Amsterdam

[porcelina]

Tulips, peony, fresh flowing water and crisp green grasses.

bottle: really wet, pleasant florals
wet: this is a beautiful floral. it's wet and juicy. the water notes are so clean and i feel like i'm standing and sniffing a fresh bouquet.
dry: still fresh and wet and pretty!
overall: as someone who normally cannot abide anything flowery (there are a few rare exceptions as far as BPAL goes), this is really, really gorgeous! perfect for spring.

[Nia]

This one surprised me by reminding me quite a bit of the commercial perfume "Sunflowers". It is very fresh and very nice, but the problem is that it lasts minutes unless that, as yesterday, the imp spills and I slather half an imp on. With such a crazy amount on my hands, the smel never became overwhelming: that's how light and fresh it is.

[emerald_ibis]

This scent really matches its description perfectly! In the bottle it smells like a spring garden. I can pick out the flowers, the grass and even the water if I concentrate. It didn't change much when I wore it, either. I would not categorize this as as "aquatic" scent, fresh flowing water or no. This is a fresh floral scent that even I (not a fan of florals in general) love. It blends together beautifully in a clean, cool way. It will be perfect for summer months.

[purplemoonshoes]

Very green in the imp, and very watery with some peony on my skin. It's a little soapy once I get it on, so I doubt I'll wear it. But I bet it would be a beautiful green flowerbed on someone else.

[greencat03]

In bottle: Tulips and grass

 

Wearing: Tulip is still there, but now it's joined by the peony rather than the grass. The water gives it a lightness.

 

It's a pretty, unobtrusive smell. very fresh, a lil soapy, but not in a bad way. Good for early spring days and closed spaces

[CrazyPretzel]

I'm frankly shocked that this actually works on me! Usually watery notes are a bit meh, and the peony in The Dormouse flopped....maybe it's the grass and tulips doing the trick here?

 

In the imp: light watery floral, a little sour.

 

On me: The sourness disappears once this hits my skin. There's grass and some very delicate florals happening -- so light you'd hardly know they're florals, just a pleasant slightly crisp scent.

 

A bit later: The soapy/synthetic note that usually gives me trouble in blends like this just does not show up. Hooray!

 

I don't wear things like this that often, but I'm glad to have found one in this category that works on me!

[maribouquet]

This is a beautiful aquatic on me...light, fresh, gently floral, soothing. I love it!

[500ml]

This is really a lovely scent: fresh, floral and watery with some green notes peeping through. Thing is, I already have some beloved blends which are practically the same on my skin and this one simply doesn't catch my attention enough.

[ClareN]

I'm tackling all the scents in categories that "aren't me" first, because they seem to be the easiest for me.

 

This is very pretty for an aquatic floral. It makes me nostalgic for the scent of the tulips my neighbour used to grow in Canada...and I didn't even remember the scent of tulips until now. It's light, summery and refreshing, evocative of tulips waving in the breeze beside a stream. It doesn't go all air-freshener-y like the aquatics I really hate; I think it's very good for this type of scent, but I'd still never wear it, so I'll be passing it on.

[Ajila]

In the bottle – Fresh green florals

 

Wet on me – Soft lush tulips

 

Dry on me – Watery florals and (oddly) coffee

 

Overall – This just isn’t my sort of blend

[sfo4]

This is soothing: fully bloomed tulips splashed with sweet, fresh water with a little sweet greenery in the background. Very refreshing.

[bryghtrose]

In the bottle it smells of tulips. It's a green scent, with hints of peony and an aquatic overlay. It's sort of meh on me.

[pinkpepper]

In the bottle: Ooh, slightly spicy. Hardly what I was expecting. I'm so excited about this one . . .

 

Wet on skin: Oh, HOLY YUMMY. This is so fresh and beautiful, a garden in spring by a stream. I can smell each individual note, clear and sharp, yet wonderfully blended.

 

Dry on skin: This is staying true, happily.

 

Conclusion: There's something ridiculously unique about this, though I can't articulate what. I can't say I know where that spicy note I smelled in the bottle went either. Oh well. I'm in LOVE. My wrist is stuck to my nose. Superglued. Won't budge.

[dnagirl]

I'm so bummed.

 

This smelled so lovely in the imp and when I first put it on.

After five minutes it turned to floral soap. The kind you wash your hands with.

It makes me sneeze.

 

Oh Amsterdam....why??!!!

[hypatia]

Amsterdam was exactly what I expected from the description, except I can't really distinguish tulips. But all the other notes are there: grass, water, and peony. All the individual scents are quite gentle and harmonious, and the whole thing is like spring in a bottle. I'm not a huge fan of florals, but this is really, really nice. It reminds me of The Dormouse and Pool of Tears -- The Dormouse for the peony note and Pool of Tears for the floral + aquatic combination (I think the water note is the same in both).

 

The only thing is, it's also very faint on me. It lasts, but it doesn't seem to have much throw at all. I suspect the imp is going to get used up a lot faster than most of my other imps.

[lookingglass]

This reminds me of VO5 extra body shampoo with some Body Shop Dewberry on top. It is a combo that reminds me of a friend from Jr. High.

[Emera]

IN THE IMP: Fresh, grassy.

 

ON MY SKIN: Sharply green, and almost a little bitter-spicy – like biting into a juicy blade of grass. Unfortunately, the bitterness is just too much for this to really work for me.

 

LATER: Weirdly, it morphs into an exact replica of a “fresh sorbet” body spray that I’ve had for years, although it took me quite a lot of sniffing to figure out what it was that it reminded me of so clearly. Really a beautiful scent, crisp and fresh and very delicately floral, but, well, I already have the body spray! The radical morph was fascinating, though. A good early-spring or summer scent, “shy” but invigorating.

[voodoocatwoman]

In the bottle: spring floral- I can't pick out anything in particular, just flowers

 

Wet: Soft floral

 

Dry: Soap- Irish Spring Soap, to be exact.

[persephanise]

To my nose, Amsterdam smells just like Lauren by Ralph Lauren before it was reforumalated.

 

And I love the old Lauren, and I don't like the new Lauren, so this was a pleasant discovery!

 

I love this scent. It's light, it's fresh, and wears easily. And I'm not really a floral person, but I liked this. I don't know that I will probably get a large bottle of this because it's not really "me" but it's very pretty.

[filigree_shadow]

This is a pleasant, soft floral, and it definitely smells watery and green. It's a pretty scent. The floral part of it doesn't smell a whole lot like peony, so that must be tulips. It reminds me of springtime. For some reason it's very light on me, though -- I swiped the imp wand on my arm about six times but it's still not very strong.

[Leopard403]

This smells very soapy to me in the imp, and on my skin it is too men's cologne-smelling.

Definitely not a winner for me... but this smells amazing on my boyfriend.

[Northernskygal]

This is what my dream backyard would smell like...

It is floral, without being heady and strong, clean and crisp.. This is the scent of.. laying in your hammock.. taking a nap in your freshly cut yard, with some blooms, bright and beautiful nearby.. while a creek runs along it's course. Everything that is good and lovely about summer.. is in this scent... just gorgeous. I think this is a more.. special occasion BPAL, for me.. not to be worn everyday but.. to be worn on that perfect day off from work when the weather gets warm, and I have the rare oppurtunity to get out and about.. maybe do some shopping.. ya know..

[etienne]

Amsterdam is a very light, soft, happy floral. It's the perfume of sunny days of the early summer, walking on green grass in pretty red shoes. It doesn't go soapy on me as it has on some of the previous reviewers. It doesn't have much throw, though.

 

This is a very pleasant scent. I like it but it lacks the kick I usually want in my perfumes. It's off to another forumite in a swap.

[bookishbunny]

This was my first true love from BPAL. A spring breeze passing over a meadow two weeks before school lets out for summer. This fragrance was so nostalgic, but I couldn't put my thumb on the time or place I became nostalgic for. It's youthful and subtle, natural and serene.

 

Come to think of it, it's not at all what I'd heard Amsterdam to be!

[Argentwolf]

In the imp: It's like sinking your nose into a bouquet of tulips, literally -- that light scent, with an almost peppery air to it, like pollen, all dappled with drops of water.

 

Wet: The light tulip scent is predominant, though the scary pollen edge to it is gone. It's very evocative of lush green grass in the morning hours, laden with dew. I don't get a 'crisp' note so much as a 'juicy' one: plump tulip heads, thick blades of grass, fat drops of dew sliding down the sides of them all.

 

Dry: It's as if the sun has come out and dried the grass; now it has a sort of moist, healthy air to it, the tulip scent almost ethereal, with a more traditional 'perfumey' note to it..perhaps that's the peony.

 

Verdict: Oh, if only this had more throw, and lasted longer! It's beautiful! Once again I am in awe of the perfumist's art of being able to capture such imagery in a bottle. I would highly recommend this to people who like unadulterated (non-perfumey) florals, nature scents, and possibly to those who like aquatic scents. I hate to discard it anytime soon, so I will probably hang onto the imp for a while at least.