Freeway

Freeway is the story that jumped, fully formed, into Sarah McCartney’s mind when she visited Scent Bar one hot summer’s day and stepped out onto the hot asphalt outside. A friend was just driving away, and the smell of his Maserati’s exhaust mixed with the scent of the orange blossom in the air and the tang of hot, melting asphalt…Sarah was inspired then and there to create an urban take on orange blossom exclusively for Luckyscent, to help celebrate our 15th anniversary.

The idea was to take the fresh, sugary brightness of orange blossom and sully it with a host of gritty, determinedly non-floral smells from an urban environment, making for a scent with a sexy kick in its tail: think flowers crushed under a rubber-soled sneaker. Sarah uses mandarin petigrain oil here for its plummy citrus aroma but also for its fuel-like facet; the result is sweet orange blossom water spilled on hot tar. For such a popular note, orange blossom is easy to get wrong – too sweet and it’s juvenile, too honeyed and it can turn sleazy. Freeway does orange blossom right, pitched exactly halfway between bright and dark. Dry woods, tobacco, and grassy cannabis notes dry out the tarry orange blossom until it smells more like old paper and less like a flower. A light, foamy vanilla froths around the dry, papery notes for a result that smells like eating a thimbleful of insanely rich, perfumery orange blossom gelato in an antique book store. Urban and urbane, Freeway is the scent of L.A.’s future, when, as Sarah says, “all cars are solar powered and the Freeways have cycle lanes, orange groves, jasmine hedgerows, and picnic areas.”