Astrid Perfume: Pink and Red Valentine's Collection review

Despite the (very) belated posting, this is my first official purchase from the wonderful Astrid Perfume. They released a Pink and Red single notes collection back in February for Valentines Day 2020, and I have to admit I enraptured. I've been looking for a cherry scent, but I also find that I absolutely love simpler blends - which Astrid also did. To quote Astrid, "some of these single notes are fairly complex as single notes traditionally go, but my intent was to create a single note in concept despite using several ingredients to create a solitary fragrance." There were a ton of scents I wanted to pick up, including the elusive Pink Underwear which sold out within a day, so I ended up getting a handful of 1ml decants from Ajevie. 

Pink Tea - A pink herbal tea blend with hibiscus, lemongrass, rose petals, chamomile, and raspberry.

Wet: Herbal goodness. It smells like a cup of chamomile, lemongrass and hibiscus tea. It's got that soft chamomile mellowness, and the slight tartness of hibiscus and that grassy citrus from the lemon grass.

Dried down: The lemongrass comes through a little stronger after dry down, paired with the sourness from the raspberry. The rose petals are never the loudest part of this blend, but they blossom more with the raspberry during the duration of the wear. While the herbal tea profile definitely mellows out and takes a back seat, the profile remains a calming blend of fruit/floral infused tea in a delicate glass teapot. It's a deceptively simple blend, but the inclusion of lemongrass with the rose and raspberry adds a meditative quality to an otherwise simple blend. I really really loved this scent, it's just really easy to wear.

Perfect for: Weekend retreats at a spa and yoga workshop. You wake up at the crack of dawn with a cup of herbal tea, chamomile, lemongrass and hibiscus, and you honor yourself with a bath of rose petals and start on a fruit detox breakfast. Essential oils, scented candles and a sense of serenity. 

Pink Cake - Traditional pink cake batter with notes of strawberry, cherry, and buttercream frosting.

Wet: From the bottle, sweet demure crushed cherry syrup drizzled on strawberry cake. On the skin, bright cherry blossoms, but starts to take on a sharp medicinal tone. Sugary strawberry hangs around on the sweet base.

Dried down: Pink cake, except it's tubby custard from the Teletubbies, which has an overall blast of artificial cherry cough syrup. The strawberry is largely overshadowed by the loudness of the cherry, and paired with the sweet base, my skin ends up amping this into a scent that wouldn't look out of place in a chemist. Considering I didn't have any problems with the strawberry notes, and not too much of an issue with the cherry note, I assume the buttercream or the pink cake to be the culprit in this blend for me.

Perfect for: Dolores Umbridge. She's screechy, loud and despicably pink. 

Red Candy - Sugary strawberry, pomegranate, and cherry syrups blended with dusty marshmallow make this sweet red hard candy perfume

Wet: Aggressively medicinal and sharp cherry candy, flanked by strawberry syrup drowning in pomegranate juice.  

Dried down: The cherry takes a backseat after half an hour, with the dominant note being sugary strawberry syrup, sickly sweet. This phase reminds me a bit of Grenadine, with its syrupy goodness settling on the bottom of the glass. I generally like this on my skin, and the medicinal sharp cherry not being amped like it did with Pink Cake is a welcome change. However, the pomegranate goes a little odd when I lean in really close to inspect it (think nose to skin huffing), and it reads a smidge indolic and almost 'sweaty' at certain points. At around the 2 hour mark, the cherry starts to make a soft return, but with the sweet strawberry, it's exactly like cherry/strawberry hard candy, without the strange turn that the pomegranate note took. It's a lovely scent, although it does take its time in getting to the best part.  

Perfect for: Hanging out in a 50's themed diner, shiny red tables and chessboard floors. Drinking strawberry milkshakes with marachino cherries with red lipstick and losing your tenth game of pinball. 

Red Lychee - Sweet lychee fruit

Wet: This basically captures the sugary sweetness of lychee, but also with an edge of green, that typically comes through when you're peeling away the skin.

Dried down: This more or less a combination between lychee stems and skin, and the sweetness of tinned lychee syrup. On my skin, I get hints of the sweet white fruit, but it leans a lot more towards the 'greener' aspects of lychee that reminds me a lot more of a fruit market, and a bit of lychee black tea rather than eating lychee (or lychee jelly). There are moments where my skin tends to amp a plastic-y profile in this, but I've layered this with Roseberry Jam and absolutely loved how it really rounds out the scent. Personally, I would definitely prefer a lychee scent that captures more of that sweet, crisp clean sweetness, but I do enjoy this too. It reminds me of my grandmother's house, where we'd sit around the dinner table after food and peel lychees and oranges together and eat them with toothpicks. Lychee is an incredibly nostalgic note to me, and I'd love to see more lychee in general honestly.

Perfect for: Fruit markets in July, stalls of vibrant red lychees, golden mangos, apples, oranges and watermelons. Warm nights in tropical climates. 

Roseberry Jam - Sticky jam made from raspberry, strawberry, and roses

Wet: Sugar, candied Turkish rose petals and rosewater, stewed raspberries with a dash of honey. The slightest hint of strawberries. It's delicate, incredibly demure. I am feeling the Jamtasy. 

Dried down: Preserved, plump juicy strawberries and strawberry jam comes through after dry down,  all shiny and ruby red, adding a dollop of sweetness in the raspberry and rose concoction. This scent is channeling the essence of the rosewater, tart raspberries topped with sticky sweet strawberry jam. While the raspberries and rosewater are the dominant notes of the first hour, the strawberry gradually takes the front seat on this scent. 

Fans of the Ispahan macaron will probably enjoy this, because I absolutely love it. Compared to Paris Royale (Poesie) which is comprised of lychee, rosewater and rose macaron with raspberries, this is rustic fruit farm version, especially due to the dominance of the strawberry syrup and jam concoction that grows stronger over the course of the wear. 

Perfect for: Stained white aprons while making too many pots of strawberry jam on a wooden shelf, a candied rose petals and bowls of raspberries tumbling out of a chipped porcelain bowl. 

My order:

While I have yet to order directly from Astrid Perfume, you can access the entire collection on their site here. 

International orders are all $35 USD regardless of how much you order because it covers insurance for any loss or damage, but you can also opt for standard air mail with no insurance but costs a little less. 

Each bottle from Astrid is 8ml and costs $25 USD, which is $3.2 USD per ml. 

If you are looking to order these, you'll have to order them through the official Astrid site as Ajevie is no longer offering the smaller sample sizes, but you can add on your order to an Ajevie package through their Addon functions - which means you can order full sizes during pre-orders. 

My order was done through a pre-order from Ajevie, who remains the best decanter in my opinion, in terms of being able to choose a range of brands and sizes, with a reliable TAT and shipping costs. The lowest weight tier of shipping from Ajevie is $15.54 USD. 

Ajevie has also introduced a new system for their sizes, so instead of the measurements, she's named them, slinks, slonks and chonks. The measurements are as follows. 

Slinks = .74 ml vials

Slonks = .92 ml bottles

Chonks = 2.3 ml bottles

I paid $4.55 USD for the slink vials, which makes it $5.2 for each mL, which is a smidge pricier than you would get if you directly ordered from the site. 

Due to the current circumstances, all shipping has been affected in some way, whether it be domestically or internationally, so this did take me slightly longer than normal, but usually Ajevie TAT does not take more than a month to process even with pre-orders.