DorothyGrace

The bottle is quite chunky and large for a 15 ml perfume. It is a metal cage with a tubular shaped glass vessel inside with a nice glass dipping stick.

Of course I choose this one because of the purple bottle, and the pyramid of notes looked interesting.

This perfume reminds me of two others that I didn't really get along with. It's giving me a sense of a mixture of Wish by Chopard (which on me developed sweet, sweet, sweet, toffee like vanilla and a little stale) and Bakhour by Al Rehab (which developed a strident pith and rind fruityness and was astonishingly strong).

The fruits all come together in the beginning to give me a sugary pineapple (I know, not listed as a note) and after about 20 minutes I get a tinned peaches wiffly waffling underneath. I can't myself pull out individual citrus fruits or apple as there is a lot of vanillic amber from the get go.

I don't get much in the way of anything that reminds me of flowers although there is something that reminds me of Freesias but the vanillic amber really starts to swamp everything by the half hour mark.

Rather quickly this beds down into a super sweet, strong, musky, vanillic amber and underneath that lot I can't really discern any woody notes.

Overall I am getting a sweet, sweet, musky, fruity vanillic amber.

I actually do like it. It doesn't smell milky or dirty on my skin like the Wish did and isn't so sweet. It doesn't have the stridency that the Bakhour developed on me. It isn't leaving much of a trail, and isn't projecting much.

I wasn't expecting such a sweet base heavy perfume because there was such a nice list of flowers for the middle notes. Not what I was expecting but nice none the less.

Very interesting note pyramid.

I was looking for a violet scent to replace my old Yardley April Violets which I find not long lasting enough. The new Yardley I have not tried.

My criteria was non-skanky and a fresh out of the bath powdery cleanness. I have found that as I have aged my skin chemistry amps up the skanky notes making them unpleasant to my nose (either that or my sense of smell has changed a bit).

I saw this beautiful bottle and find one can't go far wrong in choosing a perfume by it's packaging (ha ha, only joking, I've had a number of disasters using that methodology).

The overall effect I get from this perfume is of a light sherbety fruity floral, with some soft honey, and musk. On me it has a shampoo like quality about it with barely any powder, and only the merest touch of vanilla after a couple of hours by which time it has thoroughly bedded into the skin.

Only occasionally does it waft something that is recognisably violet, more often I am reminded of a sherbety jasmine, and at the beginning of the wear there is a rather nice green note. Nothing reminded me of rose although I have a rose in the garden that smells of apricot so maybe a fruity rose.

All in all I really like this one. It isn't too linear, has a bright quality about it, stays fresh smelling on my skin, leaves a small trail, doesn't project far, and lasts for hours. My skin next day still had a decent amount of perfume.

I've a feeling that this will really radiate nicely in the summer sun.

I have bought sample after sample in an attempt to find something, anything, that I liked. I've tried everything from the latest Miss Dior to niche but to no avail. So, despite the rotten reviews the latest formulation of Aromatics Elixir has had from having no staying power to having no scent to etc etc I decided I had better try it myself on the understanding that any Aromatics Elixir was better than no Aromatics Elixir.

I bought the 100 ml with batch code A31 which comes out, according to CheckFresh, as March 2021. I purchased it as dispatched from and sold by Amazon uk i.e. not an unknown seller.

So, was it a successful buy? To my nose, yes, a successful buy and I am pleased that I took the plunge.

Aromatics Elixir seems to have had formula tweaks many, many times and this one is no exception. It no longer says on their website that it has 500 or more ingredients and whether that indicates a reduction or they no longer think of it as being a selling point I don't know.

Taking longevity, one spray on my arm in the afternoon still smells the next morning. That is a very individual thing and I am sure that when people say that this new formula doesn't last then that is their experience. An age ago I did a set of tests with my mum using various aroma chemicals and some of the musks had no smell at all on mum; I couldn't smell them and neither could she but on my skin we both could smell them. My mum is the least smelly person I have ever met; she never used deodorant but never had foul body odour, she never had smelly feet even if her slippers were years old. The less said about my feet the better.

One of the difficulties I have had with the last couple of bottles of Aromatics Elixir is its decent into Marmite/meaty/savoury territory after a few hours wear. I am happy to say that this current batch doesn't do that. No idea what is in a perfume that makes it wear savoury on me but however this has been tweaked it has ended that problem for me. I compare with my other bottles (I now have four on the go) and still have the savoury problem with two of the earlier versions so it is a tweak rather than a phase I was going through

Another change is that the previous bottle I had had a very odd, synthetic, sweet rose overtone. This rendition doesn't come across with the heavy rose note at all. This is much to my preference as although I love rose essential oil there was something about the wrongly sweet rose overtone that was not to my liking.

Overall I would say that this formula (always on my skin so not a set in stone 'this is how it is') is greener, dryer, more mossy, and more woody, maybe a touch thinner and leaves less of a trail but altogether not too shoddy.

Not my cup of tea at all for a perfume or aftershave.

For a minute or so the opening smells very slightly of lavender, bergamot, and maybe hiding way way back a touch of nutmeg. In pretty short time everything is taken over by a a surprisingly harsh petitgrain, sharp and bitter.

Another half an hour and with the top notes burnt off completely it becomes a rather nondescript cake shaving soap such as Wilkinson Sword or Boots the Chemist own brand. By an hour it is gone, and I don't get the base notes.

For me this is in the camp of colognes that we used to use for cleaning our hands when out for a picnic in the 1960s, or as an astringent my aunt used on oily hair between washes. I'm thinking 4711, generic Boots the Chemist own brand, and so on, that we used to buy in pint bottles.

This may smell better on someone else, or may need to be applied in gusting quantities and left to die down, but on my skin it is a complete bust. being thin and bland.

The note pyramid looked exciting.

I bought samples of this Extreme Eau de Parfum and the Eau de Parfum.

I don't think they are supposed to be different one to the other just a slightly different concentration, however they do smell different and behave differently on my skin and on a blotter.

Nice enough but I was not impressed; there was no, 'oh this is nice' moment with either of them.

The Eau de Parfum has a brighter opening with some galbanum quite noticeable whereas I don't get the galbanum flurry with the Extreme. Both very quickly, just 10s of seconds, bed down into a tuberose/violet combination with something in the Eau de Parfum (maybe orange blossom) giving a fruity undercurrent like pineapple.

And there they sit. I get the occasional waft of a dense tuberose/violet fragrance that smells just a little sticky and stale, maybe honey like, although the rooms do have a nice enough scent to them.

My skin amps up vanilla/tonka bean notes and my son was very disappointed when in reply to his, 'what is that lovely sweet smell?', I replied, 'Is it this?', and it was which as I say disappointed him because he thought I had got off of my backside and made him the chocolate brownies that I have been promising to do for a few days.

So, all in all I found both the Extreme and the Eau de Parfum rather flat, nondescript offerings that fell far short of what I wanted it to be and what I expected.