Another episode of Mood Scent 4 is here and this time around we’re featuring our favourite Weirdo fragrances. My scented partners are Portia at A Bottled Rose, L’Esperessence and I Scent You A Day. We are your selectors for perfumes for various occasions.

There’s nothing like a weirdo, strange and crazy fragrance to make you sit up and pay attention. These are fragrances that have a strange combination of materials or have a Jekyll and Hyde personality with an abrupt change in the style. My selection are regular weirdo fragrances and are still wearable if you want to get your freak on in a small way. These are not completely crazy perfumes but fragrances with a twist.

So let’s start off with :

Tubereuse Criminelle: Serge Lutens : Christopher Sheldrake: 1999

This is a classic weirdo Serge Lutens fragrance and a tale of two parts. The crazy part happens in the prelude where instead of a floral opening that you expect from the name, you get a dose of menthol. Think Deep Heat, Vicks, medicinal balms etc and you will get the idea. It’s sort of like a hangover cure, something that really wakes you up with a bang.

Thankfully Tubereuse Criminelle calms down and slowly but surely transitions to a wintergreen tinged floral with a bite. Eventually this is edged out by a more recognisable tuberose, orange blossom and jasmine as it becomes soft and creamy and feels like it’s in familiar territory.

Florabellio: Diptyque: Fabrice Pellegrin: 2015

Diptyque makes scents that are well thought out and usually very wearable. For some reason they went a bit bonkers with this one. When I first tried it when it was released I really didn’t like it at all. It was a bitter, marine fragrance with sesame and coffee. It smelt like a giant mess to me.

These days I can embrace the weirdness more but it’s not a fragrance that is worn often. For the purposes of this blog piece I decided to give it another whirl. It no longer smells quite as crazy as it did but it is still a rather unusual blend. It smells fresh and marine up front and then there’s a sweetness from apples and a bitter coffee aroma that comes up to throw things off kilter. I find it more wearable than previously and perhaps it could work quite well in the heat to freshen yourself up. It’s still an anomaly for Diptyque, and has a little bit of the weirdo in it.

Orchid Soleil : Tom Ford : Sonia Constant : 2016

This Tom Ford fragrance continues the line of Black Orchid and Velvet Orchid, two popular fragrances in the collection. Orchid Soleil comes in a gorgeous rose gold bottle and I have often wanted to buy this fragrance but then have smelt it and veer between love and repulsion in rapid succession. This is definitely a love / hate fragrance and is quite unusual for what is meant to be a tropical beach floral. I checked the Fragrantica reviews and a few people seem to get a tortilla odour from the scent. I get tropical flowers and sunscreen vibes mixed in with something that smells like savoury food and also a metallic mothball vibe. This is a scent that smells strange but at the same time, one that I want to sniff again and again. I’m not sure this fragrance will be too long for this world though, as it’s not showing on the Tom Ford website which is never a good sign.

Jasmin Angélique : Atelier Cologne : Jérome Epinette : 2015 

This is one of the quirkier scents in the Atelier Cologne collection. It’s a bit freaky and cool and smells a bit different but at the same time it’s not too out there either. This is definitely not a flouro bright jasmine, rather it’s a green, peppery style floral with wisps of smoke floating around surrounded by herbal foliage. Like Florabellio for Diptyque, Jasmin Angélique is an outlier for Atelier Cologne and I’ve come to really enjoy this perfume, it’s a little different and weird but in good measure.

Please make sure to read my fellow Mood Scent 4 group writers : Samantha on I Scent You A Day, Esperanza on L’Esperessence and Portia at A Bottled Rose for their take on today’s topic. 

Thank you so much for reading and let me know your Weirdo fragrances.

Notes : Cover Image Canva : Fragrance images from the brand websites or sellers.