Polish Potatoes

Polish Potatoes smells exactly as it's name suggests. It is very rare I find, to have a perfume that actually delivers on it's promises. Perfumes are often like politicians; a load of hot air with little to no actual substance. But not here. Polish Potatoes opens with dirt. Pure, earthy, mineral rich dirt. Wow. Perfume anarchy. Polish Potatoes does whatever it wants, without anyone's permission. It will present a version of perfume that will openly challenge your nose to a fight to the death. It makes the smell of damp soil theatrical, wholesome, classy and fantastic. Earthy vegetables also play a role in this beautifully bizarre scent profile, the ensemble of them gives an essence of cold Polish vegetable soup. There are some elegant florals interlaced in the middle, and the base contains even more soil tones, along with some resinous aspects. I fucking love it. It is overpriced however. The bottle contains such a miniscule amount, but you don't need a lot of sprays for this perfume to become your skin's best buddy. Over the £100 mark for such a small bottle takes the piss a bit. But, look at the company this scent belongs to; high-end, up it's own arse "fashion". Yuk. Edit: Bohoboco have to be the most unprofessional perfume seller that I've ever dealt with, in my long time on this earth. I purchased a sample first, which arrived easily. However, if you live in England and want to buy a full size, be prepared to pay an extortionate import fee. I mentioned this to Bohoboco, stating that they should warn their overseas customers about the fee that is added on, as you are not made aware of it at any point, until DHL calls you up and demands it to be paid. Their answer took a long time to come back to me, and it was basically "this isn't our problem" in a more palatable collection of words. Fuck them, fuck their perfumes and fuck them again. I will NEVER buy anything else from them ever again. I should have known how cunty they would be, by their over-inflated "high fashion" ego. The perfume: 9/10. It loses a point for being a very small volume. The company who make the perfume: -1000/10. CUNTS.

Polish Potatoes is such a powerfully evocative fragrance! While also performing very well and being quite wearable. Why, you might just have a masterpiece on your hands, Mr. Lach. To me, this scent perfectly encapsulates autumn with its fresher, cooler air, just-planted winter wheat sprouting its first leaves, evergreen pine trees and the return of leather boots to daily rotation. The atmospheric messiness of yard work in the rain rewarded with the occasional rose, heliotrope or carnation still in bloom as well as root vegetables aplenty. The satisfying heaps of beetroots and potatoes filling the cool, humid air of your root cellar with their slightly metallic, a little mossy, sweet-ish, grounding promise. Autumn with its cold, fragrant wind, carrying news of moist, fallen leaves slowly becoming fresh earth in the forest, of fields cooling deep beneath their golden stubble, ploughed muck or young seedlings. News of stacked firewood, distant chimney smoke and coming winter. It turns out the Czech countryside childhood experience doesn't differ much from the Polish one - as far as its olfactive perception goes, that is - because I was stunned by the photorealism of this fluid, ever-changing creation. A beautiful, effortlessly wearable work of art and a new favourite. It lasts well into the eighth hour until becoming a skin scent and then lasting some more. Perfectly unisex. Bravo! I cannot wait for September to wear Polish Potatoes in their natural habitat!

On first spray there is virtually no hint of potato. The scent is sweeter than expected - opening to a deep patchouli and vanilla. It is also much more floral than I expected, the heliotrope following behind and creating a powdery trail. After a few minutes on the skin, the underlying earthiness of the fragrance develops, with a "wet" soil note combining with the heliotrope, I start to think of a sweet garden. A few hours later the scent now smells like "expensive earth." If someone were to build a Macys fragrance counter in the middle of a farm - the salespeople going back and forth between spraying floral testers and harvesting vegetables - this would be the result. (A more appealing smell than it sounds!) Almost 6 hours later and the scent still was going strong. twojtrener was not lying when saying this perfume is incredibly strong. If you want a scent that lingers, this is one. The pine and leather notes rise to the top after some time. Its strangely cooling and crisp, feels like breathing in a flower field in a damp forest. The oud is also much more prominent, after some time. This frangrance is gearing up to be a personal favorite of mine, but does come across quite strong. I'd probably spray it on a few hours before going out.

Please don't be too off put by the name. I loved this immediately. My theory is that Bohoboco scents are intentionally titled to throw you off your game a little bit. An expectation is created, only to leave you surprised when another entirely different experience happens. The potato aspect is there, don't get me wrong, it's just not the whole story. More like a single snapshot inside of a larger picture. I like to think of this more as : "Night Market 4am". Lots going on here. The idea of getting back to the roots of a dirty patchouli by actually marrying a thoughtfully complex soil accord to it is genius. So many patchouli's come off as chocolatey when trying to go down the dark path. Or high-zing hippie madness when floralized. This goes a different route, literally grounding it, bringing it down to earth, real earth, where you realized it always belonged. The Benz-amber-heliotrope trio make the whole thing more approachable and rounded, while the oud butches it up a notch in the drydown. Somehow I missed the pine moment entirely. The sillage will not disappoint those intrepid souls among you. Skin scent wearers be warned, this is a bonafide powerhouse.

A sharp, dark and dry leather/oud/amber scent, triangulating somewhere between LADDM, Puredistance M and Laudano Nero (with all the strength and persistence of the latter). The marketing is fun on this one, but also distracting. If I cross my eyes just right I can imagine I’m getting beetroots from the earthy interplay of labdanum, oud and patchouli, but there aren’t any elements here we haven’t smelled before and in similar combinations - we just have to remember that fragrance notes are pure marketing, sometimes emphatically unrelated to the actual ingredients. In terms of quality though, this is way up there. There’s a killer deal to be had if you find it on discount. Amouage could release this with some New Age-y, random Magnetic Poetry tile for a name – let’s say, Awakening – and charge a multiple of the price to great acclaim. At least then it would be better targeted to Saudi princes and American nepo hippy girls rather than your babcia.