The Hanging Gardens

[toomuch]

This perfume is an interpretation of the Hanging Gardens by night, based on further accounts of its fruit and flora: date palm, ebony, fir, pomegranate, plum, two pears, quince, fig, and grapevine with plumeria, three gardenias and dry rose.

Floral and fruity. Very ripe fruit scent, good for summer.

[Jazzi]

EDIT:

 

I'm trying this scent again, after it's aged for two years, and I'm liking it a lot more. I actually wish I hadn't re-read my previous review, though, because once I remembered "funeral parlor," I can't get rid of that association. It's a very sweet, fruity floral with a lot of incense, but I guess the only time I really smell flowers are in shops and at funerals.

 

It probably is a little generic in that it smells like something you could get at a perfume counter layered over something you could get at a New Age store, but I think that it would be a good introduction to BPAL for people who are having a hard time transitioning from mainstream perfumes. I also think the right skin chemistry could do amazing things with this scent for someone who doesn't associate sweet florals with funeral parlors. Yikes.

Edited December 9, 2012 by Jazzi

[Ryokumuji]

Got this as a frimp and was excited because I did want to try this. Love fruits, love florals, this should be a winner? Nope. In the bottle is smelt super sweet. On my skin, it had a fake chemical banana type smell, like those fake banana candies I've seen in little gumball machines. As it dries down it goes from fake banana to generic floral candle with a strange spice to it. It's not an unpleasant smell, but it's definitely not what I was hoping for.

[Helas]

The complexity of the Hanging Gardens kills it for me; I can't help but think it would have been twice as good with half the ingredients. The various fruits and flowers do not get their individual turn to shine but instead melt together to form this pleasant-smelling but undistinguished fruity-flowery mush. Instead of evoking a lush ancient Middle-Eastern tropical garden, it evokes an image of eating fruit salad in an English garden. Nice enough - and I certainly can't say it smells bad - but not nearly as rich or evocative as the name suggests.

 

Generic pretty. Three out of five stars.

[girlcalledmoment]

The Hanging Gardens is a thick, rich, fruity, lightly powdery, tropical concoction which brings to mind a niche classic, Sacrebleu, by Parfums de Nicolai. I am doing a side-by-side comparison as I type, and the main difference I can spot is that Sacrebleu has an addition of incense, which the Hanging Gardens doesn't. My decant of Sacrebleu has aged slightly, and improved; however, I recall some years ago I wrote a rather petulant review on Makeupalley (where I am Pennypencil) about it being juvenile/ PEZ dispensery/ crayons on car seats/ Wrigley's Juicy Fruit. The Hanging Gardens has a touch of this about it too. It's as sweet as an Escada scent, though the gentle powder, which is very subtle, grounds it way more than those neon offerings. The fruit itself in Sacrebleu purports to be mandarin and red fruit, but I also get a peachy, cinnamon aspect I find in The Hanging Gardens - possibly from the two pears. Anyway, this isn't meant to be a comparative review, but I wanted to mention that I'd smelled something like this before, and where.

 

The Hanging Gardens has a fair amount of throw and is long-lasting. I'm glad I don't get much fig, because I don't think I like the lab's fig note when it's prominent - here it just warms things up. The description speaks of plum, but I fancy I pick up red fruits in general - tart currants and perhaps the tiniest, remotest hint of pie. It's way too swollen with ripe fruit to pick up much green, but there is a quiet woodiness. It fits into the fruity floral category well, and isn't that different to Britney Spears' Midnight Fantasy or Katy Perry's Purr - the latter of which shares a whole host of notes with The Hanging Garden: Gardenia, forbidden fruit and rose. I suppose what I am saying is that The Hanging Gardens is about as close to the mainstream as BPAL gets, and I appreciate the thrill of that. I like to dabble in the mainstream - into gym bags weighed down by Salon Selectives, pink bed sheets, ceramic hair straighteners and nail wraps.

3.9/5

[JasminDreams2010]

Interesting.......... very very interesting. When I first got this as an imp with an order, I just thought it smelled like incense. I had read all the reviews and really wanted to like it but felt it was too monotone and rose for my taste. Sure enough, though, as with many other bpal fragrances, there is a depth and complexity to this oil that is not necessarily readily apparent. It took 3 or 4 tries to actually get a handle on what this scent was doing. It changes like quicksilver! To me, this scent and Machu Picchu are tied for the most morph-y scents I've ever tried. It is well blended so that it's difficult to pick out one note, but at times the rose makes itself apparent, at times I smell gardenia, at times fig. There are woody, fruity undercurrents to the scent so that I don't really feel as though I get the same whiff twice. Generally speaking I prefer more dominant florals (my skin turns most scents very dry and woody- somehow even the fruitiest florals become sandalwood on me). However, this is a really great mood scent. Somthing nice and ripe for a humid summer evening.

 

- I am editing to say that this is becoming my comfort scent- it's nice to fall asleep to. The gardenia and rose are really soft and sweet and have a warm feeling to them somehow. I think this might induce pleasant dreams.

Edited July 4, 2011 by JasminDreams2010

[brittanywut]

In the imp: Plum, fig, gardenias and a bit of rose. Really interesting combination of fruits and florals.

 

Wet: Heavy on the plum, with gardenias, and a little... citrus? A couple other notes I can't quite describe.

 

Dry: I can't really pick anything out, it dries down to a fantastic fruity and floral blend. I really like this, it seems to work well on my skin.

[Klolly]

In imp: sweet. A little floral, a little fruit. Kind of smells like juicy fruit gum.

 

On wet: Mmm, bright, powdery fruit. Still reminds me of juicy fruit but better. I think I smell the plumeria but nothing else really stands out to me.

 

Dry: This is really nice. It's both fruity and gently floral with a soft powdered sugar sweetness dusting it all. Something in it smells almost peppery very faintly in the background. This is very nice but nothing amazing enough to warrant a bottle for me.

[mxtine]

Floral fruit in the vial. Pomegranate and pear on my skin. It's like a fruit salad next to a bunch of gardenias and ends up smelling like generic fruity-floral hand lotion.

[ObliqueRed]

I'm very impressed by this one- it really does smell like a garden. You get little whiffs of fruit and flowers and wood and green leaves, as though it was being carried past your nose on a gentle spring wind. Yummy.

[LizziesLuck]

Really fruity, mostly plum. Plum isn't always great on my skin, sort of turns to plastic sometimes, and it's trying to do that here. This is overly sweet on me as well. The florals just barely peak through.

 

I needed to get a hold of some of this, because I am collecting the Wanderlust imps, but I don't think I'll reach for it. It's not bad at all (it finally decided not to go to plastic) I just have other fruity florals that are better on me.