Lushies

Oh, thank you Lush!

For those who don't already know this, my breathing allergies have become steadily worse since 2006, which has reduced my ability to use any cosmetics at all quite a lot, and perfumes in particular have basically become a no-go area, which is quite annoying really.

So, when Lush started advertising their new perfumes, I was all like "Pffft, another thing which is totally useless to me" and mentally put it into the category where their tinted skin creams (ie fake tans) reside. However, I was recently quite bored and feeling exceptionally healthy breathing-wise, so I went and sniffed cautiously at a few of the solid perfume sticks. And they didn't make me sneeze!! I tried some testers out on my wrists, and I was still OK after some hours, so, amazingly, I seem to have found some options for perfume.

For starters, the solid perfume sticks are quite a bit less fiddly/annoying than the little perfume tubs, which dried out quite easily and meant hard perfume got stuck under your fingernails. They're also quite good value, with the cheapest sticks starting at £4.50 each. Additionally, as well as the in-store brands, there are occasional one-off special perfumes (one of the Lush store managers at Victoria had snaffled an American Cream perfume the previous week, and everyone else was envious), the companion Gorilla Perfumes website has new products including web-only offers, so I think I might have to keep more of an eye out there. Some of the perfume sticks, including Orange Blossom, are not vegan as they use beeswax, but a good range are, and hopefully there will be yet more vegan perfumes to come.

I ended up buying myself 3 perfume sticks: Lust, Karma and Breath of God. I very nearly bought the almost-edible Vanillary, which I loved as a tub scent, but I realised I needed to leave myself enough space for future purchases! Karma is, well, Karma. If you're a long-standing Lushie, you'll have smelt Karma in some other form, be it as soap, spray perfume, bath melt, body lotion, or any other such thing. It's a lovely musky orange & patchouli classic. I love it, so that's easy enough. Lust is alextiefling's personal favourite, and (as the forum comments indicate) it's a bit divisive. If you like Flying Fox shower gel, you may well like this, as they both have a strong smell of jasmine, although Lust is a more, heh, aggressive sort of scent, I feel. It also reminds me of lily-of-the-valley, which is odd as I couldn't see any in the ingredients. Floral but a robust floral smell rather than a sickly one. Might be overpowering in certain circumstances, as it's pretty distinctive. Breath of God is the other side of the coin, a very soft, non-intrusive kind of scent which I found distinctly refreshing. I'd really say it's a good all-rounder as it's gentle, quite relaxing, and doesn't seem to have really strong notes which would put off as many people as Lust does. The musky/smoky qualities are beautiful, and I think this might be my favourite perfume so far. It's quite unusual, I haven't come across many other scents like it (although, to be fair, I don' do a lot of scent-sniffin' these days), but I hesitate to call it 'distinctive' because that suggests something far fiercer than this in fact is. It's my top recommendation thus far, though.

I'm not sure Lush claims about the duration of the perfumes are quite as extensive as they might wish; on the other hand, my mother has always had trouble getting the scent of perfume to stay on her skin for long and I slightly incline that way (perhaps our thin skin is just too porous??), so it may be me and not the perfume which is at fault. The sticks are not quite as long-lasting as they first appear, as you're going to use more than you think if you want a good, lasting scent. One genuine aspect of the products which has already been noticed is their tendency to leave a hint of colour on the skin. This is indeed, the case, and simply means that you must rub all the perfumes in gently rather than simply slicking them on, unless you actually fancy blue-streaked wrists. I suspect this may have been intentional on some level, as the perfumes seem to last better when gently massaged in and replenished from time to time.

I was surprised how good these were, and I'm probably going to be keeping an eye out for more exciting perfumes in the future, although I should probably be taking things a little slowly until I get back into the perfume habit. These really are the sorts of things you probably want to test in the shop first, anyway.