In Praise of Love

[doomsday_disco]

Jasmine tea, lemon slices, black frankincense, hinoki cypress, and golden sandalwood.

[bambi]

In the bottle, I'm getting very strong jasmine and bright, juicy lemon. On the skin, I get smooth sandalwood and a touch of more earthy frankincense. The lemon smell disappears fairly quickly, and I'm not getting much of the hinoki. The jasmine tea doesn't read as a jasmine tea so much as just jasmine flowers (a similar situation to a Shunga from last year with a jasmine tea note), but while my skin generally amps jasmine, this is much more lowkey. I have a feeling that the frankincense, sandalwood, and hinoki are doing a lot of work to ground this on my skin, and I'm left with a smooth, sweet, earthy jasmine fragrance. 

[doomsday_disco]

This one starts off being mostly about the tea (more standard green tea than jasmine green tea at first) and lemon, with a bit of a camphorous quality from the hinoki cypress. Over time, the jasmine part of the jasmine tea emerges -- but it doesn't really smell like actual jasmine tea, just like a floral note hovering over the tea note -- as well as the resins, making this a floral tea scent accompanied by resins (I get more sandalwood than frankincense). They don't share the same tea or floral notes, but this is bringing to mind At the Tea Drinking from the 2023 Shunga collection, with resins instead of orange.

 

I liked this one best during the wet phase of the scent, before the resins became more noticeable. I wish that I had gotten more hinoki from this, but I still like this enough to hang onto my decant. I'm going to give this a full-day slather to see if I need more of it -- and maybe I'll get more hinoki that way -- as I do think this is pretty. I look forward to pairing it with Informal Tea Hair Gloss.