Peony & Blush Suede appeared in 2013 at Jo Malone London, which calls it floral and lays it out itself in three stages: a red apple on top, a peony backed by jasmine, rose and gillyflower, a suede at the base. Now Smell This finds no leather in it but a powdery musk. The label proves it right: it names a cedar, a patchouli and an Iso E Super that the house declares nowhere.
Jessica, at Now Smell This, finds it well made and true to its promise, but corrects two things: the apple is cidery rather than candied, and the suede is only a powdery musk.
Olfastory’s review
The only signed review found on this Cologne is Jessica's, published by Now Smell This on 20 September 2013, a few days after the release. Her verdict is favourable and measured: it is well made, it holds exactly to the promise on display, and it carries on the manner of the house, which gives the English garden a contemporary reading.
On the opening, she clears up the misunderstanding at once. The apple is not the sharp green apple of mass-market fragrances, the one from industrial sweets: it is cidery, riper, rounder. The peony is no more the lemony, bright flower that other compositions have gone after, but a honeyed flower, a little muted. She thinks she can make out a touch of pink pepper, because of a tickling that no source names.
It is on the base that she is sharpest, and that is where her reading counts: the suede of the name is not a leather. It is a lightly powdery musk, which mingles with the rose and the peony to deepen them and hold them longer. Anyone buying it for a leather note would be reaching for the wrong bottle.
She places the audience at last: people who like feminine florals and who have come away empty-handed from the Chloé and Balenciaga counters. The kinship that comes to her is that of Pleasures, another peony floral from the parent house Estée Lauder. And she sets it in a run she judges good — Wild Bluebell had left her cold, Blackberry & Bay had pleased her, this one receives her approval in turn.