Sunday 11 August 2013

Review: Carven Le Parfum

I'm a girl who usually like sweet, oriental scents. The kind with descriptions like sandalwood, vanilla and lychee. Floral scents, for me, often remind me of soap. No matter how nice, there just are too many soaps with scents like rose, lily of the valley, iris etc. for floral scents not to be somewhat soapy in my mind.

This is very definitely one such scent. It is nice, don't get me wrong, but if you are looking for a non-soapy floral this is not for you. It starts out smelling rather sharp, of jasmine and I think sweet peas. That scent floats like a sweet cloud around you, following you from room to room. It is very easy to overdo this perfume, for that reason. Just a quick spray in the bend of my elbow is enough for this one. Elbow, because it is the kind of perfume that would have done best presented in a dropper bottle so you could apply just a drop to your wrists and to your neck. A full spray close to your face becomes overwhelming, closing of your nostrils, so you cannot enjoy that sweet, flowery cloud yourself. This is a true Eau de Parfum, a little truly does go a long way.

After quite a while, the cloud of jasmine and sweet peas settles down, coming to rest close to your skin. There is a hint of sweetness, a hint of something floral and of that soap I talked about previously. It is a scent that you carry with you all through the day, smelling suddenly of no particular reason, a hint of something truly good, then it goes away again. Perfume at its best, surprising you throughout the day and making you smile.

It should be noted that when you first pick up this bottle, first smell it, you will be punched by the sweet jasmine followed by the sweet peas with a hint of something like apricot. If I had smelled this bottle in store, chances are I would not even have sprayed it onto my skin, because of that first punch of strong flowers. It's almost overwhelming. If this on the skin as it does in the bottle it would have been horrible, but it does not. It melds with your skin, it develops, it transforms. In my case into the first floral I have ever liked.

Headache inducingly strong if you are not careful? Oh yes. Floral, almost soapy so? Definitely. By the end of the day, however, if you are usually a girl who gravitates towards the sweet and fruity spectrum but need something different for that job interview, something that isn't a date night scent, this might fit the bill.