Despite my complaints about boring fragrances in general and boring niche fragrances in particular, I’m generally not all that eager to try new and unknown indie lines. It’s true that you might just smell something fabulous, something entirely outside of the proverbial box, something that you can no longer find in mainstream or niche. But to get there, you’re going to kiss a lot of frogs, right? And by frogs, I mean fragrances that are not just boring, but awful — scrubbers, perhaps, or worse.1
Providence Perfume Co, which has garnered some attention on the blogs & forums, turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I tried 8 of the line’s 9 offerings, and didn’t reach for the liquid Tide even once. Charna Ethier is a relative newcomer to the indie natural scene; she’s been marketing her own perfumes for about a year or so. Her line caught my eye primarily because she makes a fragrance called Osmanthus Oolong which sounded nearly custom-made for me: black, green and red teas, osmanthus, beeswax. As it turned out, I didn’t like Osmanthus Oolong. It was too heavy and sweet, and maybe just too far away from the Osmanthus Oolong of my imagination (I drink real osmanthus oolong tea regularly, and have yet to see it satisfactorily translated into perfume).2 But I did like several others in the line, and so here are brief reviews:
I’ll start with Tabac Citron (shown above) because it’s so likable…
