Perfume Pen Pals: China White and B Never Too Busy to Be Beautiful B Scent


Katie,

Your Nasomatto China White review prompted me to take a quick sniff of my sample. It's a sprightly little thing, even out of the vial, the perfect perfume for a woman who talks too fast, walks too fast, collides with passersby, veers off in conversations, veers off in relationships. It's Holly Golightly. It's Holly Golightly if Holly Golightly bought her own perfume and didn't rely on creepy old men with their barrels of Chanel No. 5.

I got all of this just out of the vial. Imagine when I finally wear it.

I also tried B Never Too Busy to Be Beautiful B Scent, the lemon-rose. Unfortunately, the sample bottle comes with a surprisingly wide opening and I accidentally poured too much of it (basically, the entire bottle) into my hands. It's extremely likable and I can see why Tania Sanchez is charmed by it.

But the lemon-to-rose ratio is similar to standing in a kitchen shaded by a large lemon tree, washing your hands with lemon soap before squeezing fresh lemonade and grating the remaining rind for a lemon cake or lemon meringue pie or lemon tart or all three when your mother suddenly appears and offers you some lemon tea cookies. Oh, and across the street and three blocks down from the kitchen is a little rose garden.

Dan


Dan,

Quite a zesty summary of B Never B Scent. I like how often your mother appears in your perfume considerations.

Katie


Katie,

No, this time it was YOUR mother, not mine. My mother is a hardcore Italian and would never serve anything as refined as lemon tea cookies. To lemon tea cookies she'd scoff, "That's what white people eat."

The entire world considers my mom white. But not her. And in her mind it's the lemon tea cookies that make the difference.

Dan

3 comments:

  1. Dan, I laugh for reasons that would probably only be clear to Katie. With my Mom, it would be more like stale, store bought cookies that my Dad bought 6 months before.

    I like the idea of the freshness of a lemon fragrance, but this one sounds overpoweringly lemony with no reprieve from the distant rose. I have a feeling that the rose bush doesn't have any roses on it because your Mom has cut them all off to make an arrangement for you when she brings your your biscotti.

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  2. Pino, B Scent does have remarkable staying power for a fun little citrus. According to the B Never site, its life is extended with fennel. (It does smell more like a kitchen perfume than a garden perfume.) And I suffered through my share of stale, store-bought biscotti, which is no prize either, let me tell you.

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  3. Thanks for the clarification. I learn something all the time about fragrance. For example, I never heard of using fennel as a agent in a fragrance. I like eating it since being introduced to it when I lived in Italy. I wonder what other unexpected foods are used in fragrances? Katie, what are some unusual foods that have been incorporated into perfume?

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