Four Seasons: Winter

[GoldenRubee]

Francois Boucher

A burst of apricot silk, blood orange musk, French lavender, and red benzoin chypre in a gilded sledge of amber.

This is absolutely gorgeous, very soft and lingering on the skin. The first thing I smelled in the bottle was light apricot, almost like an orange cremecicle. After applying, the apricot and orange musk with the underlying red benzoin,mingle together and I can almost smell vanilla although it isn't listed as an ingredient. After twenty minutes or so, I can finally detect the French Lavender, it is soft and so beguiling and understated. The Amber is there, very refined, elegant and coming in at the end. This is my favorite of the Yules and definitely multiple bottle worthy!

[AnnaC]

I just got a bottle of this and it's extremely pleasant. I am shocked that it doesn't have honey in it - the super-ripe apricot scent is that sweet. It does have a vanilla-like quality to it to it. This is a bright, wonderfully warm fragrance.

[SmilesSunshine]

blind bottle direct from lab....

 

in bottle: OMG total love, the juicy plump ripe apricot as you bite into. the aromatics, the sweetness. the blood orange and hint of lavender hints lend an ethereal feel to the apricot. and i LOVE apricot.

 

On skin: GORGEOUS on application. as it warms up, amber and musk appear. And the apricot, blood orange and lavender combo is DIVINE.

 

Dry down:on my skin, this fell flat and one dimensional apricot with amber and musk. my skin ate up the mitigating notes of blood orange and lavender which kept this ethereal in the beginning. and, apricot+amber+musk, are some of my favorite notes. on me, these 3 collapsed into a single note like the worlds best smelling Staedler eraser.

 

FINAL VERDICT: i will be testing again after this settles in a week or two. I want to love this badly. and I would if the other notes did not fold an collapse. Its beautiful. I need it to be more authentic to buy another bottle.

[Minh Scent]

Did not like this when first applied, as it smelled like strong fruit candy to me...way too sweet for me. However, it calms down to a lovely orange amber. Definitely getting the vanilla. The lavender is understated. Thirty minutes into drydown, my nose is glued to my wrist and I am smiling!!! Beautiful!

 

ETA This is very long lasting. I am amazed that the orange note stays through to the end! Love it and a candidate for favorite Yules inspite of the fruit lolly start!

Edited December 26, 2016 by Minh Scent

[gloame]

Beautifullllll in the bottle. Husband and I thought orange blossom at first. It's the apricot with the orange that's softening up the citrus and making it more creamy. At dry down, it stays sweet and apricot and uncomplicated. It's lovely, but could probably stand to be layered with something a little stronger. Midnight Mass maybe.

[Foodie]

Four Seasons: Winter is so very sweet! When first applied it smells to me like fruity, chewy, orange candy. Thankfully after only a couple of minutes the creaminess comes out and it becomes a super pretty apricot amber. Still sweet but I'm really enjoying this beautiful warm apricot goodness!

 

ETA: This smells heavenly paired with The Forest in Winter at Sunset.❤

Edited December 27, 2016 by Foodie

[Little Bird]

The blood orange starts out strong, glowing red and citrusy, but the drydown is all about the apricot on my skin. It's a sweet, fuzzy, dried apricot sort of scent, with a dry, perfumey quality from the chypre and a touch of warm powder from the amber. I don't get the lavender, and I wish the orange stuck around longer, because the dry apricot is a little too one dimensional for me. Still, it's a nice, pleasant, cheerful apricot.

[zankoku_zen]

Oh god, this is amazing. Apricot, blood orange, touches of chypre and lavender, on a base of amber. Both the chypre and the lavender turn it more into a perfume, and but they are just whiffs. The apricot and blood orange are subtle but present.

 

This is just lovely. Absolutely lovely. Medium throw and wear length.

 

Will be ordering a bottle of this.

[elnajay]

On me, this is mostly a soft, powdery apricot...juicy but not too rich, with a hint of the citrus and lavender (adding a tiny herbal bite). The scent wears close to my skin. The husband said it smells more "like a traditional perfume" than most of the BPAL I wear, I suspect he's picking up the chypre/amber.

[sunlitgarden]

In the decant you can tell there are (comparatively) a lot of notes here but it's well blended. I can definitely detect the lavender, which smells a bit astringent, and a sweet fruity apricot. I'm not sure if the "blood orange musk" contains the fruit or is just supposed to evoke the color, but I do think I can smell some orange as well. It's smooth, sweet, a bit creamy, and almost reminds me of some sort of fancy cocktail with fresh fruit and fresh-squeezed juices and lavender-infused liquors--except there's no booze note. So I guess it's a virgin cocktail. Anyway, I like it so far. Occasionally my brain parses all the notes together as some sort of paint, but that doesn't always happen--just from time to time.

On my skin, it's even fruitier than in the decant. Mostly apricot with some orange also. It has a similar "texture" to the hard candies in Pere Noel... perhaps the combination of orange and lavender is what's reminding me of Pere Noel. I can smell a bit of spicy resin-ness, perhaps from the red benzoin. I don't think I've smelled a scent using red benzoin before; I mostly associate benzoin with a sweet smell much like vanilla ice cream but this benzoin is more incense-like and reminds me of sandalwood a bit.

Drying, it's getting even sweeter. I can smell the lavender more strongly again (it was buried under the fruit/benzoin when the scent was wet). It's the sweet lavender and fruits with the other aspects providing more of a grounded base. This is really nice! Whatever my nose parsed as "paint" in the decant is not present on my skin at all.

Orange in all its forms has become one of my favorite notes lately--it's just so bright and uplifting, and here it also smells warm and somehow elegant as well. It definitely smells like a perfume (as opposed to a lot of my scents that smell like food, or incense, or a fresh flower, or like some other oddball thing like Dungeon Crawl) but it's a really nice one. This is being put onto the full bottle contender list.

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Juicy, tangy-sweet fruit, orange and apricot in equal measures. The lavender is a bit sharp at first. The amber sweetens it all, but it's also lending it a powdery edge. Or the orange is about to go to powdered bathroom cleaner on me, one or the other.

 

 

Dry: This dries down to a fruity powder candy type smell. Quite pleasant, actually. While I love apricot, I am more of a fan of it when it is fresh and juicy and a bit tangy. I tend not to wear very many candy type scents, so this one is not for me. Reminds me vaguely of Jiggery Pokery, somehow, only less bright, and not as creamy. I haven't worn JP since summer though, so I could be crazy.

[milo]

This is all apricot, all the time on me. I do love apricot in small doses, like Haloes, but this is really in yo face. It reads as a creamy, vanilla apricot to me, which is probably up a lot of your alley's, and I'm OK with it, it's just not a 'love' for me. I have to admit, it really is pretty, though.

[SophieCedar]

Holy mother of apricot. I like this. 1st impression: sexy apricot fabric softener. Like that new stuff that smells all resinous and high-end.. you know, with the weird commercial of women drinking champagne and hosing their huge house down? Its not apricot is AHHPREECôT.

[VioletChaos]

In The Bottle: furry, plump, ripe apricot and some blood orange in the background.

 

Wet On Skin: the "musk" aspect of the blood orange makes itself known, lending a bit of weight to this fruity endeavor. I *might* detect a hint of the lavender, but the benzoin, thus far, is nowhere to be found.

 

Dry Down: This is like a very sophisticated fruity creamsicle. It's adult, make no mistake, but the fruit and the musk are combining to make something creamy and immanently wearable.

 

In All: Glad I took a chance on a bottle!

[Casablanca]

Wet on my skin, this begins as so close to 2016 Pere Noel, with the orange-lavender-vanilla vibe, but more elegant and less playful. Blood orange has the edge on me when first applied, with apricot close behind, and then lavender and a creamy vanilla similar to that in Pere Noel, but less strong here. As this starts to dry, the apricot overtakes the blood orange, but both are still potent, and I don't really find the line between them; they blur together with each other and with the musk. The sense of them together with musk reminds me of... gosh what was it. The early stage of Allegory of Winter, before it morphed.

 

Freshly dried, lavender comes out more on me, but the apricot-blood orange musk is still having a party. I jusssst start to pick up hints of amber. I get a background sense of sophistication and solidness from the chypre. Nothing from it stands out to me, except that maybe bergamot is adding to the orangeness. So pretty.

 

I had initially wanted a decant of this, cut it to save $, and then ended up blind bottling it from reviews. Pleased to have done so.

[marared]

Smells like O with apricot. I don't get *any* lavender out of this. The blood orange musk is most apparent in the bottle and when freshly applied, but after 10-15 minutes, it's apricot and amber (which my skin likes to amp a bit). Warm and sweet just like O.

[lizabelle]

Oh, beauty. I'm still terribly confused as to why this one works great on me and Road to Versailles doesn't, but oh well. It starts with a burst of apricot, blood orange, and the lovely bold lavender note found in so many of the Yules this year. Sadly the lavender fades pretty quickly, but it leaves an almost gooey fresh apricot and a resiny, vanillic base. I'm actually shocked that there's no vanilla in here, because that's what I smell. No amber bombs in this one, maybe because benzoin tends to work on me and is keeping it in check. Festive but still very refined--this feels like what a society lady might have worn to a party sometime in the past.

[LiberAmoris]

Four Seasons: Winter was the scent of my Christmas getaway this year (needed a bit of a breather from pretty much everything and everyone for a little while!). I think I wore this nearly every day. It's just so pretty. I love the apricot, blood orange, and lavender notes together, they're so bright and cheerful but not too sweet. The amber does give this a coat of something golden and warm, and the red benzoin chypre gives it a mossy, resiny bottom that helps this linger for hours after the fruits have dimmed a bit.

[Aviatrix]

Strong resinous apricot on me! There is a teensy bit of lavender in the background, but it's mostly a fruity-resinous scent. It is elegant and cute in some way, and I can see myself wearing it for a tea party.

It's definitely one of my favorites from this round of Yules, and if you like apricot, be sure to check this out!

[FeralFae]

I wanted to love this because the bottle art is just so, so beautiful. Unfortunately this is a tad too perfumey for me I think it's the orange, chypre and lavender combo that make this smell very sharp and fake, which is unfortunate because I can smell a beautiful apricot + amber combo underneath all that.

That being said, it's very elegant, just not my style.

[lucycat]

In the decant, I smell apricot and chypre most strongly.

 

On my arm, this dries down to orange, apricot and amber, while on the back of my hand, it’s virtually identical to Aristocratic Couple, one of my favorite Lupers.

 

On the second test, about a week after the first, the lavender is more apparent.

 

This doesn't sound like the most enthusiastic review, but I liked Four Seasons: Winter enough to upgrade to a bottle.

[mermaidsdream]

I almost passed on this, after the sniff test, but let it sit for a couple of months. I kept coming back to it, unsure, and today decided to give it a shot.

 

In the bottle, it's almost a little too sharp. Applied, it goes turns into this soft scent that's reminiscent of snow, with a hint of vanilla undertone. As it dries, I get a bit more of the apricot, but it still stays soft, and sweet. It's the perfect winter comfort scent.

[achildoftime]

After sitting for about a month and a half, it's all sweet candied apricots and oranges being bullied by a medicinal lavender. I'm used to lavender being a nice, soothing component, but something about this mix kind of makes it sit askew. It's like this for a good ten minutes or so.

 

The sharpness does quiet itself, but no matter how long I wear it I can't fully come around to this scent. When it's nice, it's stunning. Deep fruit notes and lovely lavender amber on the upswing. When it's not so nice it's artificial, powdery sweets. It has a pretty reasonable throw, which isn't usually the case on me so I wish I smelled the former more often.

 

I may just have to come to terms with the fact it might not be for my goofy chemistry. I think I'll store it for a little while longer and see how much it changes. Hopefully it will make up its mind so that I can make up mine.

[lady_pandora]

I'm normally all about orange/amber combinations, but Four Seasons: Winter goes wrong on me in a way it really shouldn't. It's just too sweet and reminds me of a shampoo I didn't really like much. I can't pick out the apricot in its own right--I mostly just smell SUPER SUPER SWEET orange--but maybe I can't wear apricot, despite how much I like eating them! Depraved didn't work on me either. Ah, well, at least I have my other orange ambers to keep me warm at night.

[theseagrows]

in the vial i smell lavender and a melange of notes that i can't pick out. on the skin i smell blood orange and lavender at first, then benzoin and apricot peek out quickly. after about 5 minutes on the skin, it's a lavender-benzoin with blood orange musk. the apricot is there but just as a background note. i'd say if you like musky orange blends, to try this. it's very warm and comforting.