Freeway

the notes listed here are entirely different than the notes listed on sarah’s website... i’m assuming that they’ve reformulated it since it was first released. the correct notes: Top Notes: orange groves and gasoline Heart Notes: jasmine, lilies, palm flowers Base Notes: hot tyres, waffles with ice cream. the description on her website is different too.. i’ll insert an excerpt of that below. “We [sarah mccartney & luckyscent] started thinking about the scent of LA in the future. It's the aroma of a freeway when the oil has run out, and the space has become a wildlife haven, with orange groves and white flowers. There are solar cars and bicycles, picnic tables and humming birds. Like everywhere in LA there's the background scent of cooking sugar. Mandarin petitgrain essential oil gives it a strange note of gasoline evaporating from sun on baking concrete, and there's the deep dark hot rubber smell in the background.” someone's probably noted this already but anyway, i think this is an absolutely great perfume. excellent concept, excellent execution. it can’t be categorized.. it’s just its own thing. it sounds as though it would be a bit challenging, but it’s very wearable.. not at all offputting. it is indeed a little strange, but nothing crazy. i was actually a bit dismayed by how nice and comforting it smelt when i first got it.. was expecting something more dystopian and abstract. a creamy orange aroma stays from opening to fade, and is accompanied by peculiar notes of hot rubber and sugary pastry. the gasoline note is more prominent in the opening, but it’s fleeting. very fun fragrance, and it is entirely genderless. i also think it’s suitable to wear no matter the weather outside.

In crafting 4160 Tuesdays Freeway, Sarah McCartney does something very special: she works in a generally sweet, creamy, pleasant formula and turns in partly dirty to create something brand new and nuanced. The dominant aspect of the risk is the trifecta of orange blossom, vanilla, and petitgrain, and the former two are used to make up the near-entirety of two other compositions that I love, the more purely sweet Profumum Meringa and Lili Bermuda SunKiss. Certainly there are plenty other such examples, as well. Freeway, however, takes a bit of a turn (pardon the pun) toward the boozy and the dirty, combining the abovementioned trio with, respectively, rum/brandy and tobacco/cannabis. It's this harmony between the mostly-sweet notes and the somewhat dirty notes that fosters a certain uniqueness that distinguishes Freeway from other sweet orange blossom scents. Sarah McCartney's mastery is best on display here as it is in Eau My Soul, finding the right combination of notes in proper proportions to create art. Performance is strong and Freeway should prove a versatile offering, serving for me as a mostly-refreshing distraction on a hot summer day, though it's also bold, sweet, boozy, and dirty, so it really works year-round. Regardless of wearer or occasion, this is something I'd like to smell over and over again. $110 for 50ml is more or less typical of her pricing, perhaps slightly higher than average for an EDP, but nevertheless worth every penny for a fan like me. Her best work to date (that I've tried) along with Eau My Soul. 9 out of 10

My first experience of Freeway, a few years ago, was not good: I received a bottle for Christmas, and first wore it on a freezing, icy January day. Though I really liked the sweet (not overly so), vanilla and orange blossom fragrance, it just didn't work in cold weather, I have revisited it with a new bottle during the the heatwaves we've been having in the UK during the last few weeks, and it has been amazing: As it comes out of the bottle, it reminds me of a more modern take on traditional eaux de Cologne, such as 4711 and Imperiale; without including nasty white musks like Guerlain's Cologne Du Parfumier or some of the newer 4711 floral Colognes. The citrus notes gradually fade, and the orange blossom and vanilla take over. The more I have worn it, the less I have noticed the hot road, tyre and petrol notes, and am smelling the floral, alcoholic and powdery notes, alongside the orange blossom and vanilla. Thankfully, I'm not smelling the cannabis, as this really doesn't work on me. I think Freeway is going to become a regular summer fragrance for me, and I am always going to remember it as the perfume I wore on my wedding day yesterday (my husband wore Goodbye Picadilly)

My first nice full bottle! (Or, at least that I bought myself). It was my signature last summer and I ran out of my decant and now that the weather is above 50 I had to get it. It was the only sweet thing I'd felt comfortable wearing in +90 degree weather, somehow it bloomed on my skin nicely in the heat. It really smells like a county fair to me. (A wearable county fair) I don't know why - it's supposed to smell like a freeway, and I can't recall any notes that specifically smell like a county fair - but it really reminds me of a fair, or a theme park, or a festival atmosphere. Maybe a gas station with something exciting going on.

Definitely more a sweet scent than dirty ... but there is dirtiness. When you apply it, you think 'lovely, sure, but where's that leather and rubber? The cigarettes and weed?'. Give it about 10 minutes. Sweetness goes dry, rubber meets with an acrid, sour citrus. It's not a freeway, nor a dirty L.A street ... but there's definite darkness. Yet, the vanilla persists. It's an odd blending. I actually would love to buy a full bottle of this. Its genuinely interesting. This is orange blossom and vanilla meeting with rubber and petitgrain mostly. Very fun. I enjoy it.

This is my second favorite offering from the house. It smells like a road trip in suburbs of California with laughter, and sunny skies. There is a bit of an herbaceous vibe which is well blended with the sweetness. I also get a bit of damp pitch after it has rained. This scent is awesome. I do not know why I thought 15ml would be enough juice lol

Sarah McCartney’s dream of a sweet future Los Angeles summoned me here. I grew up in Los Angeles, and her description of this fragrance (right here!) is so beautiful I blind bought it. This is a joyful, creamy, slightly dark scent: a look down from the top of a ride at a summer carnival. It’s futuristic in the best way.

rhubarb lovers rejoice! or mandarin lovers, apparently. punchy, invigorating, optimistic. makes you feel like a middle schooler running to hide inside a culvert post ding-dong-ditch.

coming back to say that this is quite literally the perfect fragrance to wear on a really hot day in a suburban environment.

I truly love this fragrance, possibly the best of the house so far...addictive & very long lasting. Double Thumbs up!!

I am underwhelmed. Orange blossom combined with rubber (think Bvlgari Black). Interesting for about a half hour and then gone for the most part. I’m glad I only have a sample.

You know when you were a kid, middle of summer heatwave in a tarmaced playground, it smells like that with some bitter orange and vanillary background

Freeway— very odd but entertaining. At one point it seemed like root beer and rubber. Changes a lot.

This is so interesting. A mixture of dirty and sweet. The pyramid given by Fragrantica is pretty on point: Pleasant mandarin orange and petitgrain to start out with, followed by dirty tobacco, rum, almost a cigarette smell. Dirty. They say this is supposed to represent 'dirty orange blossom' but instead I think it captures 'dirty vanilla.' The sweetness and the dirt mixed together is a bit jarring. I can't say it's pleasant. You can smell the cannabis in here, but it isn't dirty. I think the tobacco is dirty and maybe the woods. You can have clean, pleasant, creamy tobacco but that isn't what is featured in this scent. I would compare it to an ashtray smothered in vanilla body spray. Beginning: Citrus and petitgrain that burns off really quickly. Mid: Lasts two hours: dirty ashtray bathed in vanilla body spray. Dirty wood and cannabis mixed together. Skin Scent - Goes from the beginning of hour three to the end of hour eight. Smells like vanilla body spray, nothing else. It's boring at this point. I'm glad I tried this, but I wouldn't buy a full bottle. This is not a fragrance I enjoyed.

smells like rubber and black and milds. there’s not much of anything redeeming, i’m a bit nauseated but if i give it a second chance i’ll come back.

I don't want to rate this- it has a rating of 4.20 and that alone makes me happy.

Well hello, I don't normally visit, but I was summoned here by a customer. I have to disclose - it says at the bottom of the page - that I own 4160Tuesdays and I made Freeway. I thought I'd just drop in to say that I've no idea where the quote at the top of the page came from! It gives the impression that it's from me, but it's really not. If you like, you can watch the video I made with Arthur my chief bottler, on the 4160Tuesdays site, that explains everything. Sullied? Nooooo! I meant it to be the aroma of future Los Angeles after the oil runs out and the freeways are cycle paths, picnic areas, and wildlife refuges, with the waft of evaporating gasoline, which I think is a clean smell. It actually comes from natural mandarin petigrain. Everywhere I went in LA I was never far from the smell of cooking sugar, hence the enduring vanilla. It's been really interesting reading the reviews; so extremely wide-ranging. I think there are more reviews than I've actually sold bottles. 😁 You know when niche companies say they're only making a tiny edition of 5,000 bottles? We do 50 bottles. When they sell, I make another 50. I'm on batch 3 of Freeway, and batch 8 of The Sexiest Scent on the Planet, and I did a 200 bottle batch of that one because that is our best seller. Fortunately I'm not planning world domination, and if just one person loves a perfume I make, then I'll keep on making it (regulations permitting). For me, that's what being an indie is about. I make things I want to make; they don't have to be crowd-pleasers because I blend these small batches. If I go a bit extreme sometimes, I think that's what indies are for, to push it to the edge. Sometimes - for some people - we fall right over. But we bounce back up again. I recently worked out that our annual turnover is the same as Jo Malone London does in 12 hours. I'm always aiming to make wearable fragrances though - I would never deliberately make a stinker just to get talked about - but fortunately for one of ours to be what we consider a success, we only have to sell 20 bottles a year. All the same, thanks for bothering to test and review Freeway, and if this is not your cup of tea, I hope you all find one to fall in love with, eventually. xx

While this description sounds very “busy” (freeway style), after an initial “what the heck is going on here” (in a good way) opening, with what smells like fuel and rubber, a park, and everything but the kitchen sink, it settles into a rather cozy and comforting scent of sugary vanilla, soft florals and citrus on my skin, with a fresh but almost edible quality. But there is a slight earthiness that keeps it from going “too” fresh or gourmand. There is something about this fragrance that reminds me of something from my past. Not sure if it’s another perfume, a place or some type of food, but I immediately am transported into a memory. More of a feeling than any sort of visual. I love this fragrance and think it’s one of Sarah McCartney’s best — in my top 5 from 4160Tuesdays.

Very unusual perfume that does really well to evoke the story behind its creation. It's citrussy sweet, green and purple. On very first spritz there is the scent of freshly laid hot tarmac - I have no idea what notes makes up this accord, but I desperately wish there was more of it. I also get smokey tobacco and a hint of cannabis, but mostly vanilla as it develops. An intriguing, gorgeous, urban, gritty vanilla at that. There is an underlying rubberiness that I adore, and the contrast of sweet and summery vibes with something a little bit strange and dirty is what I especially appreciate. It's that little something that's a bit off about it that keeps me coming back for more.

It's freeway. It's like a sandy freeway within green fields with doses of vanilla & brandy. After 1 min in, the vanilla goes like candy with doses of cannabis. The tobacco shows later with hints of oranges. The jasmines appears later but in bits to add some planty animalic to the blend. It's fair to be honest, not bad but fair.

This is an interesting, shifty weirdo. I thought I was getting an anise note, but I think it’s the cannabis that’s so strange. It’s interesting how this combo does create a subtle, tires-on-asphalt feeling, then evolves into an incredibly pleasant, creamy dry down. Edgy, but sweet. Handsome. I think I love it?

very nice cozy perfume , at first you get the tobacco blast is a clean tobacco some kind of greenery follows i do get the diesel tinge , it is rather clean and cozy is actually very wearable . honestly i like it a lot ! it wears like a leather jacket ! , very nice love !

Very sweet and sticky, like cotton candy and marshmallow creme~ if that's your thing~ I'm enjoying the dry-down a lot more than the earlier phases-

Drinking a Vanilla Coke at a gas station while sitting in the car of a chain smoker.

Love the notes. Anyone happen to be selling this in the states?

@das-Lucky Scent has it in stock.