perfume write-ups: pineward

eleven perfumes

On the Pineward website, there’s a note on the homepage that says “proceed only if you would like to smell like a pine tree.” Do I? To be honest, I don’t know. I love the smell of pine trees but as I’ve learned liking to smell something and liking to smell like that thing are not the same. Still, what I do know is that there are various smells I really like—trees, soil, petrichor—and I’m open to trying them in perfumes.

All that said, most of these samples are not Pineward at its pine-i-est. A few are, but I mostly went for the non-pine-forward options.

One thing: unlike the other perfumes I’ve tried, Pineward’s are (literally) colorful. All of them stained the cotton test squares I sprayed them on. I would be careful applying them. That said, they mostly did not seem to show up visibly on my skin, so it’s not like you’ll be wandering around looking green.

A second thing: Pineward is not “IFRA” compliant, that is, it does not follow the rules laid down by the perfume industry’s self-governing body about what are and are not safe materials. In Pineward’s case, for instance, there’s oakmoss, which has been restricted by the IFRA since I think 2010, but there might be other things too.

I was not really worried about this, but if you are, you can probably correspond with the owner and find out what exactly isn’t IFRA compliant in any given perfume. And if you are curious about the world of scent regulation, Kate Grenville’s The Case Against Fragrance is worth a read.