azurelunatic

On two of my friends, this smells just gorgeous: rich leather and golden balsam luxuriating in warm cinnamon. It made me want to lick them. I tried it. Unfortunately on me, it smells like doing the Cinnamon Challenge in Uncle Sketchy Galore's mancave: dry, burning cinnamon with a surround of creepy, unkempt leather. I will stick to sniffing it on my friends.

Immediately after I put it on, the beeswax dominates. The incense shifts in and out for a while, but the wax always remains sweetly, smokily ascendant. I smell like the aftermath of a very complicated magical ritual that used nearly unsafe numbers of candles. It's glorious.

Okay, who here has read at least part of the Wheel of Time series? In those books, the Power that the dudes use, Saidin, has been tainted by their friendly local demonic forces. The taint is like an oil slick on the top of the Power, twisting and sickening all the dudes who touch it. Picture that, with musk instead of eldritch power. The myrrh rounds out the musk scent. The motor oil floats greasily on top, sweetening it but also making me feel vaguely unwell. Like if I keep channeling the Saidin, I'm going to have some real problems later on. Fortunately, the motor oil goes away after the first few hours. I really like the scent that stays around after that. Which is good, because the scent lasted through a shower, more than a full 24 hours in all. It took alcohol wipes to get off (mostly because I was getting bored and wanted to try something new). And then I'd dripped some on my watch band, which still smells sweet and delightful.

My skin loves white florals and they love me, so I was very hopeful about this. And then my dreams were realized! This is absolutely lovely on me. Hilariously, a local friend who was (with permission) sticking his nose in the padded envelope was very startled to see his birthday on a bottle of perfume. And he liked how it smelled on my arm. If he's very lucky I may grant him a few drops.

In the bottle: SWEET! On me: plastic fruit. I'm not even sure where the plastic fruit comes from, just there's a sweet fruitiness, and then a strong whiff of plastic on top of that. My aunt noticed the scent and liked it when I got in the car, and got some vanilla-y out of it, but after I pointed out the plastic fruit scent, she couldn't un-smell that either. Once she pointed out the vanilla-y scent, I could sort of pick that out, but not particularly strongly. Neither of us seemed to smell cinnamon. I'm probably going to swap this with someone.

I got this one free in an order several years ago. There was MILK! and HONEY! and it sort of hit me in the nose and then stayed there, very like a hot washcloth soaked in sweetened condensed milk and honey across the face. It's not a very appealing analogy because I wasn't very appealed. After trying it on and sniffing a few more times to make sure it was not a fluke, I passed it along to a woman in my writers group at the time, who gave it a good home.

My first impression was the sort of harmonious massed collection of notes that hit you upon opening a large box of various incense, and that impression has stayed. It's dusty and sweet and I could sort of just inhale this and roll around in it all day. I think it's the amber that I smell the strongest.

Now that I know the strawberry's there, I can smell it. But my circle of friends smelled it and immediately thought of a smoky, incense-filled coffee shop we visit. It smells exactly like a night in there, except a little less heavy on the tobacco. They can't stand it as a perfume. I like it.

I just got my imp of this. It doesn't seem to work on me -- it's bitter in the bottle, and bitter wet, and dries out to something spicy but not a spice that works well with my skin, and finally fades to something faint, acceptable, and musky.