MamaMoth

comes on initially with huge blast of bittersweet cocoa.  it's like... 90% dark cocoa and 10% sweet chocolate, but never milk chocolate for which i am glad.  ever so slightly honeyed, but honey is not a heavy hitter here and is really only present in the opening. the vetiver IS a heavy hitter, and it's gorgeous.  dry-grassy and smoky, it seems to be amplifying both the enjoyable bitterness and the sweetness of the blend.

as it dries, a sort of fuzzy amber musk emerges.  the cocoa does that thing it sometimes does on my skin which i love, where it's less OMGCHOCOLATE and more just a rich brown earthiness. 

fully dried and settled, i get almost no cocoa at all, which is wild.  it's a warm fuzzy musky amber/vetiver, soft and earthy and  smoky.  there's just enough sweetness to temper the smoky bitterness.

tried this on a whim, but i'm really enjoying it and will more than likely snatch a bottle before the yules come down.

seriously loving this perfume.

goes on with a LOT of sugary red musk with a hint of jasmine to it.  there's some spiciness... i don't *think* it's cinnamon, but i can't really pinpoint it.  a creamy milk note starts to envelop it, and the vegetal nature of the musk burns off early on.  there's no twang to the goats milk at all.  it's really just reading as a creamy vanilla.

as it dries,  a fuzzy amber note emerges,  giving it a slightly powdery, perfumey richness.   i'm totally getting the parchment too, something smooth and dry and... lightly woody ?  maybe a little hint of a cloth-type note?  it's hard to describe.

the patchouli is a little shy, but not hidden. in the beginning it's just providing support structure, but it begins to show its face more and more.   it's sweet and earthy, rich, thoroughly entwined with the musk and vanilla milk.

completely dry, this is just phenomenal.  sweet and musky, earthy, creamy, rich, just a tad spicy.  that sounds like a lot, but everything is tempered by that elusive parchment note, which just seems to smooth it all over.  it's not busy, or muddled, everything is just very well-blended. 

the throw on this is fantastic.  it's not aggressive, but i feel like i'm just exuding it as an aura. it subtly morphs over time, but it's like a journey you go on... enjoying every stop along the way.

i wasn't overly impressed with this when i first put it on,  then 20 minutes later i realized that the most gorgeous scent was wafting off my wrist.  wow! this really does take a minute to bloom on the skin, but it becomes a beautiful, warm,  resiny amber and honey.  the honey is creamy and light, really more like a beeswax.   in fact this reminds me of one of my new favorites: tunisian amber, beeswax, and balsam.  take out the balsam and add a soft kiss of sweet smoke, and you have horses. they're so similar that i really can't justify buying both.  and if you twisted my arm, i'd have to say i prefer it with the punchy balsam kick.  but horses is really beautiful. 

golden musk, golden lemon.  gold upon gold.  bright and tart, a little pithy, sweetly musky. very creamy, but not a dairy cream.  divine. unfortunately the amber and musk combine in such a way that takes this in a very perfumey direction,  a little out of my comfort zone.  it mostly passes, eventually, but it takes a good while. 

i'll revisit this one before the lupers come down, to see if it has settled in a bit, because that golden, creamy, musky lemon part is intoxicating.  i never imagined lemon could smell so freaking sexy.  and something in here is anchoring the lemon to my skin like it almost never does. it's like the musk became lemon musk.

this is niiiiiiice.

the cake smells more cakey than most cakes do on me!  the lemon burns off pretty quickly, but it leaves something of itself behind, like a little bit of lemon zest was mixed into the cake batter.  it's not like a big frosted confection of a cake, more like little unglazed vanilla/lemon teacakes.  i'm floral-averse, and the candied flowers don't really smell floral to me. i would have guessed light candied fruits maaaaybe, but it's very subtle.  there IS something tipping this ever-so-gently perfumey (instead of straight up gourmand) and i'm pretty sure the florals may get that credit. 

i will most likely grab a bottle of this for bedtime, because that's how i roll:  resins in the streets, cake in the sheets. 

sheer, cool vanilla with a light floral/herbal edge.  as it dries down, a very gentle cognac peeks out, and the amber turns it a little perfumey and powdery.  this is lovely, i can see why it's so popular.  the herbal chamomile makes it feel very soothing, like a vanilla herbal tea. it wears very close to the skin on me. 

i'm finding my thoughts on this one a bit difficult to articulate.  i've had this review half-finished for weeks now, and i keep pecking at it.

when first applied, the opium tar comes on very strong. i'm not intimately familiar with that note, but it reads as a heavy, dark, almost sticky floral and that sounds about right.  i can smell the cognac, and it's boozy and toothsome.  i'm not the biggest floral fan, so this opening stage isn't my favorite, though this dark soporific type floral is more palatable to me than most. i can tell there's some dark complicated stuff going on in the background, but i can't pin it down while the opium demands the spotlight.

as it dries, the opium tar fades back, and becomes more tar, less opium.  and this is where it starts to get good.  like really, REALLY good.  but this is also where i have a hard time articulating, because it becomes one of those blends where everything is so meshed and complicated, it's impossible for me to break it apart. it's deep and rich, a little spicy, a lot resinous.  it's dark and smooth, and sweet from the resins/tobacco. it's a little cologney, but in the best possible way.  

fully dry, i can finally see it as a lace.  the tobacco and cognac are doing their lace thing, and i even feel like i can sense a little vanilla in there, which i guess is probably the benzoin?

this one is a real morpher.  it's a little rocky for me at first, but the payoff is spectacular and totally worth riding it out for.

dark, mysterious, intoxicating, a little dangerous, and spot-on witchy.  this is 100% the kind of perfume i signed up for.

this is so outta my wheelhouse, but i like it.  the white tea isn't too astringent, just very clean smelling.  the rice milk is sweet, creamy, and starchy, but light.  the coconut doesn't have the dryness that i usually associate with the husk, it's sweet and fruity.  could be the way it's combining with the rice milk to give that effect. it sits pretty close to the skin, very low throw but it does hang out longer than i expected.  

to be honest, as pleasant as it is, i couldn't see myself reaching for this much as a perfume. but if there were a hand soap with this scent, it would definitely be my favorite. 

this one starts off great.  black tea, milk, pepper, ginger, honey, vanilla...  yes to all that! creamy yet fresh, astringent but soft. just a little bite from the pepper and ginger. delicious, but not foodie.  not my usual style of thing, but it could be a great summer scent. 

unfortunately, like so many of the crisp-clean-cloth type notes, my skin breaks it down quite hastily into its component florals.  loud, screechy, drowning out almost everything else.   they do settle down eventually, but this remains a floral-forward blend on me and ends up smelling like a pretty run-of-the-mill perfume. 

am i a jasmine person now?  is that who i've become?  because there's definitely jasmine here, and i definitely really like this perfume. 

wet, i smell bitterish jasmine, fruity-sweet red musk, vanilla, spices, and a touch of creamy vegetal pumpkin, in that order.  

dry, that red musk pops out all sweet and juicy and the vanilla really blooms out around it.  there's some spicy creamy jasmine just hanging out around the edges.   i really dig it.  it sounds like it would be a sexbomb, but the musk is so sweet and fruity, the vanilla so soft, that it actually doesn't read that way at all. 

i'm not tracking any pumpkin at all really, but i think it's lending some creaminess.  that's fine by me... i'm not exactly anti-punkin, but not really pro-punkin either.  i'm meh-punkin. 

this is a cousin of wild nights! to me, with that jasmine/musk/vanilla/spice thing going on.  which, coincidentally, is the only other jasmine blend i've ever enjoyed.  so either i've had some major body chemistry/preference changes (which is highly likely, honestly) or that's just the magical combination.   either way, this is great, and it's only gonna get better. 

wow.  mushroom.  i was expecting something like death cap, maybe mildly earthy.  but nope, that's mushroom alright.  as my brother-in-law would say, that smells like folks.  mild honey, incense smoke, and earthy-umami-savory-salty mushroom. you know when you forget about a bag of mushrooms in the back of the fridge, and then you find them, open the bag, and they're all slimy where they've been stewing in their own juices?  yeah, like that.  with honey.  it's kinda repellant, but weirdly compelling too. i keep going back in for sniffs. 

eventually the mushroom fades back, and this morphs into mostly honeyed incense with a bit of a savory/earthy thing happening on the back end, that anyone else might not necessarily clock as mushroom. but since i'm still recovering from having just been slapped in the face with a sack of pungent shrooms, i recognize it for the funky little beast it is. but it's actually pretty nice now. 

still, i won't be needing a bottle. but i wouldn't be surprised if i trot my decant out occasionally just to ride the ride. 

starts off with that gorgeous cedar taking the lead: bold and brassy, almost balsamic. sweetened and blunted somewhat by creamy beeswax, with the barest vanilla underpinning.  it's quite pleasant now, but a little discordant.  like listening to an orchestra tune their instruments.

as it starts to dry the vanilla surges up, the cedar mellows, and all the notes shift into perfect harmony.  smooth, creamy, and sweet from the vanilla and beeswax, woodsy and a little sharp from the cedar. it's like everything my nose craves, and very much my kinda thing. 

my skin usually amps amber and cream notes, but there's barely any to be found here for me. odd. on me this mostly astringent-y lemon tea, and overall just reading as more higher-octave top notes than i can enjoy.  very spa-day kind of vibe. 

cream cheese danish sn

this goes on with a lot of wintergreeny licorice which doesn't read as root beer to me.  it really is more herbal and rooty.  vaguely medicinal, but not in a bad way.  like a sweet syrupy fortifying tonic. 

dries down to a swanky, mellow, creamy vanilla roughed up by a low-down rooty herbal spice. it's creamy and sweet, but not cloying or heavy, and kind of refreshing in a way.  i can see myself wearing this in hot weather. 

this is really unique and i'm thoroughly enjoying it! 

i, too, am getting something "purple" from this.  a syrupy sweet patchouli, dusty purple fruit, and incense.  this reminds me a good bit of the late-day throw of urd.  very odd.  i'm questioning the provenance of my secondhand decant. i may track down another to verify.  

this one needs more love.  where my balsam peeps at?

i adore balsam and this one is toothsome and bitey,  super golden and resiny. it's gloriously radiant.  beeswax is such a great complement to balsam, creamy and sweet and adding to the golden glow while kind of blunting the sharper aspects of the resin. i love that pairing very muchly in no. 93 engine, and fans of that gc gem should definitely give this one a spin.

i can't totally track the amber in this because the balsam is SUCH A DIVA. but it's there, recognizably amber but unique.  it has a very interesting resiny tang to it that works really well with this set of notes. i'd like to find other blends with this amber in them for comparison though, because i can't completely tell where the balsam ends and the amber begins. 

i love it.  bottle, yes.  backup bottle, possibly! 

golden priapus is one of my low-key gc favs, and it does play out well with the sugar plum addition here.  but something is holding me back from loving it.  i think the combination cancels out my favorite part of each element.  for golden priapus, it's that tangy soft pine.  in the sugar plum variation, i can't find it at all.  from the sugar plum, i'm missing that sugary sweetness.  in this blend, it reads more as a tart wild plum-type note.  i was hoping for straight up golden priapus with some sugar and plum, but this is its own creature, divergent from the source.    it ends up as a soft woods and wild plum blend. which is quite nice, but probably not bottle-worthy for me.

i had to grab a decant of this, because cashmere wool sounds heavenly!  cedar always plays nice on me, and amber is usually my friend. and i'm trained to come a-runnin' when starbrow snaps her fingers and says "good vetiver, people!" because she knows That Good-Good Vetiver. 

but i put off trying this one for a while, because the nuttiness is almost overwhelming from the vial, and too much of a nutty thing going on in perfume can sometimes turn my stomach a little.

i needn't have worried though, because the nuttiness instantly recedes to the back end.  it hangs out there giving warmth and body.  i can find it if i squint.  but it's not overwhelming at all.

and oh my lawd. .. all the other notes are everything i hoped they'd be!  how often does that happen? the vetiver is indeed The Good-Good.  dry-grassy and just a touch smokey, but not in a scary way.  that cashmere wool is EVERYTHING.   i wish i knew how to describe it better than the name does, but it's just wooly and soft and wonderful and that's all i can say about it.  the cedar and amber hang out in the middle, behind the vetiver/wool and ahead of the nuts.  the cedar is just softly woodsy, not agressive at all. the amber is sweet and resinous, just a touch perfumey but not powdery.
really, i think every note here is just my favorite version of itself.

this blend is not what i'd call super sweet, but it has a creamy sweetness overall that just smashes my happy button. nothing is obnoxious or agressive, everything is soft and comforting.  so very good.

digging through a box of mega-old imps and decants, i ran across this one and the thick cocoa sludge caught my eye. after much mixing and a hesitant skin test, i think i may have found a hidden gem. back in the day, i wasn't too keen on anything overly perfumey, so the oudh likely turned me off then.  but i am enjoying it much more these days. 

the cocoa, vanilla, and custard here lay down a full, rich foundation. but it is less sweet and foody than that dessert-menu note list would lead you to expect. the oudh/musk are keeping the gourmand notes firmly in check, and they are definitely the main players here. they give it a high-end perfumey-ness that just smells so luxe.  just a wee little bit of that rose is hanging out somewhere in the middle, and i am shocked, SHOCKED i tell you, that it is playing out so nicely on me.  i've never tried white rose before... could this be a rose i can tolerate?? 

if nothing else, i would definitely like to see that custard note again someday. 

in the unlikely event that i find this one languishing in someone's destash, i might just have to scoop it up. 

you wander through an abandoned, derelict church.  it feels like centuries, maybe, since this building was put to its purpose, but it still reverberates with a solemn hush.  in your explorations, you find a cloth-wrapped bundle, what used to be fine cotton and lace, gently moldering.  it crumbles at your touch, revealing a precious cache of incense resins: frankincense tears.  copal?  myrrh? even through thick, muffling layers of dust, their scent still resonates.  you leave them where you found them, carrying only the memory of that scent with you. 

this one is just unfortunate. 

starts off as a fuzzy brownish-black musk, with a soft woodsy cedar peeping out.  sweetened a little by honeyed benzoin, mostly honey, but not overly sweet. 

as it dried down it got more and more powdery, then BOOM, my brain locked onto the baby powder association, and i don't think i can ever unsmell it now.  i think it's the musk and the honey making that happen.  the cedar is nowhere to be found anymore. 

here's the kicker.  after a couple of hours, it is actually a really lovely, musky, honeyed benzoin. there's the cedar again, and it's so softly woodsy.  this is just all kinds of nice at this stage, drat! the musk almost has a buttery quality now. 

i'm so conflicted. it's a mega peave of mine when people compare my dark sultry complicated perfume to baby powder.  i am a GOTH QUEEN damnit!  NO BABBIES!  so i'm not sure if i could ever actually wear this.  which is a shame, because that late drydown is ERRYTHING. 

further testing required... maybe i can break the unfortunate association i've made in my head. 

i have a confession to make. 

i have never actually tried black phoenix.  

there, i said it.  it just never called my name.  and every time i read the description touting it as their signature oil, i think "stop trying to make black phoenix happen!" 

but i adore this sugar plum note, and so i snapped up decants of every single one. 

at first it's... mostly sugar plum? there's something dark and sweet going on behind it, but i couldn't tell you what.  promising! but as it dries down....  oh there you are, rose, my old nemesis!  ruiner of so many wonderful perfumes with your grandma's-soap staleness.   bah! 

so yeah, there's rose in black phoenix.  now i know. 

another winner from the duos and trios! i love an elaborate theme, but there's just something about their unfussy straightforwardness that really appeals to me.  that's not to imply simplicity, though. like with others in this group, i'm finding a surprising complexity to this blend. 

the vanilla husk is wonderful.  dry and warm and golden, almost a bit woodsy. hay is a new note for me that i'm exploring, but it's unmistakable when you smell it.  it's also dry and golden, sun-warmed and sweet.  as others have noted, it opens with a lemony brightness that i really enjoy. that lemonish note doesn't fade away exactly, but it sinks to the back, giving things a lovely bright lift that my nose is always searching for in a perfume. 

i'm not clocking the nutmeg precisely, but there is a warm fullness with maybe a *leeetle* spice character that i think it gets credit for.  i'm wondering if the nutmeg is possibly serving the same function here that a little nutmeg can bring to a nice cream sauce:  enhancing the rich creaminess without adding distinctive flavor. 

unfortunately this one shares the same woe i have with some of the other duos/trios:  i just wish it were a little stronger.  this may improve with aging, and i'll certainly give it the chance because it's just wonderful.

in the vial, uh.  this is bread.  crusty outside, soft inside, cut off a hunk and slather it in butter.  like the little wheat-y loaves they bring out for starters at a steakhouse, with a knife sticking out of the wooden cutting board, and a big slab of butter beside it.

ok but like SERIOUSLY.  BREAD.  sometimes people are like "oh this oil smells like my puppy's paws after he's run through snow-covered daffodils", or "this smells precisely like a cupcake with PURPLE icing and PINK sprinkles."  and i'm  like... ok.  it smells good, but i'm not getting all that.  but ThIS SmElLS liKe FuCKiNg bReaD and i don't even know how to handle that.  there's black magic involved here, obvs.  i mean what accords and absolutes and elixirs does one even concoct that resemble BREAD?? the mind boggles.

so I apply it asap, because duh.  i very much want to smell like buttered bread.  (don't judge me.  i've been off carbs for like 3 years now.)  And once it hits skin, it starts changing.  before long it doesn't really smell a lot like bread anymore, and I'm a little sad.  But it smells REALLY good, so I'm less sad.  What does this even smell like?  There is a vague yeasty/savory under-tone to it, yes.  But it's all about that sweet buttery cream now.  The cream has none of the twang to it that i find with some milk/cream notes. (which i generally do like, but it's not to be found here.  it's just sweet creamy cream.)  it's not super rich, it's light and sweet, a little buttery, and damned delicious.  what was the bread is now the base layer under that lovely cream.  Strangely, I'm getting kind of a Boo vibe from it.  More foody, obviously.  But that bread note is kind of reading to me as white and clean, under a layer of sweet cream.  or not.  i dunno, that may be a weird comparison.  i'm kind of punch drunk from experiencing BREAD PERFUME.

do i need i bottle of this?  i think i might need a bottle of bread perfume.  because it is perfume.  that smells like bread.

eta:  yeah, no.  i stand behind my boo comparison.  after a couple of hours on my skin, they're VERY close cousins.  siblings even, maybe.