Remember that over the top retro package that was The Party in Manhattan? A refresher below:
Well, the same company has produced a few new fragrances for Spring/Summer called The Garden Party (Wisteria and Frangipani). The Garden Party Frangipani is the one I tested, and it’s a fitting companion piece to the deep, musky nature of The Party in Manhattan.
The Garden Party Frangipani won’t win any awards for ‘Freshest, Lightest Fragrance of the Season’ as it’s definitely a heavy-lidded, languid, come-hither scent from the start. It feels like a high-summer perfume, something you’d wear in sticky, humid weather that would infuse such potentially oppressive conditions with the recollection of sweet orange rinds, fleshy jasmine flowers and the spicy tropical waft of warm island breezes.
Listed scent notes are: spices, Calabrian bergamot, Ceylonese cinnamon, Indian jasmine absolute, osmanthus absolute, Venezuelan tolu balsam, white musk, oakmoss and East Indian patchouli. There’s a distinct muskiness to the entire affair (echoing The Party in Manhattan in this respect) — it goes on sweet and floral, yet with an undertone of heat, skin and salty air that becomes more pronounced as time passes.
The Garden Party Frangipani strikes me as extremely feminine, but in a glamorous Old Hollywood way, or, rather, in a Hollywood version of the British Colonial way — full of formal dances in the evening, intense conversations on tropical white sand beaches, and careening down a third-world dirt road in the latest, fastest convertible, locals scattering out of the way as the horn blasts and the over-inflated tires squeal.
Your level of pleasure in the nostalgia trip may vary depending upon whether you identify with the driver of the convertible or the terrified locals.
Again, as with The Party in Manhattan, the company isn’t breaking any new ground, and from its marketing copy and retro packaging, I don’t suspect it has any intention of doing so. Lucky Scent states that The Garden Party fragrances are crafted from all-natural components, but white musk is a noted synthetic substitute for natural musks, so I’m not exactly certain what “all natural” could be referring to in this instance (beyond functioning as a marketing catch-phrase that we’re not meant to question).
***Note: prices for The Garden Party run considerably lower than its sister fragrance, The Party in Manhattan. The Party in Manhattan is $275.00 for 50ml, but The Garden Party fragrances are $165.00 for 50ml. The Garden Party Frangipani fragrance wears much more closely to the skin than The Party in Manhattan, and longevity is good but not great.
