Kiehl's Aromatic Blends Are Simple, Light and Summery

1:00 PM, July 12 2012

By Natalie Matthews

I want to buy everyone in my apartment building a bottle of Kiehl's new Aromatic Blends.

It's not that my neighbors smell bad. I wouldn't know—or at least not in summer, when they try masking the inevitable 94-degree day sweat by showering in their fancy perfumes and colognes.

I don't see them do that, of course, but I know it. Lately, getting on my elevator is like stepping into a sauna of chemical-y fragrances. With so many topnotes and basenotes colliding in one confined space (pear! patchouli! peony!) it feels like an oddly tuned torture device. It doesn't smell funky, it just smells like too much. Too complicated.

That's where the Aromatic Blends would come in, as perhaps the most selfish neighborly present ever. Each of the four scent groups is made from far less ingredients than tradional fragrances, ensuring a more concentrated, pure aroma.

They're not essential oils—each mixes two key ingredients, my favorite being fig leaf & sage—but as two-note scents instead of, say, two hundred, they're close to that pared down simplicity. Which makes them the absolute best fragrances to reach for when it's so humid the air congeals around your body like Jell-O, and you just want something simple, light and splashy. (If only someone would tell my neighbors.)