New Haarlem Bond No 9

Desirability: Decant

Source: Fragrantica

I swapped for a half used bottle of New Haarlem, eagerly anticipating being drenched in coffee and maple syrup as others have experienced. In reality, this is what I got.

A burst of citrus greets you, its green and fresh self followed quickly by lavender and a dark woody smell, the combination of these three notes made me think immediately of male cologne. The citrus calms down and when it does I can smell the coffee and the maple syrup that many perfumistas have been gushing over. The coffee is a black bitter coffee but diluted or maybe overpowered by the thick maple syrup which conjured up images of a stack of golden brown pancakes drenched with the amber coloured syrup. So in proportions, I smell of: woody lavender>maple syrup>black coffee. On hindsight or smell I think I prefer this proportion rather than if it were an outright gourmand consisting only of maple syrup and coffee which might be a bit OTT. The cool, broody effect of the wood and aromatic lavender are a nice relief from the heavy gourmand side of New Haarlem. 

So instead of a hearty breakfast, I got an invigorating walk in the woods bordering lavender fields while dreaming of said breakfast and suffering olfactory hallucinations. 

Café Cacao En Voyage Perfumes

Source: www.basenotes.net

“What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate.” 

― Katharine Hepburn.

I would be perfectly content to be holed up with BCCC (which is also reflective of my college grades)- books, chocolate, chips/crisps (or anything potato) and coffee. Café Cacao has two of my loves chocolate and coffee, it is literally a sea salt chocolate bar in a bottle, the chocolate being a dark chocolate of say 70% with that unique and well-balanced bittersweet cocoa taste. I say 70% not 90% as 90% is a bit too intense for my liking and with 70% you still get a tinge of sweetness. The salt in Café Cacao isn't your regular table salt, it's the characteristic sweet and salty earthy smell that I associate with ambergris with a bit of funky odour thrown in. 

The coffee in Café Cacao isn't like the sweet dark coffee in Bond No. 9 I Love New York For All which could have been a cup from Starbucks or another coffee club, in Café Cacao the coffee reminds me of Turkish coffee that's wonderfully pungent and flavoured with cardamom and slightly burnt( in Café Cacao that is). As the scent settles down on my skin, it turns sweeter and more creamy but I love how the salty and bitter notes keep Café Cacao from turning into a too sweet mocha. 

I got Café Cacao as part of a trio including Captured in Amber and Indigo Vanilla, my favourite being Café Cacao followed closely by Captured in Amber. I should be fair and say that it's not the fault of Indigo Vanilla but I'm afraid I've been too engrossed with the other two to have paid Indigo Vanilla the deserved attention for now. From what I've tried, the trio which come in dab bottles of 4ml of Eau de Parfum but have an oilier consistency more like an extrait, have very good projection and longevity.

Trivia: if you ever wondered what the cacao percentages mean or want to know the process of making chocolate from scratch, I found this page to be thoroughly informative for a wannabe chocolate know it all. Chocolate: A Complete Beginner’s Guide.

I Love New York for All Bond No 9

You know that perfume that makes you stop looking for another? Well at least for that particular note. These showstoppers have saved me quite a bit of money, whenever I meet a possible contender for their pedestals, I have a Confessions of a Shopaholic moment where I search inwardly, "Do I neeeeeeeed this?"-answer NO. These lofty gods in my collection are Serge Lutens' Ambre Sultan for amber, A La Nuit from the same house for jasmine, Hilde Soliani's Cristina for an all-rounder patchouli, Diptyque's Philosykos for fig and Bond No. 9's I Love New York for All's sweet coffee note ended my search for coffee.

Source:sephora.com

Before I went to NYC, Paris was my favourite travel destination in the world, never mind the jostling hordes of tourists buying up everything in sight, never mind that a meal in one of the charming roadside cafes costs a small fortune, the city is my kind of romantic and I'm not talking about the Frenchmen. I'm talking about the endless twisting cobblestone streets to get lost in, the beautiful old apartments along the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the bridges, the food, the language...anyway you get my drift, I love Paris. Then I met NYC. Where Paris is dreamy, romantic and all La Vie En Rose, NYC is ballsy, vibrant and freaking noisy, all the time, you can't help but get swept up in the human tide and move to the rhythm of the city. Bond No. 9's I Love New York for All encompasses the city and its energy for me.

In NYC, there are coffee shops at literally every corner, this I know for sure as I was leaching Wifi at many of them. Whatever time of the day, I see them packed with customers waiting for their coffee fix. Likewise, I Love New York for All is packed with sweet, strong coffee and it's not one but two pumps of vanilla syrup to get you smiling from the first sniff. For my first trip, I was lucky to visit the city in fall and got to see the changing colours of Nature before the snow storms hit a week after. Central Park had little cart vendors at every few metres, selling hot dogs/bagels/pretzels/churros and roasted chestnuts, you could smell the burnt sugar aroma a mile away. While the chestnut in I Love New York for All is more of a candied marron glacé than roasted, it's still a creamy and delicious nutty flavour, the definition of comfort food. Lastly during my pilgrimage to the perfume stores, I stopped for sustenance along the way in a variety of chocolate stores, my loves being the Godiva chocolate-dipped strawberries and Neuhaus' Orangettes, scrumptious candied orange peel covered in dark chocolate. 

So put copious amounts of sweet, dark coffee, syrupy marron glacé and milk chocolate together and you have a gourmand fest...I Love New York for All. Vivacious, loud and potent, the scent never seems to wane, like the city that never sleeps. No need for top-ups and a little goes a very long way.