in the bottle: Cocoa! Dutch-processed with a touch of vanilla. Hint of sandalwood. Something (or some things) else that I can't identify: smooth, a little smoky, a little sweet. Also, a creamy sensation, maybe the vanilla again.

on, wet: Cocoa and a bit of sandalwood. After about 10 seconds, strong suggestion of smoke.

drydown: This will sound strange, but my left wrist retains the cocoa scent, where my right has gone completely smoky. And not just a little smoky, but full on sitting-in-front-of-a-wood-fire smoky (with a hint of vanilla). The cocoa-y vanilla scent on my left wrist is starting to seem a little food-like to me. Overall, I prefer the smoky effect.

one hour later: Sandalwood and vanilla, both wrists. A ghost or two of scents in the background, but almost completely hidden by the sandalwood.

end of day: Sandalwood and vanilla. Enduring scent, not unpleasant, but nothing like what I smelled in the bottle or through drydown. There remains a hint -- just a suggestion, really -- of other scents way in the background that are completely homogenized, but which lighten the sandalwood and give it a certain dusty sweetness.

compared to official description: Not sure I'd recognize myrrh, as I'm positive I've never smelled straight myrrh, and would therefore have trouble picking it out of a lineup. I know the lab doesn't necessarily list every component, but as the only three listed are sandalwood, cocoa vanilla, and myrrh, I'm wondering if the myrrh carries the smoky effect, since that's the only thing in this blend that stands out to me other than the other two listed.

notes: Not for me. Smells like a my paternal grandmother's house, somehow. In fact, I get a strong scent-memory of being put down for a nap as a very small child on my grandmother's bed, and drifting off to sleep with the faint drone of nearly-inaudible adult voices drifting up the steep, narrow stairs and slipping under the thick, dark, heavy wood door. Pleasant, but I'd want my house to smell this way, not me.

afterthought: I was initially disappointed that this perfume didn't retain its original character, but after rereading my description I realized that there's no reason velvet should smell like cocoa. In the end, I believe the cocoa stayed there but hovered in the distance to give the whole thing a bit of smooth dryness, and that some other element, in addition, pushed the effect over to dustiness. While the hours-later effect was very different from what I smelled straight out of the bottle, I'd have to classify the later scentsation as being more akin to how I'd define velvet (from an olfactory standpoint), since velvet (the fabric) makes me think of dusty places and the satiny-smooth skin of my grandmother's cheek. In the end, this could very well be velvet, at least for me.

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