zankoku_zen

Rose water and a mineralic, star-dappled blend of white musk, crystalline amber, and sweet oud.

Candied ginger, orange blossom, benzoin, and clove.

Frankincense, galangal, styrax, cinnamon bark, and onycha accord.

Polished oak and mahogany, crumbling pages and cracked leather, all thick with dust and strewn with sandalwood cobwebs.

Skin musk and soap, smoldering with ash and exorcism incense.

After much looking via CTRL+F, I couldn't come up with a topic. SFM3 smells like a sophisticated, manly cologne. I get hints of a fougere, bergamot, and some musk. Urban, sophisticated, dark.

Sweet myrrh, Oman frankincense, gum acacia, and white sandalwood.

Coconut milk, lavender, lilac. This is a soft, cuddly coconut and flowers. Medium throw and wear length.

Subtle chocolate, whiff of raspberry, and glamour. Honestly, this also has a foodie gourmand note beyond the chocolate that makes you think Magnolia Bakery and Carrie Bradshaw. This is the perfume equivalent of Carrie Bradshaw in a fabulous outfit, with great shoes, eating a frosted chocolate cupcake in New York. It's an absolute fantasy. It's pink but not overly so, its chocolate but not overly sweet, its girlie but grown up, and its expensive. It's the fantasy that you too can have it all, while also being able to afford an apartment in NYC. It's absolute nonsense but you can't help wish it were real. Medium throw and wear length.

Great Birnam Wood didn’t just come to high Dunsinane Hill – it marched all over Los Angeles: apple wood, apple buds, squished apples, and apple blossom.

Sweet oakmoss, vetiver, and white sandalwood.

Often found with Aegirine, a mineral named after Aegir, the jötunn of the ocean. A deep, inky scent, as shadowed and strange as an abyssal trench: a salt-crusted black musk with black orchid, luminescent jasmine, water lily, and kelp.

Pink rock candy, strawberry cream, and splashes of gin, vermouth, and grenadine. Grenadine, strawberry candy and a hint of gin. This one smells like sweet pink candy with a splash of gin. Very fresh and summery. Great throw and wear length.

Moving counter-clockwise through the room, you come upon the next stage. The backdrop is shredded, and seems to have been torn in a fury. On the remaining half of the canvas, you can barely make out a faded illustration of the sun setting over a pyramid. On the center of the platform, an elaborate golden sarcophagus has been set upright and propped up towards the edge of the stage. Beside it, upon the ground, sits a hooded lantern. A woman’s image is painted on the front of the sarcophagus, and upon the gold limned body, a tale is being told in hieroglyphics: scenes of murder, carnage, and grotesque, mad passion. Although you do not know the language, the inscription upon the tomb translates within your mind, and the words burn behind your eyes as if they were written in blood and fire: “The Guardian will never part the veil for her soul. Mighty Sutekh, have pity on us all.” A thin, dark-skinned man wearing a linen loincloth climbs onto the stage. His form is frail and withered, he is impossibly old, yet his long, straight hair is as black as the night skies. With solemn, reverential gravity, he slowly moves the casket lid aside. Within the box, you see a skeletal figure wrapped in stained, ragged cloths, draped in a mauve cloth. The dark-skinned man bends low, and lights the lanterna magica. From within the glass, images begin to form, and glowing alchemical symbols cast their eerie light onto the mummy. As the lights touch the creature, the desiccated body swells, and with horrific, agonizing slowness, a woman’s form begins to appear within the wrappings. At her chest, the rotted wrappings burst, exposing sinew and the glinting white bones of her ribs. Her hands reach towards her face, and with a screech of agony and eons-long rage, she tears the gauze from her glittering black eyes. The perfume of life-in-death: embalming herbs, black myrrh, white sandalwood, black orchid, paperwhites, olive blossom, tomb dust, and Moroccan jasmine. Jasmine, myrrh, sandalwood and something that smells like papyrus. For me, I am really amping up the jasmine which is covered in dusty book jacket over a resinous base. Compared to the 2006 version, the jasmine on my skin is definitely more prominent. I get less of the dust and resins, and definitely more white jasmine florals. Good throw and wear length.

A grounding, soothing scent that is reminiscent of leaf-strewn forest moss and pine amber sunlight filtered through the tangled, comforting embrace of redwood branches.

No additional scent description.

Soft rose, resin and a touch of tobacco. This one smells soft and nostalgic.

Sweet vanilla patchouli. Medium throw and wear length.

Rooty vegetable patchouli. Medium throw and wear length.

Aquatic snow, cypress, oudh. Both darker and lighter than expected. Medium throw, great wear length.

Black leather and a touch of beeswax. Medium throw and wear length.

Cologney leaves, dirt and vetiver. Medium throw and wear length.

Piney, pepper, cedar and vanilla fig. Medium throw and wear length.

Feathers, smoke and almond. Medium throw and wear length.

Licorice, patchouli and anise. Dark, dirty. Medium throw and wear length.