You can’t get much more obscure than Pola’s Alla Festa. Though perfectly happy just chilling on the Sunday balcony after a knackering week, there were social demands to be met, and the noise was so boisterous after four years of no Bon Odori festival that I could hardly hear my own music anyway.
Dragging myself wearily to the perfume cabinet, I found myself inexplicably in Samsara vintage extrait mode – already in sandalwood oil and the smoke of mosquito coils – but couldn’t find it.
I went for Alla Festa instead – allegedly an ‘eau de cologne ‘ – if so, what the F must this ultra rare extrait be like, in potency terms ? –
Probably I just smelled hopelessly dated and wrong on a number of levels , but I enjoyed it.
One of those everything but the bathtub maximalist cusp of the 80’s and 90’s, this is a cyclamen jasmine wood TNT in the ballpark of similar bombstresses as the aforementioned ‘Guerlain’ and Sculpture by Nikos ( did I actually spray on lots of the original Gianfranco Ferre as well for more hideous floral sweetness ? I confess that I did)
When you are off to a sweltering summer party, cicadas psychotically dovetailing from the arbour, you might as well
