Posted by Jessica
on
13 January 2012
I’m a city-loving, sun-averse individual who doesn’t even own a bathing suit, and I can’t remember my last visit to a beach. (Oh, wait, there was that weekend in Montauk. In April 2006.) Despite, or perhaps for, this very reason, I find myself testing beach-themed and tropics-themed perfumes more often than you might expect. The latest such fragrance to cross my desk was a sample of Sarah Horowitz Coconut Milk, a recent release from this California-based independent perfumer.
Coconut Milk, the latest addition to Sarah Horowitz’s “Perfect” line, includes top notes of coconut and almond, heart notes of orange blossom and gardenia, and base notes of tonka bean, vanilla, and Egyptian musk. It’s a fragrance that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. Its coconut accord is milky with a hint of green, and it doesn’t remind me at all of the suntan lotions of my youth, thank goodness. The coconut, which lasts throughout the fragrance’s development on skin, is followed by just a hint of creamy gardenia…
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Posted by Kevin
on
23 March 2011
I usually prefer to wear “simple” and light fragrances in warm weather; I don’t want lots of notes percolating on my skin and inside my nostrils on a hot day — that’s annoying. I visited Los Angeles in February when the weather there was glorious: sunny, 78 degree days, cool evenings, and skies so clear you could see stars (the celestial type) at night. I packed several new fragrances for the trip, and it was fun to fast-forward to ‘summer’ for a week (it was still 25 degrees at home in Seattle with at least another month of awful weather to come). Two of the new “summery” perfumes I tested in L.A. stood out: Pacifica Indian Coconut Nectar and Six Scents Series Three Beau Bow.
Indian Coconut Nectar smells almost exactly how Pinkberry (another “hit” from my L.A. trip) coconut frozen yoghurt tastes, with flavors/scents of cool, yet musky, coconut (slightly “green” and tart-unripe ), combined with creamy vanilla and perhaps a squirt of lime juice. Indian Coconut Nectar perfume is simple, but it smells delicious. I can’t resist the scent of coconut during summer but if you dislike coconut, you’ll hate Indian Coconut Nectar — it’s all about the coconut…
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Posted by Robin
on
22 March 2007
As long as we’re on the subject of tropical beach-y scents, I thought I’d give Ensoleille Moi another try. Ensoleille Moi launched last year as the debut fragrance release from French jeweller André Gas, and like yesterday’s Azuree Soleil, it is composed around coconut and tiare (also known as Tahitian gardenia). It was created by perfumer Mathilde Laurent, and additional notes include ylang ylang, vanilla and white musk.
Ensoleille Moi is an altogether more tropical scent than Azuree Soleil: the coconut is deeper, the gardenia is more central to the composition, and there is less here to counteract the sweetness of the floral notes. It is brighter and not so warm as Azuree Soleil, and also considerably richer and creamier; if Azuree Soleil is meant to evoke the Mediterranean, here we have moved on to the Polynesian islands…
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