There’s something magical in that little bottle that drew me to this slightly unusual, yet so seasonally appropriate fragrance from Jo Malone’s latest seasonal limited edition. Here’s my Jo Malone Poppy & Barley review!
I tested Poppy & Barley three times, every time a bit more enchanted by this little, unassuming scent. It made me smile, and pause, and conjured up some happy places – so finally, I bought it.
What is it?
“Rich red poppies dancing in the wind. Violet flowers, alive with colour. Fruity with blackcurrant. Cocooned by barley and bran. Softened with powdery notes of white musk. Lively. Cheerful. Inviting.” (Jo Malone PR)
A bottle of 30ml retails for around 50€ at all the usual suspects. (Jo Malone online Germany, US, UK)
Poppy & Barley is included in a line-up of five scents in the English Fields collection. (The others are Primrose & Rye, Oat & Cornflower, Honey & Crocus, Green Wheat & Meadowsweet.) Each scent was created by Mathilde Bijaoui, who did scents for Jo Malone before. She especially wanted to create fragrances that include grains, which isn’t done often in perfumery. (She also created a scent called Tilda Swinton Like This for Etat Libre d’Orange, which makes me immediately like her.) The little bottle comes in a very pretty design, all millenial pink in something that looks like glazed/ untreated clay.
What’s my experience with it?
And if you’ve now, at this point, exclaim: “But poppies and barley don’t smell like anything!” – You’re right. They don’t. Instead, Bijaoui wanted to evoke them in her fragrance, and did so by creating a scent that’s light and lively, but will remind you of red flowers. I read on a lot of fragrance sites that blackcurrant is one of the top notes, and I can definitely smell that when I spray it. You get a fruity sweetness that’s nevertheless not candy-sweet, but like a fresh berry. It’s also a bit tart, mixed with some violet floral-ness, but followed immediately by creamy bran and musky notes. I sometimes get a bit of rose in the dry-down, a bit spicy, a bit grain-y – just as I like my roses. But that stage is fleeting, and I’m left with a clean, sweat musk.
Worth it?
For me, the whole composition is a blast from the past – namely, from 2012’s Estée Lauder’s Bronze Goddess Capri, which opens with blackcurrant notes and then fades into its signature suntan lotion/tiare flower combo. Poppy & Barley has a similar vibe to it, but where Bronze Goddess is a tanned, golden goddess who laughs loudly and has a drink at the pool, P & B is a young girl wandering through the English countryside. (And is very well-behaved.) It’s a very wearable fragrance for spring, and also for the office or instances in which you want to smell nice but don’t want to overpower a room. It wears very closely to your skin, and, like many Jo Malone scents, its longevity is virtually non-existent for me. I also have to douse myself with it, but well, it does make me smile every time I spray it. And so, why not?
Give it a try when you come across it, you might like it.
For the kind of prices J.M’s fragrances sell for I think one might expect (if not demand) a darn sight more sillage and staying power. A Chanel fragrance lasts ten times longer at a comparable price. I’ve always thought Jo Malone to be a rip-off and many of the fragrances to be rather simple and monochrome, like air freshener.