Hi there Crew,
Writing to you from the past but thinking about how lovely it will be to be hitting Singapore and South Korea in spring and recently I got a Surrender To Chance decant from one of my favourite independent perfumers; Christopher Brosius. It’s about as springlike as you could ever imagine.
Jasmine Sambac by CB I Hate Perfume 2013
Jasmine Sambac by Christopher Brosius
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
It’s nearly night time, you are enjoying the newfound warmth of spring evenings and you’ve decided to take an evening stroll with your true loved one, your dog. In my city Sydney, where I live currently in Redfern just off the center of the central business and shopping district, maybe 3 kilometers easy walk from the Sydney GPO the early spring evenings are chock full of after work drinkers, diners, people coming home and people going out. The cafes and supermarkets are full and loads of cars with their headlights on low are taking their precious cargoes to the next big, last big, will it ever get big thing. The streets, cafes and the parks are also full of other people walking their dogs. Below is a picture in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, less than an hours stroll from my home.
Photo Stolen Wikipedia
What you can also feel on these evenings is the promise. Spring in Redfern is FULL of the scent of promise. Promise of warmer days, t-shirts, beaches, flirtations, picnics and sunshiny days. There are plenty of jasmine vines climbing up fronts of terrace houses and in pocket handkerchief sized back gardens, even some of the pubs have an old ropey vine that bursts into leaf and flower at the first hint of spring.
If you want to smell something that gives you the same flutterings in your heart, the same joyful spring in your step, the same inner whisper of promise then Jasmine Sambac is something I think you should try.
How does it smell? Stronger than jasmine in most fragrance, healthier. At the start very indolic but within half an hour Jasmine Sambac becomes fresh, lilting and friendly. A zephyr on a late spring afternoon bringing you the fragrance of a fence full of jasmine down the road. Glorious.
Photo Stolen Pixabay
From Christopher Brosius: I find Jasmine Sambac to be the richest and most pervasive of all the Jasmine Absolutes available today. While obviously a Jasmine scent, its perfume contains levels of depth and complexity that other Jasmines cannot match, its scent is serene, euphoric and hypnotic. Jasmine Absolute contains many chemicals that have a powerful effect on the central nervous system. Jasmine is possibly, next to Rose, the most synthesized flower in modern perfume. While there are many exceptionally fine synthetic versions of that flower available, should you ever compare the two – Real and Imagined – side by side, you will see there is absolutely no comparison at all. Real Jasmine is much richer, far more complex and infinitely more beautiful.
Photo Stolen Wikipedia
Further reading: Perfume Posse and Colognoisseur
CB I Hate Perfume has $325/100ml
Surrender To Chance has samples starting at $5/.5ml
What scents make you think of spring?
Portia xx
Australian Perfume Junkies 