Sikkim Girls

This is one of my all time fave scents from Lush, along with my sig scent Lust. I live for jasmine/white/yellow/any florals, I adore them. Seriously. SO MUCH! The more the better, a frag can’t ever be too floral for me. Something abt beautiful florals makes me feel so feminine. And Sikkim Girls is truly a thing of beauty. The frangipani is expertly done, & the touch of slowly evolving vanilla with the jasmine & tuberose... it’s a masterpiece. Sultry, sexy, a bit sweet, a bit spicy, a bit Smokey/incensey, but ultimately a beautiful floral that I can never get enough of. I do pick up on the slight tropical vibes & it really does perform amazingly, both the solid & spray last all day, awesome sillage. Keep getting whiffs while typing, stunning. The solid is just as beautiful, slightly different, maybe a tad sweeter? And a bit waxy, prob from the base? SG is one of my few perfumes that without fail *always* gets compliments from random ppl, but like they immediately want a bottle - like stopped while shopping etc. asking for the name of the perfume I’m wearing, how to spell it, where to get it etc. so crazy! I could go through bottles & really wish it wasn’t discontinued.... I’ll never understand why Lush does that w. bestsellers. I’m going to savor my 100ml & 30ml :( Lush perfumes do really well over time tho & I keep all my frags in a wine cabinet; highly recommend if you have one (god, so out of touch I know lol, but really...) light-proof, constant 56% humidity & 55 F sweet spot temp- perfect enviro for storing frags, esp vintages. And CaAlice is right, we all need to petition Lush to bring Sikkim Girls back! I’ll die if they discon Lust too... I guess there’s always dupes... tons of sites make Lush type sprays & perfume oils for almost every Lush scent ever made & they’re pretty accurate, plus the oils last forever & are super affordable. I love how Lush goes back to basic & creates such brilliantly simple, harmonic blends for their scents. Usually no more than 5 notes. And you won’t find a list of top, middle & base notes anywhere. Not all of them winners, but a lot are. (LUST: jasmine+sandalwood+vanilla+rose+Ylang=orgasmic). Sikkim def does something to me too and it’s just 4 gorgeous notes! For a long time I *only* wore Lush frags bc everything else seemed too perfumey in comparison. I now realize I was missing out on an entire world of beautiful fragrances (vtg, new, designer, niche, I want them all!) I’m back to my usual perfume obsessed self; can’t stop collecting & love almost everything I come across lol (almost...) I do see the similarity to Songes, but initially they’re very different. Compared, SG immediately seems deeper, spicier, smokier and Songes is lighter & sweeter. Their listed notes are almost identical. Songes slowly resembles SG more & more the longer I wear it as the frangipani comes through. I’ll have to check out some of the others in the ‘reminds me of’ section! If you can get your hands on a bottle of Sikkim Girls, I highly recommend. Or find yourself a dupe :)

Lush Sikkim Girls is a box full of Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa Incense cones miraculously transformed into a glorious golden nectar of a liquid and bottled for our delight and revelry. I am completely besotted with it. This incense is unlit, there is no smoke in here. Although there may well be a genie waiting to grant your wishes and get you into lots of the best kind of trouble! Off with the lid then, spritz and Oh! What is this? I was expecting white flowers and this is an old fashioned spicy thing - hang on a minute, what is happening, it's growing on my skin, getting bigger and bigger until I am surrounded by an outrageous triffid like floral spice bomb and now I've got to stand in the queue at the supermarket smelling like this, how embarrassing. Great big wafts of Frangipani (known in India as Champa Flowers) and warm tuberose (made rubbery, moist and naughty by the resinous halmaddi note) sitting happy and smug amongst powdery sandalwood, all larger than life and waiting impatiently to be driven off to a wild festival or concert with after-party and they are not going to calm down for quite a while yet. Whew, this one needs a bit of fresh air and some good fun, devil may care company to go with it. Sikkim girls will gladly stay up all night rocking it's way into the morning, in fact it can probably go without sleep for a couple of days. I can smell traces of it on some of my jumpers (oops, I mean 70's posh hippy Biba dresses ;-) days and days after I have worn it. Please don't be put off though, I am prone to getting a bit dramatic. This is very lovely and has a wonderful way of getting really close and familiar with my skin chemistry. Although it's quite strongly floral, it smells natural and feels like it's become part of me and if applied with a light hand is wearable at any time. It does have a soft rubbery, resinous, woodiness in the base although the notes are not listed, this must be a result of the benzyls added to the gorgeous floral absolutes. When it gets very warm I can definitely smell some naughty rubber of the latex kind - you have been warned. I don't really get any jasmine amongst the other flowers but I get a fair amount of smoothed out spices shimmying around with them, and courmarin is there in the base to sweeten and hold it all together. There is a delicious creamy warmth here. Sikkim Girls is different from, but shares some outrageous type DNA with my 80's favourite YSL Opium 1977 (pre-reformulation). Sillage goes from moderate to massive to good and longevity on my skin is awesome. This one will be staying on my favourites shelf and although I wear it whenever I fancy, really I should keep it as my get-ready-to-get-wild go to. Must-try amazingness 10/10

Another scent that hit the market in 2013, as part of the line of fragrances called "Volume 2" (released in 2012) and took inspiration in a tale related to the musician Sheema Mukherjee. She met a coffee-owner in Darjeeling, who claimed that his son-in-law had been attracted by two sirens (mythology) that lured him by shaking their sexy bodies, leaving him in a trance, with her feminine wiles. Sikkim Girls is an exotic and seductive floral that captures the warmth of Darjeeling – a town in West Bengal, in India. It is known for its tea industry and its name translates, literally, by Land of Thunderbolt. In the fragrance composition, notes of jasmine absolute, frangipani absolute (aka plumeria), vanilla absolute, Angelica (tuberose) absolute and tonka bean, in addition to chemical compounds such as Farnesol and Geraniol, which enhance the floral aspect, Linalool, which gives sweet floral aroma and Eugenol, which is clove oil. The result is stunning. Like all perfumes that carry notes of tuberose, the floral output is strong and vibrant. Here, the absolute that was used is almost narcotic: hot, sharp and fruity-type (smells like peach). To give an idea to those who are reading this review right now, in one of the tests that I ran on my skin, I applied a drop on each wrist and received praise from my parents, who were in another room in the house. This perfume exudes a lot! Actually, there is a touch of vanilla in the middle of the story, but amidst the scent of Tuberose and Jasmine absolute, it's almost imperceptible, mere supporting role. Luckily, there is a strengthening of this vanilla nuance, thanks to the frangipani absolute, which must be of pink color, creamier and with more vanilla than the white, which is fruitier. On my skin, the nuances of jasmine appear more isolated after about two hours, when it's easier to distinguish what has gone and what is yet to come. Some say that jasmine's powers are associated with the secrets of fertility, magic, and healing. For a scent that symbolizes an almost magical tale, nothing could be more consistent. For comparison purposes, I would say that Sikkim Girls is part of Carnal Flower's family, recognized as the fragrance that has the largest volume of Tuberose already used in perfumery. Although it is marketed as unisex, some people judge this fragrance as more feminine than masculine. In this case, maybe those sirens have bewitched me too because I would be able to wear it very easily. It's been more than 12 hours since the last application and I'm still in a trance.

It seems that comments about this scent is so mixed. I'm on the positive side. It depicts a seductive, mysterious, exotic beautiful girl, people past by her will turn their heads to see who that girl is, she throws you a mysterious smile, she quickly she walked away. The scent is strong, the smoky white flowers hit you right in your face. But the scent of these white flowers like no other girlish white flower scent which is commonly found in the commercial perfume. Strangely, I don't feel like it's thick, smoky, heavy white flower scent depicts a lady, an granny, but a <>. This frangipani is strong, but not like the frangipani scent you found in Asian frangipani scent - they are sweeter, and has no bitter smell. The performance of this perfume heavily depends on weather, body temperature and humidity. I've used this perfume in Norway's winter and summer, Hong Kong's summer and Singapore's spring - it smells different in all these occasions. The bitterness in its opening lingered for 30-45mins in cold weather. If the hotter the weather, the sooner the powdery, smoky white flower complex comes out. For a time, its scent got onto my jacket and watch, it smelled very different again. What I detected was a mix of soft jasmine and tuberose - doesn't smell like any of those you could easily found on the market. It lingers in my room for almost a week. Its longitivtiy is good, it last over 5 hours even in hot weather. In all the Lush boutiques that I've been to, this is always put in a very un-obvious location of the perfume shelve, it tells how unpopular it is in the Lush perfume family :( For those who want to give it a try, please try not to be frightened by its bitter opening, leaves it on your skin for a while, and smell it again after an hour. When the bitterness has gone, it takes to you to a warm, sunny (not the kind that the sun hit your head and roast you as a barbecue pork), exotic no-man island in the East.

My review is for the solid perfume, sampled during the coldest and driest winter my area has had in a long while. Some other reviews mention Sikkim girls is very weather dependent, so maybe I should do a Spring review. I think Sikkim girls is a timeless, ageless classic. If I pulled the label off, I could see this on the grandmother I never had from Brooklyn, wearing a Hawaiian floral print muumuu and a big straw hat on Rockaway beach. I can see it being worn by a mom at a water park, wrangling small children with floaties on their arms. I can see it worn by a tween girl, maturing into hipness over the summer between school years. The girl is at a pool in LA designed to look like a lagoon. And on myself, I picture the vacation to Thailand I’ve always dreamt of. I’m on a small, fairly isolated beach laying in the sun at waters edge and the air is thick and heavy with flowers. My skin is oiled, and basically being singed by the sun but I don’t care because I am VACATIONING. Maybe toasty skin is the expression of the animalic note others say they pick up in Sikkim, well bended so it’s more of perception than an actual note? The inclusion of water in these scenarios is not meant to convey aquatic or salty tones to sikkim, but the message that the wearer is summering, HARD. It’s linear and simple. The comparison to Chanel no. 5 doesn’t really register with me because No. 5 is aldehydes, aldehydes, aldehydes, but I see where some of the notes could connect for others. I get frangipani and vanilla mostly. The frangipani is realistic and smells amazing. I get some wafts of vanilla candle occasionally, but I think it might be due to the fact that it’s a wax solid perfume. I like it enough to buy the liquid version, but I looks like production has been discontinued? The good ones are always so difficult to get.