In my day job as a drug discovery scientist I am fascinated by the placebo effect. It is amazing what the power of suggestion can achieve even with health care conditions. The placebo effect is seen in clinical trials where some patients are getting the drug being investigated and others are getting a placebo which has no drug. While the group getting the drug sees the effect; quite interestingly the group getting the placebo also sees a percentage of patients respond because they believe they are getting a treatment. That is the serious side of it. On the more plebian side most products in the beauty department thrive on the placebo effect. Telling consumers that snake venom, gold flakes, cayenne pepper, yada yada yada; has some effect. For the percentage who buy into the hype and see a change they have a customer for life. I hadn’t thought there would be a perfume equivalent until I received my sample of Panah Icy Citrus.
Kedra Hart
Panah was founded in London in 2016. They say their goal is to combine “valuable aroma chemicals” with “high quality natural oils”. The spend a lot of time on that “valuable aroma chemicals” part of the equation. To date I have found their perfumes to be credibly designed gourmand, floral, or citrus style perfumes. Icy Citrus caught my attention because they claim the icy part comes from a new technology, “skin friendly cooling micro spheres”. I was quite curious to see what this was all about. As has been the case with all the previous Panah releases perfumer Kedra Hart is the nose.
Icy Citrus is mainly a classically designed citrus. Ms. Hart combines a group of citrus notes in the early going to give that typical bright opening. Then I detect a set of the sea breeze ozonic notes which provide some lift to the citrus. Is this what is meant by the cooling effect? There are some herbs and spices of which it seems mint is part of. That also provides a cooling effect. It transitions rapidly to a solid woody base sweetened with some vanilla.
Icy Citrus has 8-10 hour longevity and average sillage.
I can’t say I experienced the technological cooling breakthrough promised in the press release. I instead found a combination of expansive ingredients paired with mint providing the icy part I detected. Icy Citrus is a nice citrus as all the others in the Panah collection are. As for new icy tech; that might be a placebo effect.
Disclosure: This review is based on a sample I purchased.
–Mark Behnke
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