Bollywood or Bust

This is a very pleasant and satisfying fragrance with sandalwood, but done more elegantly than in a hippie gypsy fashion. The rose is there, smooth and discrete, and the sandalwood lingers nicely and gently. I really enjoyed wearing this today and find Smell Bent scents to be original and so much better than the "fake plastic watermelony florals" that Coach, DKNY, and everybody else is doing right now. Smell Bent's fragrance names can be naughty (though fun and suggestive) and sometimes do not give full credit to the complexity and elegant design that is being offered. Other favorites, soon to be reviewed, are Smell Bent's She Wolf and Mirror Ball, both also great. Bollywood or Bust, Incensed, and Mirror Ball, also smell to me like they have a good amount of natural molecules in them (She Wolf is nice, but has a tenacious synthetic musk, I think). I like the at least partly natural composition, which adds complexity and is safer for people who may have sensititvities around me. I will wear these Smell Bent fragrances to work applied lightly.

How can I be the first to review Bollywood or Bust? Maybe this means you all have yet to discover Smell Bent, and I'm not sure I want to clue you in. At $45 for a bottle, this is the biggest bargain in niche fragrance. Whether you love his scents or not, the one thing that is objectively true is that they smell like they cost three times the price. If you all start buying it, you may drive up the price. The colder the weather the more I get rose, but in the warmer weather the rich spices come to the fore on my skin. This is a very easy and comfortable scent. Brent Leonesio captured the delicacy, along with that coolness that is particular to roses. The sweet spices give it a comforting quality. It smells far less exotic to me and on me than the name would imply. But it is, in one word, delicious. Where is that like button? I like Bollywood or Bust. Edited to add: I have both the oil and the EDP. I prefer the EDP. Very good longevity, but not a lot of silliage on me.

I've been on a "rose" hunt, and I must say this really makes me happy. Not a headache-y rose. I don't get the incense as much, and the sandalwood is understated, which I like. Hmm, this may be in the running for my FB. I agree with jonovon that the rose smells very real and close and velvety... if I close my eyes I swear my head is buried in a bouquet of them. There is almost a raspberry-ness to the rose. Similar to Andy Tauer's 10 Une Rose Vermeille, which does have raspberry in it. This is VERY nice. Every perfumer needs a nice rose, and I'd say Brent has done very well here.

This is really lovely! Lovely rose and spices and sandalwood! Beautiful.

Cheap, fun, kind of trashy, a little cloying, way over-loud. Yes, it's the tackier side of the Bollywood aesthetic, performed and enacted with great enthusiasm for a reasonable price, and certainly has echoes of greater, much classier rose/woods scents. In its celluloid dreams it's a marquee star like Guerlain's lovely Santal Royal. In actual fact it's more of a mall-grade princess. I still give it a few stars. As I'm not a fan of big, high, pink/red rose as a note it's a little much for me overall, but it'll still be loved by many who want a warm, ever-so-slightly niche-y treatment. I was hoping for far more wood & spice and less of that ever-so-slightly screechy rose top, which does (for me) conjure not-premium incense sticks, rather than real flowers. But it's all a matter of taste and this one is definitely closer to the mainstream than many of Smell Bent's wackier more experimental things (which I tend to like more.) Seems pretty femme but male rose lovers would be able to rock it. As I'm sensitive to that big-petal blowsiness its sillage seemed pretty huge to me, but it didn't last forever - 3-4h max on skin. If you can imagine an ultra-budget remake of Santal Royal but with everything filmed through a slightly blurry filter and with the colour saturation amped to the max and beyond, you're about there. And there's a place in the world for that.