Friday 6 March 2009

By Redo: Pulp



When I first read about the By Redo scents I thought Pulp would be a paper or newspaper scent- I have no idea why that came to my mind at all but it did- and I still think an inky papery scent would be very interesting.

However it is actually pulp as in fruit pulp. I hadn't thought about this before but fruit is probably my most neglected perfume family. I enjoy scents with some fruit but aside from rhubarb scents (Burberry Brit Red and the CDG Rhubard Sherbert) they don't get me worked up the way a chypre or incense scent does.

Pulp is the scent of fruit that is somewhere between perfectly ready to eat and being a little over ripe and almost ready to be turned into jam. It is the scent of fruit that is so juicy it is literally about to burst out of it’s skin.

Blackcurrants dominate Pulp. When I think of blackcurrants I think of wandering riverside or country paths in late summer, pickeing the berries almost absent mindedly. With the wild picked berries you get the alternation of a very sweet, sun soaked ready berry and the tart berries that are newer, or further down the bush. With Pulp you only get the sun soaked berries and this scent mixes the humble but deliciously succulent blackberry with the creaminess of the, to my English palette, much more exotic fig. These figs are perfectly ripe and juicy too.

It isn’t a sickeningly sweet scent though. Partly I think this is because it smells of the whole fruit including the skin. So many fruit based perfumes smell of the juice of the fruit rather than the whole piece of fruit. This smells of the skin, core, seeds, bits, all of the fruit. The sweetness is also counteracted by the apple note and the cedar in the dry down.

This is an interesting perfume and one I can't immediately compare to any other scents- which can only be a good thing. I am looking forward to revisiting in different seasons. I think it might work especially well in the depths of winter.

Picture courtesy of www.allposters.co.uk

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