All Things Lush UK: American Cream Solid Perfume

4 November 2015

American Cream Solid Perfume

As most of my regular readers will know, I don't enjoy solid perfumes as much as I do the liquid versions. While the opposite can be said for hair care products, there is something much more alluring about spritzing myself with a favourite fragrance than there is about rubbing a little into my pulse points. Although I recognise that some of the product gets 'lost' with a spray, I find that the smells are longer-lasting and far more powerful when presented in this way. When it comes to American Cream Solid Perfume, this is never more true.

When I first began collecting Lush perfumes, I often trawled through eBay to find the rarest and most interesting finds. Solid or liquid - if I didn't already own it, I would have to have it, and this led to me possessing quite a number of old solid scents - some as old as four or five years after their original release. Disappointingly, I would find that many of the solid renditions would often emit a nasty, wax smell when applied to the skin, and this is my main problem with this particular perfume.

While the liquid version is one of my favourite Lush perfumes, this solid format is probably one of my least favourite. For those unfamiliar with this scent family, American Cream is supposed to offer a musky vanilla aroma mixed with the sweet, floral undertones of sage and just a hint of lavender to round it off. A clever collaboration of the vanilla, clary sage and lavender oil also means that there is also a wonderful sweetness to the scent that lends itself to the strawberry reference that most people recognise as being the 'classic' fragrance.

Although the non-vegan conditioner version possesses a very potent rendition of this scent, the body lotion, bubble bar and liquid perfume possess a much subtler, creamier and slightly less powdery smell, and it is this latter version that I have grown to love and appreciate over the last couple of years.

Unfortunately, what I immediately noticed upon opening the tin, was that this perfume has a strong element of wax in the fragrance. I recognise that all solid perfumes have a wax base to help make them solid and retain the perfume in this format, but this is one of only a handful of times that I have noticed a presence of the wax strong enough to overpower and ruin the actual fragrance itself.

On the skin, the fragrance continues to be dominated by this waxy aroma for quite some time before it settles down. Only then do you get the beautiful but very subtle creamy vanilla and strawberry aroma - one that is completely lost on me by then because of how dissatisfied I feel about the lack of scent overall.

While I did enjoy the smell once it had settled on the skin, it didn't bowl me over at all, and even when I attempted to apply some to my hair to prolong and intensify the smell, like all other solid perfumes have demonstrated to me, I found that this one didn't perfume at all. While I proclaim to be a huge fan of this scent family, as I do with Snow Fairy, it's my opinion that these fragrance are perhaps a little too simplistic to fair well on the wearer in most incidences. I'll stick to my body lotion and just hope that my three bottles of liquid perfume holds out until they come around again!

Quantitative Ingredients: Organic Jojoba Oil, Castor Oil, Candelilla Wax, Perfume, Fair Trade Vanilla Absolute, Clary Sage Oil, Lavender Oil, Benzyl Resinoid, Anise Alcohol, Citral, Benzyl Benzoate, Geraniol, Limonene, Linalool, Alpha-Isomethyllionone, Coumarin.

Vegan?: Yes.

2015 Price: £9 for 12g.

Year Of Original Release: 2010.