Potsdamer Platz Toboggan

[zankoku_zen]

Brian: “Now this shit was fun. When we arrived in Berlin, we stopped by the Potsdamer Platz market for a few minutes on our way to the hotel, but we didn’t stay for long because we were all exhausted. We check into the hotel, and I open the curtains in my room and Lilith and I see the lights of the market… and this ride, this alpine slide, that we must have walked right by in the dark. Lilith and I knew we had to do it first thing in the morning.”

 

Lilith: “There was a humongous slidey thing where you sit in a pool thingamajiggy and slide down it. And you have to carry your pool thing up the stairs. Ok, so DAD had to drag it back up the stairs for me. Anyway, I went on it a bunch with my Unkie and my dad, and mostly mom took photos. AS USUAL. This was one of my favorite things in Berlin!”

 

A tube of black rubber sliding wildly down a whoosh of white musk and white oud.



Synthetic black rubber, oudh, and a whiff of musk. This is mainly a rubber blend, and at first sniff, it reminded me to a cool black leather, but then the plastic started to come through, so more like pleather? If you were looking for a 'leather' type Lilith, I'd give this a whirl. Great throw and wear length, of course.

[crimescenecleanup]

I just realized that I never formally reviewed this. Well, that must be corrected.

 

I get so much snow from this blend - a sort of piney, bracing BPAL snow note, which might just be a very cold version of the white musk.  This particular cold white musk /ozonic/airy note is not my favorite, but boy does it capture the feel of winter air in your face. It is not camphoric or minty, if people are wondering about that.

 

White oud has been in previous Lilith blends and I love it. Oud never does the dung thing on me. Maybe I just cant smell the animalic qualities, but to my nose it always smells like exotic woods and a hint of forest decay. Complex, a little rotten, but also clean like rain and beautiful in the way an autumn leaf pile is rotten. Wait, does that make any sense at all? Moving on. 

This oud soft and gentle, like if an ancient tree was also a fuzzy blanket. 

 

But most importantly, this blend has black rubber, a realistic black rubber note, which is hilarious and it made my day to know that this was in perfume. I actually love that smell, the way some people love the smell of permanent markers or gasoline. New tire stores are my jam. 

The only thing stopping me from snapping up a bottle (or multiple bottles) is that darn wintery snowy white musk thing going on. With very few exceptions, BPAL cold and frost blends tend to not play well with my skin chemistry (disastrously so). (The Snow-Storm, Frostbitten Jack, Berliner Dom Antics, and Krampus have been the only exceptions, if anyone was wondering and wanted to compare notes). I went through a whole multi-year phase of wanting to try all of the 'cold' Yules in hopes that one would steal my heart. I went through so many decants during the Winter Salon...ahem. Anyway. Many dozens of tested blends later, that experiment ended in rueful disappointment.

 

So I am still on the fence about this one. It is wonderfully unique. It is playful and humorous, which is an important quality in perfume. And it is wonderfully cold. Do I brave the cold and try aging a bottle to see what happens? Trying to decide has been a toboggan ride I tell ya. 

 

For lovers of BPAL's cold and snowy notes, and lovers of perfumes that evoke the experience of the seasons and the outdoors, and for people who love the techie-steampunk perfumes that reflect the man-made world of metals and leathers and concrete - if you love any one of these things, the decision should be easy. PotzDamer Platz Toboggan somehow brings together these different worlds of perfumery, and does so quite elegantly.