Cinq

[Leopard403]

Tea roses and shortbread.

Cinq will be a sleeper hit, I think. It certainly surprised me. I was picturing delicate pink roses and dainty cakes, but this is actually quite bold. Another of Une Douzaine de Roses that made me moan aloud upon first sniff from the bottle. There nothing grandma-like about these roses, and the blooms (not just pink, by the way!) are grounded by a slight but lovely butteryness without being identifiably foody (if that makes sense to anyone else). No, this is not a gourmand blend at all. Instead the floral and not-quite-cakey notes blend into something just delightful, youthful and fun without being "too young," robust without being cloying. Another blind bottle win for me!

 

eta: Actually, the more I wear this, the more I realize that the rose here has an awful lot in common with the rose in Peacock Queen. So there's that.

Edited March 1, 2018 by Leopard403

[bheansidhe]

Look, I was very curious about the combination of notes, but I really hate rose perfumed anything.

 

Nevertheless, I skin tested!

 

>LOOK

You are standing in a formal Victorian garden. To your east is a green lawn. To your west is a brick wall. In front of you is a greenhouse.

>LOOK AT GREENHOUSE

You see an ornate wrought-iron and glass greenhouse. The glass is misted. There are blooming plants inside.

>ENTER GREENHOUSE

You enter the greenhouse. Oops! The door swings shut behind you, locking you in. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, though. Doesn't it smell pretty?

>LOOK

The greenhouse is full of pink and red roses in full bloom. They smell heady and lush. On the floor is a plate of shortbread cookies. They look mouth-watering.

>GET COOKIES

You head toward the cookies. You're having a hard time seeing them for some reason. What you thought was mist is actually steam. It's getting thicker by the minute.

>LOOK INSIDE GREENHOUSE

Behind you is a locked door. The eastern wall is covered in climbing roses. The western wall is thickly planted with shrub roses. The north wall has a potting bench, a sink, and a camp stove. There's something boiling on the stove.

>LOOK AT STOVE

You see a lit stove, a metal pot, and huge clouds of steam. Something is boiling vigorously on the stove. It smells like rose syrup.

>TURN OFF STOVE

I don't recognize that command.

>LOOK AT POTTING BENCH

You see a few empty plant pots and a huge knob of butter. Hm, that sounds dirty.

>GET BUTTER

You get the butter. Whoops! It slips out of your hand and lands in the boiling rose syrup, you butterfingers.

>LOOK

You can't see anything. You are surrounded by thick white clouds rose-and-butter scented steam. It's very pretty, but it's getting hard to breathe.

>HELP

I don't recognize that command.

>GET COOKIES

There were cookies in here somewhere, weren't there? Unfortunately, you can't find them in all of that rose and butter scented steam.

>BREATHE STEAM

You breathe deeply, filling your lungs. It's rich and heady, but too much for your system. You pass out.

>LOOK

You see darkness behind your eyelids. It's rose-scented.

>LOOK AGAIN

You open your eyes. You are sitting at a kitchen table. In front of you is a plate of shortbread cookies and a vase of lush red roses. Would you like to eat the cookies, smell the roses, or flee in terror?

>FLEE

 

Wisely, you decide to leave the delicious cookies and beautiful roses for a more appreciative audience.

[comearoundruby]

Cinq is amazing. The roses and the cookie, somehow not cake - oh no, it's solidly the delicious buttery solidity of shortbread, play together so nicely and so well. There's something in here that reminds me of a slightly more grown-up Katrina VanTassel... but only a little more adult. If these are tea roses then they are red ones.

[zankoku_zen]

Pink tea roses and buttery shortbread cookies. Rosy, buttery, cookie. Medium throw and wear length.

[Geminirubyshoes]

One of my favorite GC's is Knave of Hearts. That one is black currant tarts and crushed roses and this is in the vein of that. Rich, buttery shortbread cookies (crumbs and all) but not cloying. These roses are pale yellow and pale pink and they are romantic and genuine. I am really enjoying this and predict excellent aging.

[astarinel]

I like this wet, as there's a good balance between rose and cookie, but unfortunately as it dries my rose-amping skin turns it into all rose and it ends up smelling like most other rose scents do on me: like ROSE.

 

I really wish the cookie scent hung around longer, as it started to remind me of Knave of Hearts (which I love!), but the fruits in Knave balance out the rose better on my skin.

[Miyabi]

I get baby powder and a whiff of cookies, but not a whole lot of rose.

[RedPersimmon]

Wet: Bright, green tea rose. Sheer and refreshing. The shortbread is not very noticeable. It actually smells like the rose syrup that you can put in food and drinks. Yum!

Dry: Shortbread comes out a teensy bit more as tea rose calms down. Still, Cinq is very tea rose-dominant, at least on me.

 

Low-medium sillage, average longevity. From this year's Lupers, One Perfect Day and Cinq both have a tea rose note that I can't get enough of. Might have to get ALL THA TEA ROSES from now on.

[LizziesLuck]

Lol @bheansidhe

 

 

Wet: Sweet rose (almost candied). Love it instantly. I used to adore rose, and bought tons of rose perfumes. But then I just wasn't reaching for them. Then I realized I like really sweet rose perfumes. So I have been revamping my "rose collection". This totally fits the bill of a sweet rose scent perfectly. I swear there is a sugar note in here - so much so that I want to lick my arm. I get no butter (luckily) and no actual cookie note, but it's still very gourmand. Like simple syrup with a ton of rose in it. YUM.

 

 

Dry: I LOVE this. I never do get a cookie note at all, it's just super sugary rose. It's different from Hope, which is powdered sugar and rose. This smells like rose syrup. It's amazing and I want a bottle. I had told myself I would only get one bottle from the Dozen Roses collection - I already want Cing and Un, and haven't even tested any of the Post Roses yet. I am in trouble.

[samanare]

On me, I mostly get sugar cookie, with rose when wet and for a short while after drying. The sugar cookie smell dominates and increasingly so with wear time. I was expecting more of a baked goods smell, but this, on me, leans more towards the artificial sugar smell I associate with candy.

 

In that way, it reminds me of Un, but without the cherry/red flavor smell.

 

Good wear time, but I wish the rose was more prominent and stuck around longer.

[doomsday_disco]

In the decant: Tea roses with a plate of shortbread cookies in the background.

 

Wet: The tea rose note is the most prominent on my skin, with the buttery shortbread cookies in the background.

 

Dry: The tea rose is wafting over the shortbread cookies, which are much stronger now than they were originally, but not strong enough to overtake the rose.

 

After a while, it's a light tea rose scent warmed by the shortbread. I agree with those who have likened this one to a rose syrup.

 

Verdict: I really enjoy the combination of the tea rose and the shortbread, and I don't feel like it is too similar to The Knave of Hearts (which I wondered if it would be like minus the blackcurrant note). While I really enjoy the scent, I'll probably just stick with my decant, because I feel like I have too many rose scents as it is. But if I didn't have too many rose scents in my collection already, I'd probably be leaping for a bottle of this (and I'll retest it before the Lupers go down just to be sure). Of the Une Douzaine de Roses that I've tried (the others being Un and Sept), this one is my favorite. I kind of wish I had bought a bottle of this one instead of Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs.

[Little Bird]

I like the GC blend The Knave of Hearts a lot more than this one (for red roses and a pastry scent). I don't really smell anything gourmand, buttery or cookie-ish in Cinq. On me, Cinq smells like a mix of fresh, dewy rose and a sweet-ish rose dusting powder. More and more powdery on me over time. Pleasant and simple, but I don't need more than the decant.

[windbourne]

Fascinating. I love it when scents come up as heavily YMMV, even on the first page of reviews.

 

I really loved Shortbread Snowflakes, a BPTP scent/bath oil from a while back, and this has a lot in common with that on me. Actually, it's almost identical after drydown, which puts me firmly in the category of 'all cookie, minimal rose' reviewers. I can smell the rose very strongly in the bottle, and for the first minute or so that it's on my skin. Big fluffy tea roses, plus warm, very buttery shortbread. It's pretty good! Then it dries and the roses just vanish. Once in a while if I jam my nose up to my wrist, I get a bare hint of what might have once been a petal fluttering by. I like both sets of notes just fine on their own, but I was hoping for a slightly more balanced blend.

 

I have a mildly hilarious amount of Shortbread Snowflakes, so I'm almost regretting blind bottling this rose. Almost. It's still a delicious smelling and very foody perfume, and I really like the initial HELLO ROSE blast. :9

 

Moderate throw, lasts average length, fades to buttery sugar.

[patina]

Sweet tea roses, like The Rose to me, but slightly more lemony and without the stem note. Plus Shea butter. It's a warm, sweet rose lotion.

 

Surprisingly, I'm considering a bottle.

 

It is similar to Knave of Hearts, yes, but there's no blackcurrent. I get a weirdly savory note from Knave. This also seems to last longer on me.

Edited April 13, 2018 by patina

[Aveya]

I did NOT expect this . This was a random whim imp-buy because I thought heck, shortbread!

 

Wet on skin this was SWEET. Unexpectedly so. Tea roses = sweet roses? Yummy. Rose Syrup. This is actually sweeter to me than Fuzzy handcuffs were, despite you know, not saying anything about being sweet.

Drydown the sweet rose turns green rosy. Really pretty, proper cute perfect rose. I'm not really getting anything buttery, shortcake-y, or foody. It's just all really pretty slightly sweet well-rounded rose.

 

Lovely scent. But I'm proving I amp rose, so it's drowning out everything else.

[mishi-bear]

Straightforward and not too complex, but lovely. The rose in this is light and somewhat watery. Still a sweet and sour rose note but a lot more sweet than sour. The shortbread in this is really nice. Sweet and buttery with a nice vanilla-almond scent to it, very comforting. It doesn't overpower the rose at all, serving as a base, but is still strong. The combination of the rose and shortbread does threaten to go bubblegum smelling on me at the start but that passes quickly. Medium throw but long wear length.

[Lucchesa]

I didn't get any Cinq when the lupers were live because tea rose is one of the rose notes that's pretty reliably bad on me, but I was intrigued enough by the all-over-the-place reviews to swap for a decant. And it's so pretty in the imp, and after about an hour the drydown is such a pretty sugary buttery rose, like Hope with crumbs, but wet my skin makes a mess of those tea roses. Oh well, I'm delighted I had the chance to try it.

[crystaltongue]

I am SO glad a bottle of this came up on the lab etsy. Wet on the skin, it was a slightly astringent rose with so much green in it that it almost read as lemongrass. At that stage, the shortbread was nowhere to be found. However, upon dry down, the rose bloomed rich and dreamy, and the shortbread became a lovely subtle undertone of butter and sugar. Rose plus something sweet is usually a winning combo on me (see Jezebel, To Lallie, Allegory of Chastity, etc), so I am so glad to have added this to my collection.