Rubia

Friday, 11 pm, messy girl's room:
Nicki and I eat sour fruit gum and spray our teenage dreams with hairspray. She lends me her vanilla deodorant with CFC, I her my lipstick.
There rings already our buddy Andi, the one with the driver's license. We climb into his Opel Kadett and off we go to the disco!
Oops, Nicki has burned a hole in the leatherette seat with her cigarette butt. Andi is creaky, until she presses herself against him in her synthetic dress in the rain-soaked parking lot - and Andi sinks into an aura of scented rubber and vanilla.
I guess I'm redundant there, so I warp through the November night toward the entrance line.

A scent like a weekend kickoff in the 90s. Dance, ecstasy and dry ice fog are still missing, but the expectations hang high. Still everything can happen.

The fragrance hits a few snags, but somehow I get it under a hat. Unlike other "varied" fragrances, it does not fall into pieces for me. May be due to the fact that a few notes hit for me on memory buttons and so set a central theme.

Well... At the first spraying on there is only a faint smell. I'm already thinking whether I have to do with a "Body Mist", and fog courageously after.
The scent makes me think of strawflowers - or rather: a meadow after a long heat wave, whose aroma wafting from afar. It is shortly before the hay mowing, the meadow flowers and herbs steam out something minimal spicy-resinous. The overall impression goes in the direction of organic cosmetics.

In my imagination, I am in a healing and massage practice. In the communal kitchen someone has put on chamomile tea, through the tilting window flows the meadow smell. All very unobtrusive. I relax on my lounger.
Just as the masseuse closes the window and tells me that she only buys Hauschka products, another smell in the room grows stronger and stronger.
"Funny," I say, "I could swear I smell Nivea, the one in the blue can."
"Oh," says the masseuse blushing, "yeah - I just can't get away from that one."
I sense: where Nivea is a guilty pleasure, nothing bad can happen to you. To women who wear Angel's Trumpet, I hand my child and tell them of my troubles, because gentle understanding awaits me.

After four hours, the scent on my skin has quietly departed after one last Nivea burst; it still hangs in my wool sweater and has added a slightly soapy quality. Overall, a nice scent. I may not wear it myself, but like to meet him from time to time.

I tested without looking at the pyramid and put the impressions below on paper. If someone is looking for me: I'm in the olfactory support group.

There's a distinct cedar at the beginning. And the cedar is followed by something that, with the wisdom of two oud scents, I think I recognize as oud used sparingly.
The next strong impression is: warmth. This perhaps stems from the sweetness that now sets in, and a spicy note. Clove? Cinnamon? Allspice? Something like that.
The whole thing seems noble to me, rather reduced and harmoniously coordinated. In between, I think it humanizes a little (cumin?), but that evaporates then again. I also wonder if there's some uncharacteristic vanilla in the wood, because in the background it's subtly dessert-like and delicious. Or is it high-proof chocolate?
Otherwise, Woody Moods remain Cedar Moods to me; I don't recognize other trees for lack of note vocabulary. Also, the overall impression for me is less woodsy (i.e. trees, mosses, grasses, etc.) and more that of furniture wood and wooden floors.

I find this fragrance nice, round and not boring. He seemed at the first wearing on me quite masculine and I wanted to give him away - but no: I do not give that away.
If the fragrance were a dating profile, it would be in my mind:
Lukas, 44, architect. Has a minimalist apartment, but it does not seem cool because of the natural materials. Somewhere there is an Eames lounge chair. He likes cinema, trekking, melancholic guitar music and likes to explain the grinder of his espresso machine or a Shimano gear shift. And if Lukas doesn't find anyone, I would be very surprised.

So - more clichés I have not.

I find the opening of Spicebomb borderline sweet, but I'm not big on offensive sweetness either. The fragrance is familiar to me. Did my first boyfriend have a fragrance with a similar sweet top note (Joop?). Or is this just a direction I know from spraying around airport perfumeries? To me, the smell does not seem particularly unusual at first, it positions itself very much in the familiar.

The nice thing is that the sweetness soon becomes more pleasant; better integrated into notes that now come on the scene. Is the spice tickling the nose cinnamon? Or pepper? I also distinctly think I smell something tonka-coumarin-like, and it may be the saffron that is responsible for me now finding the scent to be nobler and deeper. There is a faint hint of cumin in the background, for which "Fàra" is my reference, and I am happy to detect it here. Unfortunately, the cumin is quite zugetonkat.

As it progresses, I like the scent more and more. From rejection becomes "Joah, you can do in the appropriate mood quite times."
H&S I find okay, but not bomb. Also, I think the name "Spicebomb Extreme" for this spicy-cuddly fragrance for exaggerated - but possibly "The nice Janine Obermüller tries the first time to cook Indian rice pudding" is not a good marketing alternative. Besides, I prefer to add spices to food by the spoonful rather than by the knife tip. Maybe I'm jaded and after the lockdown I'll be arrested by the spice police with my "spicebomb" aura for blocking the airspace without permission.

At the very beginning, there's a sour, metallic freshness. As if I would rush up a freshly mopped stairwell with a hand on the steel railing and smell the top of my palm.
The night stairwell is cold, but my date opens the door to his apartment, which is cozy. He puts on a cup of coffee in the kitchen and places a tin of Danish Butter Cookies on the table. "Are you cold?" he asks solicitously, turning up the heat.
My nervousness evaporates, and I sink into the comfort of a soft armchair, trusting. We talk, share memories, and I know that if nothing more comes of us, I want us to be friends. Because I feel good, because nothing is exhausting. It's two o'clock when I say goodbye to the night with a hug, his warmth enveloping me one last time. "Cedar," I think - and, "I'll be back."

In plain words:
I like the fierce rhubarb impact and the grapefruit zest. It quickly turns warm, slightly sweet and homey: coffee I suspect, tonka and/or vanilla is more obvious. The scent breaks down into two parts, both of which I really like, and the progression from one to the other is almost forward on my skin. All too soon it ends with a warm leathery cedariness. I would like to immediately rewind or re-spray.
The other notes I do not smell out (nutmeg? Where?), or I do not know them (How please smells currant bud?).
Nuit Rouge I will certainly wear often, I find it pleasing. However, preferably on textile and creamed skin, so that it does not say goodbye so quickly.