Perfume Review: Bond No 9 Coney Island

Coney Island is the latest Bond No 9 scent scheduled to launch on June 1. For the fellow non-New-Yorkers who, like me, are unfamiliar with the neighborhood, according to Wikipedia: Coney Island is a peninsula, formerly an island, in southernmost Brooklyn, New York City, USA, with a famous beach lying on the Atlantic Ocean. The eponymous neighborhood is a community of 60,000 people in the western part of the peninsula (...) The area was a major resort and home of Astroland amusement park that reached its peak in the early 20th century. It declined in popularity after World War II and endured years of neglect. In recent years, the area has been revitalized by the opening of KeySpan Park, home to the successful Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team. Bond No 9 "were intrigued by the vintage allure of this century-old fantasy-land with its honky-tonk chic, its Mermaid Parade, its incomparable hotdog haven" and "wanted to celebrate its future, too, just as a formidable revival is getting under way". The scent, with notes of margarita mix, melon, guava, cinnamon, chocolate, caramel, musk, vanilla, cedar and sandalwood was created Michel Almairac, the perfumer behind Bryant Park and West Side. The start of the scent is a tangy citrusy blend. I smell lemons, limes and even oranges. They smell a little candied, but not overwhelmingly sweet at all, bringing to mind a refreshing, only slighly boozy drink served in a glass with sugared rim. For a while there, I smell a slight melon note, but just when I start to think that scent might go a fruity route, it changes the direction drastically. It grows warmer, "thicker", more "solid" in feel, the vanilla becomes very apparent as does the cinnamon note. At this point, I like the Coney Island quite a lot. It has the kind of soft, not too obvious gourmandness that I always appreciate. I don't smell chocolate or caramel, the middle stage is all about sweetly piquant cinnamon and fluffy vanilla on me. If the scent stayed that way, it might have even ended up on my wish list for summer...The drydown, however, was disappointing for me. After the joyful, colorful robustness of the top and heart notes, the composition suddenly looses all its oomph and becomes rather pale and unexciting. The base has an aquatic note that bothers me and an overall understated, neutral feel of a typically fresh unisex scent. I very much wish that the bright, happily inebriated, indeed carnival-like feel of the first two thirds of the scent stayed till the end. Coney Island will be released on June 1. Bond No 9 will start accepting pre-orders online mid-May. The Mermaid Parade poster is from coneyisland.com.