Escential of Portland Fig
Escential Lotions & Oils is a fun shop to visit, and I admittedly possess some local bias with regards to them. The great appeal of Escential’s perfume oils for me, besides being made by my hometown perfumers, is their affordability and excellent staying power.
With their take on “fig,” they’ve captured the smell of fig preserves (like the kind you’d spread on toast.) If you’ve never eaten fig preserves, the smell is approximate to a cross between homemade white grape juice concentrate and a late harvest Riesling. The green fig is appropriately sweet and tangy, but I perceive a real creaminess here, too.
Just as you might imagine, this is not a terribly complex perfume, but I enjoy layering it with other perfume oils, including Escential’s Nag Champa. A mix to which I sometimes add a smidge of Helmut Lang’s parfum or Escential’s Vanilla Amber Musk. It is a little too easy to go nuts with layering though, since these oils tend to be quite potent. Something I learned the hard way when one day I nearly suffocated everyone that came near me and my inadvisable perfume overdose. Ooops. I unfortunately turn into a crazy cat lady sometimes with my perfume layering - one more can’t hurt, can it? And then before you know it, the whole thing becomes a crowded stinky mess. This is why I need to leave the art and science of perfumery to the professionals.
So, uh, Escential’s Fig: For me, it’s probably the easiest to wear out of the three figs from today, due to it’s clean simplicity. It’s not remarkable like the Mathias, or cozy like the Bendel, but still… nice.
To visit Escential’s online site, click here, or to be carried directly to their Fig, click here.