The incense tray - Bond No.9's Andy Warhol's Lexington Avenue

(Goodness, try saying that title 5 times fast!)

Bonds are normally very hit or miss for me, but the concoctions are always fun, the packaging is amazing, and the correlations Laurice has started drawing between art and fragrance are very thought-provoking and classy. Andy Warhol's Lexington Avenue is the third in a series of Warhols, preceded by Silver Factory and Union Square. I have not yet reviewed the previous two, mainly because they don't smell good on me but smell fun on a card, and it always takes me a bit more time to write those kinds of Bond reviews. I always feel I'm missing something.

However, Lexington Avenue is different. The concoction, to start, is very unusual in its notes - who thinks of cypress as a top note? Or roasted almonds, fennel, and peony together?? It has been compared to Bond's prior success, Chinatown, and I think for good reason. It seems to share the same kind of rich, incensey sensibility, but there's one major distinction.

This starts off pale for me and stays pale throughout. Whether it is on the card or on my skin, there's just something about my nose that renders it very sheer for me. When on my skin, instead of fennel I get faint cinnamon with my pale cypress. If I breathe deeply I can smell the roasted almonds, but it is never strong. The creme brulee in the drydown sits shyly behind the lightest smoke-trace of sandalwood. The sillage is nearly nonexistent, but even with my nose next to my skin, it's incredibly faint. It's as though someone had burned incense a while ago, and I can still get a gentle whiff of it from the tray that sits nearby.

In itself, this is unusual. I'm sitting here pondering to myself "when in the world has Bond EVER made a fragrance that sits close to my skin??" I thought my nose was wrong somehow, and that I was smelling something incorrectly, but no... While others find the scent much stronger on the card, on my skin it's this wild "your skin but SO much better" kind of scent.

It's a little miracle of chemistry. I guess my skin eats whatever molecule brings out the normal sillage in this scent, but I'm not complaining. While I'm not that fond of the shoe motif, it's always good for a woman to have a yummy, neck-bound scent in her arsenal - one that makes people want to move in closer.