Zum Mist Patchouli Orange

Nicedirty/earthy hippie patch, with orange. What is written on the bottle is what you'll get! Clearly not made with top notch ingredients, but given the low price point, that's a great one just to keep in the car and get a couple of sprays for casual occasions. Leans feminine. Spring/Fall days, 20+

Good room spray...orange first, patchouli later.

A weird one. It smells like freshly squeezed bitter & unsweetened orange juice mixed with the smell of freshly cut wet grass. Literally that. Green & orangish. Mixed together, the smell is like of orange mold. I'm not kidding. Like orange mold or mold that grew in a bucket that was left in the rain. This is not something I want me or surroundings to smell like. I don't like it but I don't hate it, & it does actually smell unique. This is more a "Dislike" than a Like.

I use this as a room spray. It doesn't smell "moldy" to me at all, but rather incense-y, and quite pleasant. It lasts for days if you spray it on any kind of fabric. I knew a young woman who used to wear this fragrance often, which is why I bought my own bottle. It takes me back to the mid-70's, when Patchouli was quite popular. I've never associated Patchouli with a "dirty smell", as so many seem to, these days, perhaps because I come from a different generation, when most public places were filled with smoke from cigarettes, and fragrances had to be strong enough to overcome such odors. Young people today have no idea what it was like to go to restaurants, clubs, or any public place, even workplaces, with all the smoke of cigarettes hanging in the air like a blue haze, to the point that fresh air, and it's smell, was virtually unknown, unless you went to the countryside! From the 50's to the 90's, olfactory senses were dulled by the onslaught of smoke (and automobile exhausts) and I'm sure this is why the most popular fragrances were "powerhouses" to today's noses. I love Zum Mist Patchouli Orange.

We live in such a sanitized world (and I'm talking pre-2020) that smelling earthy, smelling herbal is gross to some people. I get that Patchouli is a divisive fragrance, and that's fine, but we're so cut off from the natural that unless a fragrance smells like one of the zillion laundry musks available today it's unappealing to a lot of people. And that, my friends, is sad. I actually like the orange blend better than the original Patchouli because the orange cuts some of the woodiness and I think the sweet acidity of the orange helps round out the herbal earthiness here. I love the soap version of this sold at Publix. Sandalwood is a close second.