But Not Mine: After My Own Heart by Ineke
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Here's the sample box I got:
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The packaging is gorgeously conceived and executed and I'm sure Ineke is charming and well-educated in perfumery, so I feel like kind of a churl when I say that I just don't think After My Own Heart is very good.
The official notes:
Top: Bergamot, Raspberry, Crisp Green Foliage.
Middle: Lilac.
Base: Sandalwood, Heliotrope, Musk.
The raspberry-and-greenery top note just doesn't fit with the lilac that follows. I tried convincing myself that it could work if I thought of it as, say, sitting in a summery garden among the lilac bushes eating raspberry granita, but I couldn't lie that thoroughly to myself. The raspberry is, of course, synthetic — virtually all berry notes in perfumery are — but this one feels particularly so, like melted gummi bears. I have never been a great fan of lilac soliflores: I don't think lilac translates especially well to composed perfumes, because it never smells like the real thing, bright and creamy at the same time. (It can be done: Demeter's Lilac is for a little while a nicely convincing lilac soliflore.) The lilac in After My Own Heart is recognizable, but it's not authentic: you could never mistake it for a gust of the real flower. When composing a perfume as simple as this one is, I think, you have to take one of two tacks: either the scent must be perfectly realistic, or it must be completely abstract. If you're going for realism, as Ineke is here (and, I would guess, the entire line, based on the descriptive text), that sense of reality is paramount, because there's nothing to hide the seams: but After My Own Heart is all pieces that don't come together.
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