JuliTuli

JuliTuli

Reviews
JuliTuli 6 months ago 2 1
8
Bottle
8
Sillage
8
Longevity
9.5
Scent
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For lovers of gas station fragrance
As part of a traveling letter (thank you dear J.!) I came into the opportunity to test "Freeway | 4160 Tuesdays". I was very curious about this fragrance. Gasoline and burnt rubber? And then from a niche brand? That can't be good after all. Let's take a look at what perfumer Sarah McCartney says about her creation:

"It's the aroma of a freeway when the oil has run out, and the space has become a wildlife haven, with orange groves and white flowers. There are solar cars and bicycles, picnic tables and humming birds. Like everywhere in LA there's the background scent of cooking sugar. Mandarin petigrain essential oil gives it a strange note of evaporating gasoline, from the sun on concrete, and there's the deep dark hot rubber smell in the background."

Indeed, the scent starts with what I would understand as a mixture of gasoline and car tires. The first impression is burning, as if you have too much gasoline vapor around you. However, this impression disappears as quickly as it came back. Immediately afterwards, there remains what I would call a "memory" of gasoline and car tires. You can kind of detect it, but it doesn't smell exactly like that. It smells more like how you might imagine gasoline and rubber when you have to recall it from memory - and of that, only the good parts. Because even though I've never been a lover of gas station scents, I can put my nose to my wrist without wrinkling my nose. Gasoline and rubber in good, I am impressed.

Pretty quickly then mix in the sweet notes that soften the whole thing, detach gasoline and rubber and make it wearable. To stay in the image of Sarah McCartney: We've reached the end of LA's highway and now the orange grove begins, families sitting there eating waffles with vanilla ice cream. Sweet flowers bloom along the roadside. It is beautiful here. From here on, the scent is also wearable. It is a gourmand sweetness. Gasoline and rubber can only be guessed, something that once was, but is no more, only the memory traces of it.

Rarely has a fragrance impressed me as much as this one. Sarah McCartney's vision has captured it perfectly in #Freeway. You can put yourself in the described scenery so well with her description and the fragrance. So this must be what it smells like on LA's streets and beyond. I'm not sure I could really wear Freeway. Now the top notes don't trigger a feeling in me of "I want to smell like that!" but rather "Wow exciting, give me more input on that!" and the gourmand sweetness is a bit too gourmand and a bit too sweet for my personal taste (but better than the current drugstore sweetness). BUT this scent describes a vision of LA's streets consisting of gasoline, rubber, pastries and nature and captured that SO incredibly well and wearably that I thought: Wow, this is true perfumer's art, a masterpiece. Even though I probably won't wear this fragrance, I wish I had a small bottling so I can relive this olfactory sensory experience over and over again.
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