Miss Spink

[tziporra]

A grand, over-the-top tuberose gardenia.

CAN I WRITE MY REVIEW IN ALL CAPS PLEASE?

No?

Fine. But while you read this please imagine I am bouncing around the room squealing and flapping my arms in that very particular fashion of someone who has filled a long neglected niche in her life.

Do you have a tuberose niche?

I do. Mine is shaped like the scent (don't ask me the shape of a scent, just go with me here) of buttery tropical florals warmed by the midday sun and wafting through a screened window into the coolness of a shaded room....

Laid with cookies and tea?

Apparently my tuberose niche was born in a British colony? No matter!

Wet I get the heady blast of tuberose familiar to lovers of tuberose perfumes (Kors Michael Kors comes to mind, but the drydown is nothing alike so don't scold me for the comparison later). Then I get an oddly wonderful moment where the butteriness of the cookies amps and melds with the tuberose in a way that smells of the most intense perfumed shortbread ever concocted (I make rose shortbread cookies, and this like that, but with tuberose).

For a moment I am concerned by the foodiness and beg the cookies to behave themselves. Please! Cookies! Do not get out of control!

And there is the tea, coming to my rescue. Lab tea has not agreed with me in the most heartbreaking of ways, especially since in my commercial perfume days I was in love with Eau D'Oolong which was, as it sounds, all tea (and figs). She has been too sharp in the past and I've shrunk from her strictness. But this tea is so proper, so perfectly mannered, she marches the cooky and the tuberose and the magnolia - now shyly beginning to peek out - into line and begins to read them a lesson in etiquette.

But as with all rambunctious children, though they are _really_ on their best behavior and dressed up in their Sunday clothes, these notes are still all tumbling over one another in their eagerness to make themselves heard.

There is Tuberose! There is Magnolia! There is Cooky! And they are all delicious and charming and lovable that you don't mind the clamour and ruckus they are making on your arm.

Especially when your husband takes a deep breath of the fragrance and says, "this one reminds me of a lasso." A lasso? "Yes, like you are going to lasso me in and never let me get away."

Yes people, it is that good.

Drydown reads as a beautiful magnolia, with a buttery backdrop, an overlay of tuberose and the strict schoolmarmish tea still holding everyone together. The children really have settled down and are now ready for their photo op.

I haven't read the source material, and I can't speak to the scent's power to evoke its muse. Someone else will have to write _that_ review. I am just so happy to have found "my" tuberose, easily accessible - unlike my beloved Kataskopia, which I can now hoard.

<still squealing. still flapping.>

Tzi

[puck_nc]

Origin: Straight from the Lab.

 

Initial Thoughts: I am an all-florals-all-the-time type of perfume consumer. I love gardenia to bits. The only thing that worries me is the foody notes taking over. It's a rather hot day here - when I first pulled the bottle out of its wrapper and held it to my nose, all I could smell was a heavy sweet baked note.

 

In the Bottle: Tea and biscuits, indeed. I'm not getting even an iota of floral from the bottle. Rich, incredibly strong and sweet tea with a pastry beside it.

 

Wet: At first it's yet more tea, tea, tea, sweet enough for the spoon to stand in. And then the glorious gardenia starts to fight its way to the top.

 

Drydown: And the gardenia promptly fades again. All I'm getting after half an hour is tea and biscuits. This makes me sad.

 

Verdict: I'll give it a couple of days and try once more, but if all I'm left with is foody then this bottle will need to find a new home.

[Leopard403]

Finally, a wearable tuberose! I amp amp amp it like crazy and cannot smell anything foody, but the floral is obviously tempered by those notes. Lovely and feminine.

[ltrittipoe]

Skin chemistry is so weird! And while I have had some minor examples of this, Miss Spink is a MAJOR skin chemistry weirdo. (Keep in mind this is fresh out of the mailbox). Freshly applied, I get floral cookies. Drying down, I get this odd tea/cookie/floral combination. Then, completely dry, I get....

 

 

 

Red Lace.

 

 

 

In a side by side comparison, Red Lace is slightly more sweet, Miss Spink is slightly more smoky. But so similar!

[angelamaria]

In bottle: this isn't as over the top as I was expecting; to me this feels a lot more stately, full of old-fashioned grandeur. I'm not sure which floral note is strongest, but my initial impression was gardenia.

 

Wet on skin: a lot more floral once on my skin--yes, I can see where "over the top" is coming from. There's also a slight powderiness to round things out, which is in keeping with the old-fashioned feel of this perfume. I've seen reviews that call for smoke, but this is really more like powder than smoke for me.

 

Dry: once dry, in addition to that stately, old-fashioned, expensive powder, there's an additional soapy tinge to this, although it may just be scent association for a lot of floral notes. It's generally the same as the wet phase, if a little softer, a little soapier.

 

Verdict: nope, this isn't for me. It's an interesting scent and thankfully it isn't beating those notes incessantly into my nostrils, but I wouldn't wear something this floral.

[voodoocatwoman]

I was so looking forward to this blend because I am the biggest gardenia fan. Unfortunately, the only gardenia I get in this scent is buried beneath a pile of rotting garbage.

 

Ick.

[stellamaris]

???? cookies? Perversion? What the hell...

maybe I should let this sit a couple days.

[tativa]

I love how we all seem to be getting something a little different from this.

 

The two times I have worn it have been very different as well. The first time (the first day the package came) I got licorice cookies out of it and no flower at all. Today I am getting almost only flower out of this... but is it gardenia or tuberose? Nope... its lotus. A very complex and realistic wet lotus.

 

I haven't decided to keep this one yet or not. I'm going to let it sit for another month or two and see what wildness it smells like then.

[kohaisama]

Sadly, no matter how long I let this rest, it starts and ends on my skin as pancake syrup. No florals at all, just cloying syrup and for the final twist, it amps like crazy and overwhelmed my nose to a point where I was congested.

[KittyHawk]

Bah, Miss Spink. Too much cookie and tea, not enough flowers. If it were just tuberose and gardenia, this would probably be my HG floral, but alas, the buttery tea just makes my stomach churn. Gunny really nailed it: it smells like pancake syrup. I'll test this again once it's settled for a month or so, but this is too foodie for my taste. Disappointment, thy name is Miss Spink.

[Blood onmy hands]

Testing my bottle of Miss Spink has had its ups and downs. I expected to hate this, because tuberose is usually sharp and harsh white floral that gives me a headache, but the floral part of this isn't bad (at least not at first). It's a creamy, tropical smelling gardenia that reminds me of monoi oil. I also love the 'tea splash and biscuit crumbs,' which are quite strong and remind me of anise cookies and caramels. But something about the mixture in the drydown starts to smell rancid on me. It's like the floral takes on a rubbery, sour, rotten quality that mixes with the sweetness (which dries down to smell sort of like pancake syrup on me) in a bad way. I totally get what another reviewer meant by the pile of rotting garbage. It really has an undertone that smells like plastic bags full of rotting food on a hot day. Sad, because I really love this when first applied, but the drydown seems to just turn rancid and off on me... I definitely recommend tracking down a sample of this before going for a full bottle.

[zankoku_zen]

Gardenia, wet wool, tea biscuits and mothballs.

 

This smells like someone's old grandmother's house.

 

EPIC SKIN FAIL.

[milo]

Why does this smell like pastry to me? I'm getting nut pastry and what I think may be gardenia. Either my skin or my nose appears to be broke. After a bit, it does become more florally and less pastry-like. Still, I've yet to smell a bpal oil that actually smells like the real deal gardenia. I do get a faint resemblance, but it ends there. This is still a tropical and heady floral, with the nut pastry just not really gardenia in my books. I do like the odd tropical blend, but this one just doesn't make the cut.

 

eta, OK, looking back I'm not the only one getting foody here!

Edited June 20, 2013 by milo

[doublehelix]

In the vial, smells of buttery biscuits! The kind one would serve with gravy. Wet, it smells like buttery biscuits with a hint of floral. On the drydown, the biscuits are definitely still there, but I get more of the gardenia. Yum! I think I prefer this one over miss forcible, it doesn't have the candy-liquorice note.

[savage_rose]

Florals and tea, with a subtle hint of that baked note. This blend just makes me smile...it's sweet and not overpowering, and just smells like sunshine and teatime. But that teatime you might have had a little girl, imagining your dolls and bears, or your favorite characters coming to call (my teatime would have had Benson, oddly enough. I was a weird kid who valued deadpan humor). A childlike, effusive, innocent counterpoint to the demure knowingness of the Miss Forcible. I love this so much .

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Omg! Not what I was expecting! It reminds me of Venus Verticordia right off the bat - there's a sugared/honeyed floral in here that is TO DIE FOR!! As it dries it smells nothing like Venus V., but it's lovely in it's own right. Very very sweet, but I love sweet perfumes. It has a very classic feel. I am not actually that familiar with either tuberose or gardenia, so I can't say if either is dominant.

 

 

Dry: I totally get the hairspray effect others have mentioned. That's what this is on me. It's so strong!! It's not really unpleasant or anything, just not something I want to smell like.

[Cali]

Okaaay, so I have figured out by now that tuberose is... not a note for me. Which is what I remember bothered me about the other miss spink. I'm getting a lot of the tartyness a lot of the other BPAL GC foodies have, which I am ALSO not a fan of (I'm a mess, I know) and this whole thing just amps on me like cRAZY and gets messy and I ...kind of just wanna wash it off again.

Miss Spink, you're a sweet old lady but this doesn't work for me.

[AraliaShine]

Of the Coraline decants, this was one that I was pretty sure that I'd sniff once and pass along.

Tuberose is a caution note on me. It tends to amp to the moon and back from my skin, usually to

the exclusion of any & all other notes. So I read 'over the top' and expected a tuberose bomb.

Lightly applied to one wrist, I was pleasantly surprised that the first note I picked up was a buttery

gardenia. Then tea, rich and strong. Then OH HAI, tuberose crashes your tea in true grand dame

style. But she's forced to sit down and more or less behave while she's plied with buttery shortbread

biscuits and even more tea. I do like gardenia and have a soft spot for foody scents more than all

flowers all the time, so this one has begun to work its charms on me.

 

I'm hanging on to the decant and interested to see how it compares to The Other Miss Spink.