Byredo Tobacco Mandarin and Tom Ford Bitter Peach Reviews

Tom Ford Bitter Peach was the original target of my review today, but I sorta got distracted, so that one is going to be short.  I’m not entirely thrilled with this direction Ford is going. I did love Lost Cherry, I learned to mostly love F’ing Fab, and I admire Rose Prick, but I sorta miss all of his over the top stuff, like Velvet Gardenia and the old Oud Wood and Tobacco Vanille.  Eh, everything changes.

So Tom Ford Bitter Peach has notes of peach, blood orange, davana, labdanum, patchouli, sandalwood. The open is the opposite of how I felt on Lost Cherry. It is verging on shower shampoo/bath wash, and not the expensive kind.  But I was patient, and the davana veers it off into something more interesting. Davana is a more fermenty smell, little putrid – like the fruit was getting just a wee bit rotten.  I always like to see that pop up in a very sweet fruity thing that is annoying me.

Then the drydown gets completely away from shampoo and  has this rounder peach smell.  Ultimately, I’m not sure I really love it, but it’s an interesting take on peach, and I do like it and enjoy wearing it because I can’t think if anything else I have that is like it – that is saying a lot right there. I never think there are enough peach fragrances. No, it is not Mitsouko.

Then Byredo Tobacco Mandarin arrived on my doorstep.  I’ve never paid much attention to the Byredo Night Veils line, toooooo expensive!  But this one sounded interesting.  I like tobacco, and I like mandarin!

Byredo Tobacco Mandarin goes on, and it hit my nose and I was like whaaaaaa???!?!?  Who emptied the cumin bottle into this?  I grabbed the notes, and this is what we have – cumin, coriander, cumin, tobacco, cumin, leather, cumin, mandarin, cumin, labdanum, cumin, olibdanum, cumin, oud, cumin, sandalwood and, yes, cumin.

It was like someone grabbed my arm after a three-hour sweaty workout and no shower and rubbed it on my arm.  My oldest brother used to do this kind of thing when he came in from the fields. Gross, but I am very familiar with the smell of nasty armpit on my arm.

Amazing is an understatement. If you do not like cumin or skank, then just skip to the end.  The cumin phase lasts so deliciously long, but other notes show up and kind of corral the cumin a bit so it doesn’t get too wild and feral.  I kept thinking, where is the mandarin(?) but I think that is what is doing the job here of putting ropes around the skank.  Because on top of this truckload of skanky cumin, you are throwing, oud, leather, resins and, duh, tobacco.

The long drydown – and this thing last forever – loses the skanky cuminy stuff and is soft and snuggly with an echo of smut lingering.

I’m in love. I’m not sure I can wear it out of the house until about 2 hours after it goes on, but I really love a perfume that makes me think about my choices carefully. Now I’m obsessed with the rest of the Byredo Night Veils line, I need to try that Casablanca Lily!

Update on my mom. She is out of the  hospital as of last Saturday.  It’s up and down, feels good one day or in the morning, and then gets puny as the day goes by, but it is better than it was.  She’s eating well, which is the piece that landed her in the hospital – not eating and drinking enough, and her sodium and potassium were dangerously low. She is really tricky to sort out once her electrolytes get out of whack  But she is better, and her voice sounds really strong, like she always sounds. She has a voice like a bullhorn when she needs it, and being 86 has not curbed that a bit.  She did make the decision to sell her lovely little house on the hill outside of town with the several acres and move into senior apartments in town.  She lots some strength with this, and she isn’t sure how much she will get back, and she said she is just tired of worrying about watering things and all that goes along with that, and just doesn’t want to be scared of getting snowed in this winter and her friends can’t get up the hill to  take care of her. I think this is wise. I still want her to come move in with me, but she’s not there yet and may never be. She doesn’t want to leave her friends and sister and where she has lived all of her life.

First, winner of the Kilian Angel’s Share samples – Taxi and Gina T.  Just click on the Drop Us a Note up at the top in the Aqua bar, send me your mailing address, remind me of what you won, and I’ll get it sent out to you!

Yes, of course we’ll do a drawing.  I’ll draw two winners at random, and you can pick which one of these you’d like to sample.  But which one do you think you’d like just based on the notes?