juniper is truly a master!
I have never smelled those famous rather stinky flowers that bloom for just one day and then fade away. But such a flower now appears in my imagination - new, exotic, juicy, spicy, sweet, unknown. And atypical. This is the beginning, which lasts about 5 minutes and confuses me, also surprises me. I am very pleased, this wins me over.

Then nuances emerge that sway me back and forth, as they remind me of certain people and situations. Normally, everything listed in the pyramid I know and could identify. But for some reason, it remains closed to me. Rather, the scent is so complex and simultaneously agile that it overwhelms me to fathom it. Everything is there, but nothing really stands out for long. There are only subtle scent wafts of the individual aromas that briefly brush through my senses, only to collapse back into themselves and trickle onto the calm surface of this fragrance. Then it tingles briefly and settles back smoothly onto my skin.

I only know - yes, I like it and yes, yes, there are days when I am just like that: bright and fragrant like flower honey, but just as viscous and dripping; and whoever touches me, it is no pleasure for them, I stick to their senses for a long time! Grinning oddly, but inscrutable and closed - that is how this scent comes towards me and that is how I am sometimes too! On such days, I also want to smell like that. Not like a meticulously carved marble statue with mirror-smooth curves, but like a rustic wooden figure from Nineveh.

And in general - the theme of the Orient comes here without the typical oriental attributes - no spices from the mortar, no oud, no amber, no roses, no resins smoldering in the bowl. None of that. An Orient like Akkad from Lubin - sacred like in ancient times, before trade, wealth, and the Middle Ages gave it the aura of 1001 Nights. This Orient has nothing lascivious, nothing physically pleasurable. It only expresses a mindset for me.
This perfume has taken a very important place in the past 2 weeks since I got it - the place for the clear nights and days when I can look far, when I am strong and willful, when I am enough for myself, when my spirit roams like a desert wind, creeping into every crack and reshaping everything within me!
Now I know the scent that belongs to it! Another tessera in the mosaic of my self!

End of the 80s and a bit later:

Self-adhesive, removable shoulder pads
Perm with grown-out roots
Golden blazer clip and stretchy sleeve cuffs
Layered skirts made of lace and rags
Over-the-knee boots with worn-out heels
Teased ponies high and to the side
Dark-lined lips and bright lipstick
Elastic dresses and skirts in neon colors
Platform shoes - of course in patent leather
Ladies' bags on golden chains
Liters of hairspray
Crispy, double-layered tracksuits as going-out outfits with high heels (couldn't fall lower!)

and

a fragrance that withstands it all!

Heliotrope + Tuberose = an unmistakable fist that crashes on the table!

Smelling and being smelled was the olfactory motto of this time.

My own mother turned away in disgust, my father had plenty of remarks ready to express his disapproval.

But: we were cool, we were unmissable, we provoked and just waited to be provoked!

The scent rushed ahead of us and announced the arrival of the girls from the ghetto.

Like a force, we hit every disco, pushing all other visitors to the edge of the dance floor and danced until it was time to head to the beach - the next day.

My big bottle of LouLou was brought to me by a friend from Cologne - and made me (along with Giorgio and two men’s fragrances from the City Men brand (I think from DM), later also Maroussia) the scent expert in the clique. I sold one spray for 5 Rothmans cigarettes - from the dark blue, wide boxes with golden filters. Or for half a bottle of white Riccadonna. Once even for a bottle of coconut beach oil. Sometimes the girls shared a spray - by rubbing their necks against each other. Sharing is what they would call it today. Back then, it was coolness for half the price. Another bottle followed, as a reserve and to solidify my status :)

The scent reminds me most of an afternoon when I was competing for the title "Miss Wet T-Shirt" along with many tourists ;)
We dipped in a swimming pool wearing monokinis and white T-shirts only up to our necks, surrounded by loud, cheerful, drunken young people. My permed hair was teased, held back with a twisted scarf, and richly perfumed with LouLou. As I strolled, dripping wet, along the pool edge, my father appeared and grabbed me by the ear. I was so perplexed that I slipped and fell on my wet bottom. Everyone laughed like crazy. My father, in his perfect shirt and blazer, a truly elegant man, looked so out of place that I thought he had gotten lost. He yanked me up by the ear, wrapped a towel around me, and dragged me by the ear almost all the way home. Without a word. That my ear almost fell off was not worth mentioning. But the embarrassment was so bad, my clique teased me for several days, and to this day we sometimes talk about it; they love to imitate how I twisted to walk sexy and how I then plopped down :D Of course, only my father's appearance prevented my certain victory ;)

At some point, when LouLou was not even completely used up, I got my first perfume from the Orient. And that was the end for LouLou and the others. I gave it away, Giorgio was already empty, Maroussia had to disappear too.
...........
Two weeks ago, my husband surprised me - he bought 170 miniatures. Blind. In the box was also LouLou, a small original from the very beginning. I applied it and for a long, very long time, scenes flashed before my inner eye.

It was a beautiful time. Not thanks to LouLou, but despite him :)

One of my oldest fragrances... how can I view and describe this familiar scent neutrally?
I’ll give it a try and apply the oil to my inner elbow. Right away, a complete impression.

The oil is light in color and light in my perception.
At first, it has a citrusy and slightly peppery aroma, and I think it could be ginger.
Also, a light, fresh smoke, like that from mastic or dammar, is briefly noticeable.
The next thing that comes to mind is tea tree oil. Very light, just on the edge, but it gives the scent a slightly herb-fresh, invigorating quality. It’s actually unlikely that tea tree oil scent is contained in a perfume.
A slight camphor association also comes to mind, but I’m more likely mistaken than I could insist on it.
As you can see - many associations, nothing precise.
Maybe I’m just unconsciously searching for what comes across as slightly scratchy, because it is definitely present.

It’s also interesting that this scent, with all its sharp brightness, has a subtle depth for me from the very beginning that I cannot fathom. Everything I associate with depth - woods or resins, seems to elude me here, but the impression is there.
A floral component makes the oil smell somewhat like soap foam, but I don’t recognize this flower (or are there several, and I can’t untangle the mix?).

And suddenly, just like with Lailati, I think of a bathroom fogged up with steam, where someone has just taken a long shower and left without ventilating. The steam is slowly cooling and condensing on the walls, the scents of various care products and fresh towels overlap, forming a clean whole that can be felt in the throat when inhaled. Maybe that’s the depth I subconsciously sense - the smell and feeling of being completely permeated by water, shower, skin, and hair oil, completely enclosed in the steam of the bathroom, like in a cocoon?

After about 30 minutes, the scent intensifies, becomes louder, and a couple of new notes are added. I believe I smell geranium leaves - the same scent I get when I cut off the faded flower heads and remove the wilted leaves from my scented geraniums. Along with these green, spicy leaves, there’s pepper again and also something else. Lemon-scented geranium or even rose. Since geraniol is a natural component of rose oil, it’s very hard for me to distinguish whether it’s rose, or geranium, or something else...

After about 1 hour, a couple of other spices mix in, I think I perceive green cardamom pods and a hint of curry (or is it cumin?), but it remains fresh and floral, only the prickly/scratchy aspect has disappeared. Instead, the green increases, no idea what exactly it is, but it’s herbaceous. And that’s how it smells until the near end.

It’s a fresh, herb-fresh, clean scent, without notable potency or spirit, but with average longevity - after about 6 hours, the scent on my arm has become quiet, and for another 2 hours, I can only sniff it very closely.

The name Best is pure unoriginality, but I don’t care much about names. What doesn’t particularly excite me is the scent. The only interesting thing about it is the guessing game around its notes; otherwise, it’s clean, fresh-herb, bright, with a hint of spice. Still, the perfume oil is not a bad purchase, but even a repeat buy.

On the side, I’ll tell you something, and not to amuse you - this oil is my foot perfume, along with a sandalwood oil and a good mood aroma roll-on. I massage it into my feet with my fragrance-free foot cream, and in between, I also dab and rub it on my feet. Since it overlaps, my feet smell permanently of perfume, even after showering. I have no idea if it works for problem feet, I do it simply because I like it and because the light tea tree oil note tricks me into thinking the oil could be nourishing for my feet. Despite all the criticisms I have/would have of it as a normal perfume, this is already the sixth or seventh bottle I have standing here.

Nothing about this oil is really expensive or high-quality. Especially not the bottle. Cracks in the screw cap are part of the package (with many oils from the company), and labels coming off in the leaking oil are a common sight right when unpacking. More than half came with broken plastic parts. At first, I still complained and returned them, but even the replacements came damaged. So I accepted it. Some opened and half-empty bottles I gave to friends who really liked the scent and still rave about it. They use the oil quite normally on their neck and décolletage.