Ginger Pear

Ew, no. This has that 'floursecnt brite' synthetic vibe you get with mabye avolume 9 magnolia mixed with lemon-brite. The 'pear' note is a watery, tame and anaemic excuse for a Fruit note and it's not even designer sugary sweet at all! A fail on almost all accounts. No ambery/ambrette punch, no movement, no other fruits or spice/woods to add depth. I would have also liked much more from this 1 in terms of maybe a rich vanillin or exciting notes like toffee; and there are much more complex/fuller project scents out. Deeply disappointing. My rating: 5/10. And that's being generous, at least there was no barnyard and Niche-a-minute chimney smoke vibes coming off this tester!

So bland and boring, with poor performance, I don't even want the spend much time on this review. The scent is somewhat fresh and you may recognise some Pears, if you really think about them. But it is slightly harsh in a fresh way, and still very weak. And reminds or some furniture varnish.... Update: okay, I gave it a couple more tries. I I like it somehow. It reminds me of something from my childhood... Perhaps somebody I knew used to wear similar perfume? So it has some old fashioned vibe, but is not old lady scent. It is a bit fresh and rounded at the same time. I pairs amazingly well with vanillas. Performance is actually not so bad. I think I will finish my decant.

On me, this smelled like a very faint cross between pear and those little tree air fresheners you get for cars. I waited for the dry down to see what else would happen and then it just disappeared! Seriously, I got less than 20 minutes out of this and it was completely gone. Pear, air freshener, nothing. That was it entirely. I tried it again a couple of days later in case it had just been some weird fluke, but exactly the same thing happened again. The more I go through my sample pack from this house, the more convinced I am that they have no business charging as much as they do for their perfumes. I really wish they'd focus on quality over quantity. They claim to offer high quality perfume, but I personally don't see it (and can't help but wonder if it's even possible when Boadi is churning fragrances out so incessantly).

To me the pear is the dominant note in this fragrance. I can't quite pick out the ginger but I recognise the slight (VERY slight) warmth it gives to the pear note. It's a little too sweet and cloying for me, as indeed are many perfumes by Illuminum. Too many of them have an artificial note and Ginger Pear is no exception. There is a perfume (although I can't remember the name of it) in the Boadicea the Victorious line that smells *EXACTLY* like this. It's only now that I realise that both lines are by the same person, namely Michael Boadi. The Boadicea fragrance turns very soapy and unpleasant on my skin and lasts only an hour, at best! The staying power of Ginger Pear is somewhat better but unfortunately it's the aforementioned cloying quality which aids its longevity. Overall, 1 out of 5. Not good.

The exciting stuff (ginger) is in the opening, and then it becomes one of those generic floral-musky-sweet aroma that so many perfume have, and what's more, this perfume is not even doing a great job at it because the longevity is short and the pear in it smells synthetic and bland (the pear note does exist from beginning to drydown, but not as a character but more as a background). So why was it named Ginger Pear at firsthand? I can nearly say I am infuriated by this since it is quite pricey, for this cost I can get 2 bottles of something similar but with a lot more fun package design and larger in size.

There is no ginger at all. Disappointed. Although the pear note smells juicy, I don't think I will buy it.

Initially I thought that it must have been the luck of the draw that another Illuminum perfume, this one Ginger Pear, reminded me of another Bond no 9 perfume, in this case, New York Fling. The ginger and citrus are key to both creations in the opening, but they swiftly diverge as they drydown. This perfume never becomes soapy or cleanish, as does New York Fling. I fondly recall my dentist asking me what perfume I was wearing during an appointment (it was New York Fling), and then saying "I like it. You smell like you just showered.) Ginger Pear dries down very differently. For many people it appears to be a simple disappearing act, a swift fade-away to nearly nothing. On my skin, I start to notice that "stuff"--amberish-cedarish aromachemical amalgam in near ubiquity. By the drydown, that's all that I smell, so this is definitely not for me, as I completely and utterly dislike that "stuff". It's not as bad here as it is in many mainstream designer fragrances today, but it is still detectable, which is already too much for me.