Echo Azure

[Casablanca]

Our gilded silvery mud-puddler! His scent is of the blackberry bushes and wild lilacs in which he makes his home.

Tart blackberry bushes. Freshly applied on my skin, Echo Azure smells like blackberries that are tart and dry, rather than fresh and juicy. Somehow I also get a little dried greenery impression, as though a few limbs of the plant have been cut and hung to dry, their leaves beginning to curl. Or like dried moss.

As the blend dries, the lilac comes out, cushion-soft and blended into the blackberries. The initial tartness settles into a dry blackberries softened with lilacs. The dry mossy note, for its part, now makes me think of oakmoss and lichens. I'm not sure if this is just what my skin is doing to the blend -- but it's appealing, a little rustic. This blend is basically a visit to a Willamette Valley blackberry orchard in the dry part of summer. That thought is making me super nostalgic for Oregon.

Echo stays in this sort of blackberry-country vibe throughout its life on me.

 

 

ETA: My friend later tried this. It's not as tart on her as it is on me. On her it's just a natural blackberry. The rest of the blend is similar on her.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Casablanca

[Little Bird]

I love lilacs. I have over a dozen planted in my yard now, just because I love their honeyed, creamy fragrance so much. They strike a perfect balance between sweetness and a fresh, springtime airiness. Echo Azure is mostly lilac on me, with a bit of blackberry bush peeking out from underneath as a tangy, slightly herbal, super realistic blackberry. The only thing that throws me off about this is that I associate lilac blooms with early spring and blackberries with late summer, and this scent is so realistic that it almost makes me feel lost in time (not a bad thing, just a strange-ness within me, lol). Overall, it has this dreamlike, soft, purple feel to it that I really enjoy, and is a beautiful mix of sweet and clean tones.

[zankoku_zen]

Dreamy blackberry lilacs. There's a springy ozone note to this that serves as a base, but ends up veering too much into air freshner for me. Great throw and wear length, of course.

[LizziesLuck]

Blackberry and lilac are two of my favourite notes, and two notes that seem to get swallowed in most of the scents that I hope they will be prominent in. I don't want to have high hopes for this.....but I do!

 

 

Wet: This is stunning the instant it touches my skin - gorgeous realistic lilac, greenery and sweet blackberry. As it settles on my skin, I do find myself looking for the tartness of the blackberry that's not here, but otherwise this is lovely. Sweet, delicate, a bit heady. I have a lilac bush beside my driveway. When it's in bloom, I make sure all the windows and the roof of my car are open as I back into my driveway and I get the heady smell of lilacs as I come home. My home is my sanctuary and lilacs have always reminded me of home. We had them all over the property I grew up on as well, from when I was about 2 to 17. So lilacs mean the world to me, and are easily my favourite flower. It makes me happy beyond words that Beth does such a spectacular job of getting that totally realistic lilac note. I just need to find the perfect blend where it sticks around and is not overpowered by all the other notes! Will this be it? (Sorry about the "story hour" here friends, apparently I am a wee bit nostalgic today!)

 

Dry: Sadly this doesn't have longevity on me. I didn't slather it, but had put a fair amount in the crook of my elbow, and it's gone now. Before it faded fully, it was a sweet scent, kind of hard to describe because the blackberry somehow really didn't smell like blackberry to me and it kept confusing my nose. I guess it was meant to smell more like the bush? But I kept missing that berry tartness. The lilac note is lovely. I will likely give this a full day wear before I make any decisions, but I am STILL feeling like I will never find my perfect lilac scent.

[DryFrogPills]

I think I got a slightly different feel from this then some of the others. To me, in the imp, this was definitely a quite juicy blackberry bush scent, with soft hints of lilac. That's what I got when I first put it on too, a fresh blackberry note with vague hints of green leaves or a lilac nearby, less like you're in the garden with both and more like you're standing near a cracked window in the spring eating blackberries while the breeze blows the lilac scent in through a cracked-open window. That lasts for nearly an hour, then the lilac starts to lift out into more prominence. It's perfectly pleasant, but doesn't do anything special for me.

 

For those wondering, as I was, how this compares to Glasgow, despite both having only two notes and one of those in common, I found them completely different. Glasgow is primarily heather with soft touches of blackberry, and the heather is prominent to me from the imp to the long term, with the blackberry subtle. It reminds me of a gift shop in England, or attending an outdoor re-enactment event. Echo Azure is all about blackberry bush, with the lilac used to make it a livelier, more centered scent. It's far more of an outdoorsy or cottage garden scent, and feels younger and more like spring.

[izile]

I'm starting to wonder if my skin soaks up everything blackberry. I generally love blackberry-everything, but between this and The Storm, I'm having a hard time finding it. On the other hand, even though I can't smell any blackberry, this is a lovely lilac scent, a bit like the Lilac Wood from the Last Unicorn series, but with a bit more of a woodsier note (maybe I can smell the "bush" part of the blackberry?) - It's a really nice lilac scent either way!

[Juliamon]

This is, in general, an incredible lilac scent, possibly the closest to a perfect lilac as you will get from BPAL. It goes on fairly aggressive as the blackberries and lilacs try to figure each other out, but dries down to an unexpectedly delicate scent with the lilacs being gently supported by the blackberries on the bush.

 

On a personal level, unfortunately, I pick up that same air-freshener ozone that z_z did, and between that and the ever-so-slight tang of blackberry (BPAL's blackberry note definitely goes sour-stanky on me) it creates a really unfortunate and powerful scent memory for me involving a house so thoroughly skunked that I got sent home from my job because my coat (which had been in a closet and was untouched by any skunk spray, mind you) was making the locker room unbearable, and required a short impromptu vacation and the use of several bottles of Febreze over the next month. So... this is a pass for me. But I'll be having other family members give it a try and see if they have the same reaction.

[Soupy Twist]

Sweet green lilac in the bottle. Goes on as a gorgeous lilac, but the green plantiness of the leaves takes over quickly. Ends up being too green for me, alas. Zero blackberry.

[Lucchesa]

I know, I was going to stop trying blackberry blends.  I lied.  And good for me because Echo Azure is just beautiful.  I love lilacs, they're one of the florals that really work on my skin, and the blackberry here is not the lush, ripe blackberry that inevitably goes to candy on my skin but more like blackberry brambles with the odd cluster of berries, maybe dried ones left on the vine from the previous year's crop and still there when the lilacs are blooming.  This is mostly lilac on me, and it's a beautiful springtime scent.  Wear length is about average, with low throw, but that's normal for my chemistry.  

[VetchVesper]

Lilacs and green grass is what I get.  I'm not really picking out any berry.  It's a pretty, fresh, and floral scent, befitting of a butterfly.