Poesie: Welcome to Wonderland Reviews

Taking a small trip to Wonderland! This is a limited edition collection although it has just come back this year, so I've decided to share my thoughts on some of these. You can pick them up from Poesie's website here. 

Eat Me - peach lavender cake with a marshmallow frosting dotted with currants. 

Although lavender is personally one of top favourite florals, I think there's just something almost medicinal and too sharp about the lavender accords that are usually used, and unfortunately, the lavender here is just a little sharp and almost astringent for my taste. Although it does fade and melt into the skin after dry down, it's also somewhat tempered by the peach gummy note here. The peach accord here is almost all sweet, sugar coated gummy, and it's toothcachingly sweet. For me, this scent is mainly a two person show between the loudness of the lavender upon application, before it steps aside to reveal the peach in all its giant gummy glory, with almost none of the currants and marshmallow to be found. I think it's just not quite I had in mind when I picked this scent up, as I expected more of of a soft flourmand, a little more cake and a little less candy, and while it's not bad, I just never find myself reaching for it because I don't really like how it wears on my skin. If you asked me, I'd probably describe this as a cheeky spritz of hazy lavender clouds from one Cheshire cat, and one (unexplained) massive sugared peach gummy in the bizarre room. 

Always Time for Tea - countless cups of black tea loaded with cream, treacle tarts, mini strawberry jam tarts 

The thing that I've come to realize about Poesie's tea note on me, is that the tea note, despite having a two second life of being the most gorgeous tannic black tea note, eventually just decides to go entirely off the rails and becomes nothing but star anise. And while I think, star anise has its place in the world and is perfectly legitimate as an existence, it somehow just feels like a kick in the teeth when I'm looking for a cup of English Breakfast but I just keep getting liquorice. I guess in a way, it's very topsy turvy Wonderland of them when I ask for one thing and its magically shifted into something else. After the initial blast of anise fades, I do get the slightest peek of syrupy treacle and the barest hint of butter and strawberry jam, but it's very very faint and almost invisible under the sharpness of the anise, but the little hints I do get are absolutely delectable and gorgeous. I know that Poesie's tea note is definitely its best selling hit, but my favorite blends from Poesie have always been tea-less. I think this is a nice blend, and if you enjoy Poesie's black tea note, this is definitely a riff of a popular template, but for me, I'm a little underwhelmed. 

Brief aside -

On a sort of related note, I also do notice that there is a similar 'vibe' to Poesie's scents that I hadn't noticed during my initial purchase from the brand which I started noticing. I find that even with the change over from rice bran to fractionated coconut oil, the brand still has a very distinct, almost musky sweet aspect to all its blends (sans a few), and I'm not entirely sure if its my skin chemistry or just that I'm not vibing with it anymore. I've definitely seen other similar comments along the same line of what I've noted here, and I also found these two, despite the very different notes, quite similar when not huffing at the scent, and compared to other gourmands out there, I wasn't as impressed as I was when I first tried Madar or Sucre Vanille. I haven't had a chance to try their other blends, but I imagine it might just be that Poesie's base just isn't quite working out for me right now and that's okay. They can't all be hits all the time, and sometimes that's better for my wallet.