I am trying to expand my nose, trying to step out of my comfort zone and The Smell of Weather Turning is about as far away from my comfort zone as you can get. Firstly it is a LUSH fragrance. Lush is a store that you can smell before you get to it. I find it pretty overwhelming but their fragrance smell nothing like their stores which is always a source of fascination to me. The Smell of Weather Turning is beautifully packaged in a terracotta tube, the glass bottle. It is very giftable.
Initially, alI I get is smoke – the kind of smoke that makes your eyes water and if you have a weak chest will leave you feeling slightly short of breath. Green twigs and grass burning smoke. Keep inhaling and you get grass, green grass which is pleasant but the smoke is overwhelming. The Smell of Weather Turning reminds me of when I was a girl guide and we went camping in Cudham, Kent and attempted to light a fire and it just didn’t work because the twigs were green and we were cold and generally it was all a bit of a mess. This is not a positive memory for me (did I mention the cold) which may be part of the reason that I am not a fan of this fragrance. In addition this wet smokiness stays on my skin for about two hours which is way too long.
Once you get to the dry down it is very woody with a generous helping of chamomile tea (which is not my favourite herbal infusion). On my skin the cinnamon in the blend hardly registers and the woodiness stays constant. At this stage, if I add a citrus cologne (of which I have several) I get a very interesting blend which brings out the green and tones down the chamomile. If I attempt to layer the fragrance after the initial spray, my beloved citrus fragrances can’t cut through the smoke.
There is a possibility that if this smelt like the smoke you get from a summer barbeque on the beach that I would enjoy it more, but green twig fires on a rainy day in Kent? I’ll pass!