Gardenia

This smells nothing like a gardenia to me. I've spent a large part of my life around several varieties of these flowers, so I feel I know of where I speak. This perfume, on my skin, and on a perfume tester strip, smells alarmingly like one of those scented hand sanitizers. It's just like the kind you find in a dispenser by the sink in a public bathroom. Headspace technology at the NYBG? Ok, whatever they say, but this isn't it - sorry! Just because one is able to read and record the molecular structure of the fragrant air swirling around a blossom doesn't necessarily mean that those same molecules can be successfully replicated in a lab somewhere. We've seen too many unsuccessful reformulations of classic perfumes over the last several years to think and believe that a chemist can just recreate forbidden aroma chemicals, to say nothing of Mother Nature, who is by far one of the greatest perfumers! Caswell Massey's original Gardenia Signature Scent was a big, green, Yankee Candle Co.-Amway air freshener bomb, so I was really hoping this new formulation was going to be an improvement. Alas... I'm also regrettably left in the uncomfortable position of being both glad and sad that I cannot love this perfume - sad because it was a gift from someone who knows how much I love gardenias, and glad because I didn't pay for it! This perfume does have one redeeming quality. The packaging. It's lovely.

Unadulterated gardenia. Faithfully unpolluted. True and natural. Pure Magic.