If you’d asked me in, say, 2006, if I needed or wanted a beachy coconut sort of perfume, I probably would have laughed.¹ That was the year that Estee Lauder launched Azuree Soleil Eau Fraiche in collaboration with Tom Ford, and I didn’t bother to smell it until they reintroduced it the next year, at which point I realized that yes, I did need a beachy coconut sort of perfume. Azuree Soleil turned into Bronze Goddess in 2008, and Estee Lauder has been releasing it in one form or another every spring since then (see this year’s entry here). It’s one of my summer go-to perfumes.

Even then, I would have guessed that my beachy coconut perfume needs were small enough that they’d be adequately covered by Bronze Goddess for the rest of my natural life. Nope — here comes Lush Furze to pile on. Furze is part of the latest crop of fragrances from Lush, all of which were inspired by the lore of the English countryside, and Stonehenge, and all sorts of related Englishness. Furze in particular was reportedly triggered by furze (gorse) bushes growing in the yard of Lush perfumer Simon Constantine. I don’t know the smell of gorse, although I think it’s botanically related to broom (which I do know), but anyway, Mr. Constantine thinks it smells a little like coconut and vanilla, and that’s where he went with the Furze fragrance: coconut, vanilla, mimosa, neroli…

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