Scentroulette Day 19: Ormonde Jayne Tolu

I am starting to feel as if I'm just criticizing everything that comes down the pike, that I should just pick something that I know I like and write about that to counteract the non-stop barrage of oh-hell-no or kind-of-but.

Also, I could not find a decent picture of the Tolu bottle--although the Ormonde Jayne bottles are mostly the same, I think (here's one and here's another)--so here, for no particular reason, is a picture of a cat. Cats make everything better.

I love the opening of Tolu. With a little shiver of orange blossom atop a warm oriental base, it smells amazingly like a stripped-down hybrid of Opium and Obsession--Opium without the violent spices, Obsession without the heaving-bosom florals. It is exceptionally good.

And then it turns vaguely awful on me, not horrible but unpleasant-ish: it goes herbal, but not in a good way--grating and prickly--and the oriental base notes turn cloying and a little sour.

A couple of hours later, the awfulness goes away--poof!--and we're back to the comfy balsamic warmth that the opening of the scent promised. Your mileage, as usual, may vary, and a lot of people really seem to like this, but I just can't square the first and third acts, so full of the oriental warm fuzzies that I love, with the unfortunate middle.