patina

This is a bit heavy on the leather and teak which gives it a kind of cologne sense. It almost smells like celery at a close sniff. I get an occasional waft of plummy sweet lavender but I don't think the up-close smell is worth it. Very sophisticated though. After some aging the celery has calmed down though the leather is still prominent. I get sticky plum with cologne and red musk too. Now I can finally see the comparison to The Shadow in the Elevator

Nice! The vetiver mixes with and tones down the gingerbread. I'm not getting charred wood from it at all. The blackcurrant is dark and perfumy while just hinting at jam.

I could tell there was a blue element without reading the notes. Champaca is sometimes bad on me but this isn't at all. There's certainly an evergreen presence here too, though the scent softens it. This is very different from Perchta's sweet white powder snow, it's more ice for one thing. It is sweet in it's own right because of the resins. Almost a pineapple ice scent. It's a bit like a blue moon (or one of the lab's Blue Moons) hanging over an ice and snow covered fir tree in the dead of night. It's going to be a hard call deciding on a bottle between this and Perchta 2018.

The rum and tobacco worried me in the vial because sometimes rum smells a bit off on me. No worries, the other scents are strong enough to hold their own, all that toffee and sweet pink rose musk, and just a bit of spice. This is one seriously cheerful scent for me, but then I wouldn't expect a supernatural polka themed scent to have a solemn feel. It's a bit pink but the rum and tobacco give it a unisex edge. Ideal cold winter scent, because I don't know whether the tobacco would be too overwhelming in warm weather. There's something very old fashioned about this in a toffee in an old country store sort of way.

If you ever wanted Shub Niggrath, but didn't want the darker parts of that scent, this is for you. It's really delicious, but then I've yet to try on a gingerbread scent that wasn't.

Sadly underwhelmed by this one, but then coffee bean isn't my favorite note. It is the standard fruity coffee bean. The gingerbread is softened by the vanilla here. Don't get me wrong, it smells great! It's just not my favorite gingerbread scent.

This was a difficult one. I almost bought a bottle straight away because I love red musk and clove. When I first put it on I was underwhelmed by a scent like stale mint that must be the anise. The red musk was unusually shy and the opium and flat patchouli just made everything smell even more stale, like candy gone bad. However, I've only been wearing it a little while and the scent's already warmed up and gotten better. There still isn't a lot of throw but the red musk has gotten over some of its shyness. I think once the patchouli's had the chance to age a little this is going to smell amazing. Edit: After settling a while the clove has come out and it no longer smells like mint. So now it's red musk, anise, and clove, and also weirdly like a clove-scented candy cane.

I just tried on a lot of Yule scents but this one is easily my favorite. But then I do like oude and sweet scents especially if they have non gourmand base notes. (The "stale cardboard" note some reviewers got was certainly oude.) Mostly caramelized toffee with a spicy roasted note. The oude quickly becomes the strongest note though it's always spiced and sweetened by the other notes. That means that this is not a primarily foody scent. I do get coffee, the normal fruity coffee bean note which never smells exactly like the drink, but it stays in the background. This is ideal for a cold, chilly day.

I think Pop Art would be represented best by simple colored musk scents. Also tin, plastic, and metal scents. However, a fembot would wear Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs from the lupers.

I think California Leaf-Nosed Bat would be another good WTNV scent: Nightfall in the desert: Mojave yucca, creosote bush, saguaro, dusty clove, and sacred datura. Maybe Scarlet Horror for Desert bluffs or the Night Vale Council too.

If this was offered in bottle sizes I'd get one so fast. I've said before I don't care for lavender. As a cologne it can go murky and weird but this is nice. A "pure" lavender as someone else said. It's a blast of pure sage and lavender at first, followed by something sweet and deep, neither too herbal nor too dirty and more than one-note sweetness. This amps on me but I don't mind. Maybe like TKO (I don't know I haven't tried TKO, but deeper with extra oomph.

I do smell the cola-ish labdanum, though this is not particularly a dark labdanum on me. I do get clove, but not as much as I anticipated. The truly weird part is that this all meshes together to sort of smell like candlewax. Dusty old candlewax. And maybe white coconut meat?? It's odd. Low throw. Tested next to Suffragium, they're much alike, but that one's more wood, this is more light clove and a little smoke. Come to think of it, that smoke plus the oiliness of the labdanum may be why I get candle wax.

I'm vague on specific oils, but I'd look for black musk, oakmoss, and oude. Edit: Old Moon 2011 The scent of things drifting just on the edge of memory, hiding in shadowed corners. Old, yellowing books, dust-covered toys pushed to the back of the attic, windows obscured by thick, thorny vines, letters discarded, and photographs of people long-forgotten. This might smell more plastic-y than you'd like though. It does indeed smell dusty. Haunted Houses (Halloweenies) Quiet, ineffective ghosts haunting the realm of mystery and night, stretching dusty hands back to homes and lifetimes unforgotten: pale gossamer musks swirling in thick, dense otherworldly vapours through cracks in dry wood and old, old stones. from GC's the only one I can think of offhand is Robin Goodfellow which is rotting wood and plants on me. Maybe Phonenix Steamworks which smelled like a workshop with sage to me. That one might be a little bright for you.

This is a yellow-green scent. The amber smells pale golden, or maybe it's the Ti leaf that has a lemony green tea quality to it. The Ti leaf is the strongest element. While the myrrh and musk are very much present they stay in the background, giving an impression of sleek blackness, fur and silk. This is not a powdery, chunky old fashioned amber on me, this is a light silky perfume. .

Funky strawberry incense indeed with a somewhat dark luxurious background. Blackberries can get too sharp on me. These are fine, but they're a little bit Kool-Aid or craft store berry scent. Probably not for me but not bad.

The oakmoss, myrrh and green musk are murky, the cognac gives it a lift. This is very nice, leaning masculine. While it's not quite Irish Spring soap, there is a clean element to this that manages to avoid soapiness. "Meditative" fits I guess. I would like to rename this "The Murkiest Glen." It reminds me of a non patchouli-clove version of The Laughter of Loki. Or a non vetivered "Smite All Thy Borders With Frogges"

Black-rusted gates swinging wildly on broken hinges. Weed-choked mausoleums and crumbling marble thick with corpse-green mold. Claw-streaked soil and broken pine boughs. I get a soft, powdery, misty green scent. There's a huge amount of moss and pine is soft, menthol-y, and not like floor cleaner at all. I don't get a lot of dirt, but then dirt has never been a strong note to my nose. It could be that it's mixed into the moss smell.

That sounds really nice! I’m half surprised I hadn’t checked out the reviews here in the forum. Might look into that a little more later. Fair warning, this is one of those that seems to vary wildly based on skin chemistry. Everything from "actual dirty aquarium" to "soap" to "beautiful green aquatic."

Plague of frogs is a cool, minty* aquatic that I think would work very well for Froppy and her laid-back attitude. Some people get a bit of an oakmoss(?) funk to it though. *Not super minty just a tiny bit like mint.

Woodsy, cozy fall scents for sure. Scarecrow, Jack, Thanatopsis, Nylarlahotep (The Beast) Magnificent Autumn, Samhain, Hallow-e'een 1914, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Hearth (Yule), Scarecrow Turned Philosopher (2018), Illimitable Dominion Over All (2018, the edelwoods), In A Whispering Gallery (2018, the tea plantation), Nothing But Death (there's a river scent in it!), The School-House, The Death of Autumn, November (Yule), The Governing Dark's Begun (Yule), Frostbitten Jersey Devil (Yule)

Daemonorops, star thistle, wild tobacco, and asafoetida intensified by hemlock accord, black musk seed, mortuary cypress, and black gum leaf. Super dark, balsamic, medicinal woods, resin and herbs. The scent has a brooding men's cologne feel to it. Really not as offputting as it sounds, not "fetid" at all. (Drydown does have a strong camphor element though.) It smells like black musk, with faint highlights of dark red and wintergreen.

I smell the airy/earthy Spanish moss when it's first applied. After that I get the patchouli. It's a sweet-ish patch on me. My main impression is black, glossy polished wood. While the green tea doesn't exactly smell like lemon polish it's close enough to be a less-offensive version of it. I do get a bit of green vegetable-ness overlaying the dark wood. This scent is weirdly formal to me. I could see it as a painted representation of a swamp, all black waters with a little bright green duckweed and a few sprays of gray moss hanging.

I keep forgetting that violets + clove turn to powder on me and the oakmoss doesn't help. The chypre is prominant, it's black and matte and a little scratchy. Overall I was hoping for something more slinky.

This is super refreshing. I'm reminded of Green Tree Viper, but with cream and faint waxy honey. It does smell like citrus, but not in a loud, bright, sour lemon way. It's more like the lab's green tea note. My only problem with this scent is that it gets faint after wear on me. It is cool, summery, and totally work appropriate. The cream does not curdle on me like I'd feared.

I don't get the smoke from smokestack. This is not an industrial smoke on me by any means. While there is a lot of smoke/ashes, it doesn't overwhelm the other elements of the scent on me. The sandalwood and sage are at least as strong as the smoke and I can certainly pick up the frankincense, or maybe I'm confusing that with the copal. This is very much like an earthy incense braiser. I really like it.