I guess I haven't learned my lesson, because I'm back to review another British fragrance. For those of you who are new here, I wear it pretty visibly on my sleeve: I generally dislike English perfumery. Their stuffy and excessively dandified style is anticlimactic. There's no passion, no romance, no danger. They like their starched citrus and spice colognes, those Brits, and God Save the Queen. Their dull-as-dishwater citrus and spice goes well with their bubble and squeak, and it's gone by the last bite.
St James of London is a midcentury barbershop house that was recently revived when someone bought it and retooled its range for twenty-first century sensibilities. There's the requisite nod to environmentalism; every fragrance is alcohol-free. There's the spiffy packaging, all blocky color fields and clean lines, with regal fonts on embossed boxes, as safe and "classy" as it gets. And there's the fragrance names, which simply tell the buyer what they will smell like. St James has opted for the "natural" approach, boasting of aromatic oils and earthy blends. So Black Pepper & Lime should be, by their metrics, a simple pairing of the two notes, with both smelling as realistic as possible.
I expected the composition to be pepper-forward in the top notes, with the spice easing back after a few minutes to reveal a woody lime. I hoped the lime would hum along for an hour or two before fading into a woody (zesty?) musk. Maybe it would get powdery, or maybe it would just disappear completely. To my surprise, the polarities are reversed; BP&L begins with a blast of lime, very bright and acidic, and that lime note is all there is for a while. Great, except it doesn't really smell like lime. It smells lime-like, yet there's an unnecessary and nondescript sweetness undergirding it. This scent is supposed to be barbershop, yet manages a very non-barbershop lime. Strange choice.
Just when I'm beginning to think the carrier oils are the source of the sweetness, the fragrance reveals its true nature to be that of a generic woody amber. The citrus fades off and the black pepper appears, smelling better than the first act did. Fair enough, but the amber gets stronger when the pepper fades, and after an hour I'm left with a very cologney-baloney and contemptible blah. The smell of Mr. Blue Jeans. Of a mall island with a half-asleep Pakistani guy reading a newspaper. Of a fraternity open house at three in the afternoon. I can achieve this effect by blindly grabbing any random discount masculine off one of the lower shelves. I don't need to spend forty dollars on it.