Okay, so yeah. I am once again riding the coattails of my pals here on the Posse. But can you blame me? As much as you are incited to try after reading their takes on things, think of poor me. I have to come up with content here and it’s frankly easier to armchair it and order samples sent after they point the way than to go all the way to ScentBar (through the snowdrifts, uphill each way, while being chased by wild dogs and maybe cats.)
So there you are. Portia wrote about With the Candlestick and off to Surrender to Chance I went. I also added in one other in the line, as well as a Tom Ford that featured cherry, just because.
With the Candlestick. Something about the Blood of Christ on a hot iron? Now I was raised (barely) Catholic, albeit in the post Vatican II, nun-with-a-guitar no Latin mass era. So a lot of the references just don’t resonate with me. I don’t find this as weird as Portia did. I get a little smack of Cherry Heering in the opening, then the scent somewhat like a dusty candle being lit, then a really good simulacrum of a candle being extinguished. I can definitely see the ex-cathedra portion of the program, and I applaud it. I am just not in a place where I would need a full bottle of it.
The Point. Well, you have to hand it to them for naming it that, since you know that some wag out there will be writing “there isn’t one” or something like that. The notes (from The Clue website) are listed as “Jasmine Tea, Crushed Porcelain, Honey-Soaked Patchouli, Ocean Water, Ambergris, Wet Sand” which is fairly eye-rolling for something which is simply a lovely and quite wearable slightly salty, slightly sweet scent that really does smell like delicious jasmine tea. I love jasmine tea and neer thought of it as something that I would be drinking in a beach chair on a summer day, say at the Hotel Coronado, but to each their own hyperbole.
Lost Cherry I threw into the mix because A) StC only had the two clues and 2) I vaguely thought I would include something cherry, maybe comparing the other to SL Rahat Loukoum, which I happen to own. Well, Candlestick’s cherry note is fairly fleeting and the Tom Ford has it front and center. Patty gave it a deep-dive in 2020 and I don’t have much to add. It meanders between maraschino and Luden’s Lozenges with a few stops at Cavendish pipe tobacco. Leaning more at the latter as is wears. I actually prefer the oddness of the SL (alert the media! whoda thunk it?) with the touch of celery and almond and the cherry that goes from actual cherry to cherry confection. The TF version seems more like a stunt than a scent, something that I suppose could be written about the Clue scents, except somehow coming from them it doesn’t bug me. Much.
With the Candlestick and The Point are available for $140 for 30ML at LuckyScent or the Clue website. Tom Ford Lost Cherry can be had for as little as $85 for a beensy 10ML, more (lots more) for larger sizes, at his website. My samples were from Surrender to Chance.
Photos: My iPhone, Pexels, and Wikimedia Commons
TF’s Lost Cherry is just…meh. I think all of his fragrances are incredibly mediocre…and at that price!…no thanks. Alkemia Cherries in the Night is what TF wishes he had done with Lost Cherry.
Oh, wow, I HAVE to try With the Candlestick, I love those melted-candle scents… Lost Cherry was lost on me! Yeah, I’d rather have Uncle Serge doing something weird and wonderful.
With the candlestick kind of grew on me. Don’t need a bottle but..
I had fun reading this post and you convinced me not to bother with the first two perfumes you reviewed. Glad you wrote about Lost Cherry too. Now I’m sure that I haven’t missed anything with my being anosomic to the cherry molecule. The muddy mess that I do smell sounds better than the real deal. LOL.
A cuddly mess would be nice..
Great reviews, Tom! The Point sounds like my cup of jasmine tea. I also really am a fan. Drinking it, or sniffing it on the beach, seems just grand. The candlestick one made me recall reading obscure modern French plays in college featuring a character called Papa Ubu whose catch phrase was, “By my green candle!” We spent a lot of time debating what that meant. Any other theatre nerds familiar? Just me? OK! Dean Joan King is smiling down on me from Heaven. I don’t really want to smell like Ludens throat lozenges, though they did taste good as a kid. Cherry lifesavers were better.
Papa Ubu sounds vaguely familiar. Not sure why.
Cherry lifesavers I had to long ago convince myself did not actually exist. I could eat rolls of them..
TF Lost Cherry is likely to make mine grow back again. Who wants to smell of childhood antibiotic medicine? Gross! Like so many TF fragrances of the last decade it’s an anti-aphrodisiac, withering nether regions since 2015.
Ha! That made me giggle.
It’s kind of funny how louche TF tries to get to but just misses. It’s like asking a mineral to impersonate an animal.
The current TF is so off Tom Ford’s original message. Currently I see the brand as a teenage boy believing he’s as urbane & suave as David Niven but in reality being one of the Inbetweeners.
“Seems more like a stunt than a scent”. Oh, Tom, you are the man! I tried this TF and another cherry one a few years ago and had to step back shaking my head. I’ve yet to meet a TF I wanted to be near for more than 5 seconds. Trying RL has been on the list for ages. Next Paris trip.
RL is so wonderful. But there are so many SL’s that are.
TF however does not do it for me. He’s like that marvelous Neutra home in “A Single Man”- I love it but I could bever be comfortable in a house with a picture window next to the toilet (even if only squirrels were watching me poop.)
It was a Lautner, not a Neutra.
A Single Man is such an amazing film. He was much better directing that vs making perfume.
Oh, Tom, thank you for a wonderful post that made me laugh more than once. I needed that this evening. Nun with a guitar….
I’m glad you laughed! I was kind of annoyed that we have the new “accessible” church. I wanted robes and incense. Nuns should only play guitar if the instrument is needed to keep them grounded. Lest like The Flying Nun they go airborne at the first stiff breeze..
And those awful felt banners… remember those?
Fwiw… I am reading this on my phone … and my eyes ain’t what they used to be…
… and for a hot minute… I thought that nun was wearing rainbow colors on her nails!
It could happen. Ya nebber know
Oh I do remember those!
We had some clerics who might have been wearing rainbow polish under their little embroidered slippers..