Bond No 9 - Coney Island

A story, a dream, a perfume...


Summer, the sun is shining from a clear blue sky, a soft sea breeze ruffles your hair, a bottle of pink lemonade. It´s going to be the greatest day, a day at Coney Island´s amusement parks.
The ferry arrives, a short walk, the streets are strangely unpeopled.The wind suddenly feels colder, the sky turns grey and hazy. Fog are closing in from the sea.
The amusement park is totally abandoned, your steps echoes drearily against the pavement. Suddenly you realise that you´re alone in the fog, your company has dissapeared.
And your on the highest hill in a worn out wagon at the long ago closed roller coaster, the wind make the rusty old parts squeak, the track ends some where down in the milky fog...


Bond No 9´s Coney Island is a big surprise for me. I´ve been curious about it for a long time, and though (considering the notes and the name) that it would be a happy, sweet, summery tivoli kind of scent.


Coney Island is a part of New York, famous for it´s beach and many amusement parks. Coney Island was most popular during early 1900th century, but has since then been on decline. Amusement parks has closed down and some of the most famous rides have been close to ruin. But, just recently the City of New York decided to do over Coney Island ant it´s historic tivolies and roller coasters. So hopefully Coney Island has a bright future ahead.


Coney Island lists notes of melon, guava, vanilla, cinnamon, caramel, chocolate, sandalwood, cedar wood and musk. Maybe it´s not that strange that I belived it would be a sweet, yet somewhat fresh gourmand. Sure, it has some gourmand elements, for start it smells like a sour soda pop mixed with sea air. The sour note dissapears rather fast on me and leave me with strange notes of sea, fog, impenetrable milkyness and from some distant, notes of caramell, vanilla and wood. Maybe I´m anosmic for something in it? But even if I am, I think of Coney Island as a very interesting, exciting and melancholic scent.


But, I have tried another scent similar to Coney Island, without knowing it.
http://rebelladensnella.blogspot.com/search/label/Aral
The notes listed for Aral isn´t the same as for Coney Island, and the scents differes in some way. Aral lacks of Coney Island fresh, tart topnote for instant. When I´ve tried them next to each other I find Aral to be slightly dryer and not as complex and thrilling as Coney Island. The base note of Coney Island is also much more prominent, not only the scent drying in and slowly dissapearing on my skin. I still belive that Aral is a very nice scent (if you happen to stop by France, it is also much cheaper then Coney Island), but if I had tried it AFTER Coney Island I hadn´t find it so unique.


Well, whatever... Coney Island is a perfume worth trying. Maybe it become more gourmand on you? I belive I´ll use Coney island quite much during summer, I think of it as a perfect warm weather scent. This time of year, but also during autumn, I think Coney Island enhance the melancholic mood of melting snow, rain and snow and grey weather...


Have you tried any perfume that smelled totally unlike what you have expected?




Pic: Neatoroma