Let''s feel the base

Afrika Olifant opened on my skin with a very sweet feminine balsamic rich incense, animalic shoe leather, oud, bitter myrrh, nothing much in the way of wood notes and floral. And musk.

The perfume spread rapidly throughout the house as I blithely gave myself four or five tiny sprays from a 2ml tester. My skin appeared lightly perfumed but the house obviously reeked as my son came downstairs to see what I was doing and put his acting skills to full use to describe how chokingly strong and acrid he found the scent whilst I, after a brief couple of minutes where it smelt to me very powerful, could smell barely anything. By the half an hour mark the perfume began to ramp up; and ramp up; and ramp up; and ramp up until I felt quite faint. It was not so much a strong smell as a strong overwhelming presence.

Four really soapy hot washes later and still I radiated (some sort of artificial cedar/sandalwood scent. And musk).

An hour later I felt driven to take a full shower and hair wash having first massaged copious amounts of a fatty macadamia nut oil into my skin to dissolve some of the aroma molecules, then into a clean set of clothes. Still my skin was strongly fragranced. My neighbour took a step back from me and wrinkled her nose.

It was all too much for me but in the spirit of giving it a fair go I hung up a clean cotton vest with a tiny tiny spray of perfume to see how I got on with that. Two weeks later and said vest was still going strong.

Afrika Olifant is tricksey; a close sniff of the vest gives me a powerful super sweet almost balsamic animalic musk. A second sniff I can barely smell anything, a third and I can smell nothing at all. Leave it a few minutes and there is that super strong sweet musk.

A.O. is one of the most pervasive perfumes I have ever tried as it spreads rapidly, hangs in the air for days indoors, trails, and has massive presence without necessarily registering as a very strong smell due to tricksey behaviour as exhibited by my little vest test . I wore the vest yesterday and was treated to strong intermittent wafts of a very sweet musk all day.

So I am kinda on the fence about this one; I like the smell but find it too badly behaved to be a wearable perfume. My experience is that on first application it is super strong and choc full of basenote musks but within a couple of minutes tops I am used to the smell so can hardly smell it at all but it is there, radiating, spreading, sucker punching anyone walking past with its strength.

Conclusion? this is me, cast away all on my little Jack Jones for giving myself a heafty spray of Afrika Olifant