tunage: 26 miles by sean watkins
like most girls who cope with having to look beautiful on a budget (</sarcasm>), i buy a lot of my “smelly-good” products from bath & body works. scents come and go with the seasons there, but “cherry blossom”-themed fragrances seem to have taken off, if the fact that b&b sells three different types is any indication. but one cherry blossom is not the same as another.
there is, for example, the original cherry blossom fragrance. according to the company’s web site, the scent breakdown (if you understand such things — i don’t) is as follows:
- Fragrance Top Notes: Dewy Watermelon, Green Lush Accord, Wisteria Petal, Red Plum
- Fragrance Mid Notes: Cherry Blossom, Sheer Freesia
- Fragrance Base Notes: Musk, Sandalwood, Heliotrope
yay. what this means to me is that my nose starts to tingle if i wear too much of this scent or stand close to someone wearing too much of it.
then there is japanese cherry blossom. stevie, who wears this scent (in profusion — at parties i’ve gone to i’ve been able to tell she’s arrived just from the scent in the air), says she likes it because it’s more “grown up” and you don’t end up smelling like a literal fruit. these fragrance notes are:
- Fragrance Top Notes: Asian Pear, Fuji Apple and Ume Plumb
- Fragrance Mid Notes: Japanese Cherry Blossom, Butterfly Lily, Kyoto Rose, Mimosa Petals and Hedione
- Fragrance Base Notes: Vanilla Rice, Imperial Amber, Silk Musk, Cinnamon Incense, Himalayan Cedarwood and creamy Sandalwood
so, as you can see, the scents in this body splash are much more exotic and mysterious and simply smack of the orient … yeah, you get the picture. this kind also threatens to give me allergies or a headache if too much of it wafts past my nostrils (what a lovely word “wafts” is, don’t you think?).
bath & body works did sell a third scent called white cherry blossom, but it’s been discontinued and is now 
replaced by my personal favorite,blushing cherry blossom. this scent smells like the following:
Fragrance top notes: Mandarin, Leafy Green Accord, Sparkling Quince, Lush Berries, Fresh Melon; mid notes: Rose Damascena, Super Hedione (Captive), White Jasmin (Captive), Rose Juliette Greco; base notes: Musk (Captive), Violet, Soft Amber, Creamy Sandalwood.
i’m not exactly sure what they mean by captive, and i’ll confess that it has me a bit worried (not too terribly much, though), but i still think this smells pretty. why, you ask? why blushing cherry blossom over japanese or just plain ol’ cherry? i like it because it has the grown-up fragrance of japanese cherry blossom without the intensity that both the japanese and regular scents have. blushing cherry blossom is very light and very feminine (no husky, seductive-voiced [scented] fragrances for me), but isn’t so light as to wear off very quickly.
and i think the name is rather appropiate for me, because i blush at almost anything.
