Tuesday, July 17, 2012

penhaligon's blenheim bouquet review

 
 

I posted that I had recently acquired this a couple of weeks ago now, for my birthday, and I wanted to wait until the initial love-affair had worn off before reviewing it properly for you. Well, the affair isn't over, it has just intensified. Sorry! I will try and be as unbiased as possible.
I will get onto the packaging later, and shall start with the most important thing - the scent. You get an initial burst of fresh, limy, citrusy goodness, with a spicier undertone. The freshness lasts on me for quite a while, despite it only being an eau de toilette. As time wears on, you get a slightly different scent, one that is more spicy, and smells more like the base notes of pine, musk and black pepper, I find however, that even when it's starting to wear off (usually around the end of the day) I get little flashes of the sweeter, lighter lime and lavender head notes.
I'm generally not too concerned about staying power of a perfume, as I know if I want a strong perfume, to go for parfums with a richer and deeper scent.
What I really love about it, is that it's fresh and citrus based without it being too girly. I used to love girly, fruity scents when I was younger, and I still sort of do, except they can smell quite cheap overpowering and thats not really what I want. A lot of Penhaligon's perfumes are unisex, and my housemate said he really liked this one, and it smelt like something he would wear, so I think it's quite suitable for both men and women.
The packaging feels very expensive - because it is. This costs £80, which I don't actually think is unreasonable, not for 100ml, however, it was a birthday present, I didn't buy it myself. The box comes in two parts, the top three quarters lifting off to have the perfume resting in a little stand. It's thick, reinforced card, not cheap. The whole experience of the shop is amazing, too. I got this from the little store in the Burlington Arcade in London, where a very lovely woman ran me through various scents that I would like and let me try and uhm and aah, even throwing in a few samples of the other ones I liked. 
I absolutely love the bottle itself. The label is beautiful and exactly the kind of thing I love, right down to the typeface used. Apparently they used to come with little glass stoppers, hence the top, but this lifts off to reveal a typical spray pump. The bow is the only thing I don't like, because it feels a little cheap and you can see the glue. However, everything else is perfect so I can't fault this one thing.
This concludes my mammoth post! I've never reviewed a perfume, even though they're one of my absolute favourite things in life. I had put myself on an extreme perfume ban (I own too many!), I haven't even had any bought for me in over a year and a half, so this felt like such a treat. Is it bad that I have my eye on Castile already?

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