Splendid Molerat

Satyr: Buy me! Buy me! Buy me! Okay, stop bouncing around, already. I like this one, and plan to get more. The initial few minutes are ideal if you want to smell like a goat (albeit a recently washed goat, from good stock and in excellent health). Fresh, plant-based indoles and scatoles, from something with really fleshy flowers on it. Satyr settles down into a pollen-y, masculine blend with green and sweet notes (say, cypress, vanilla, maybe clover hay). Very much a sex-coming-out-the-pores scent, with the sort of cheerful, unfocussed lechery normally associated with French-Canadians.

Penthus is a beautiful fragrance, with the rose held in check by the aquatic notes. There is a sorrowful, hollow quality to this; the sort of chest-heavy feeling you get after hours of bearing your own grief and being strong for others. The scent anticipates the moment when you can finally weep and set free that part of the other person you were holding to earth. It's interesting in comparison to Loralei, which feels like a more "embodied" sorrow, if that makes any sense.

This is one of the spookiest Love Potions I've sampled yet. It has the aquatic sadness of Tears, and almost smoky florals. Loralei is an overcast day with diffuse light, a mist on the river, and the scent of flowers growing more distant as you wade into the water. Your eyes sting more than your last breath ever could.

Non compos mentis, indeed! A contrary, conflicted scent, bubbling with merry madness. Contains apple, rose, and lemon. Delirium is an effervescent remedy for being sticky-hot. I'm cautious with roses, since some versions will turn into a thick fog after warming up on my skin. The lemon and apple notes make this a very clean "wet" rose, sort of like rain over a rose garden.

Muse begins with a mouth-watering, glossy green lime. For me lime oil is a kissing cousin to turpentine, a pleasant nostaglia scent for me. The white florals are there, but they aren't as heavily sweet and funereal as they would normally turn on my skin. I'll be wanting a bottle of this in future.

Nefertiti is beautiful and serene. It's one of those fragrances that gets shuffled to the back if you're sampling several at once, and tends to reward single-minded attention. The iris is heady and light, almost aquatic. The resins and spice are dry and airy. The beauty here is of someone who requires distance, and not of someone who can be touched.

Some combination of the Lex Talionis name and the dry-dark ingredients gives me an image of wooden shelves and leather-bound books as far as the eye can see (the Borges law library, perhaps...) Resistant, opaque, and unbending.

Hymn is initially clean and airy, with the rose absolute and lily of the valley. The resins are dark and smoky, and the light and dark together do seem to enlarge the space. I could see adding this to the oil burner when I need to clear everything away.

Ingenue starts out with wild clover, crushed violets, and water. [Note to self: roll in a clover patch at next opportunity.] Dreamy innocent. In a tale of innocence lost I would expect progressively fleshier notes, and as this warms up I am getting the slight musk of melon, and an allegorical pink rose. This is the girl who went to be in films, and ended up sleek and nude on a sepia-tinted postcard. Pleased to have met her.

Eos is beautiful, sweet and fragile. The impression is very soft-focus, dusted with pollen; yellow sunshine, cool air, and easily bruised flowers. I'm picking up a grassy note in the background, which stops the fragrance from going sugary sweet on me.

Whip has a subdued, wearable sort of rose (similar to the rose in Kali). The rose and leather together are sleek and elegant, very womanly. I find this fragrance plays well with both De Sade and Perversion -- call it the cerebrally sexy trio.

Black Pearl is a gleaming, purple-brown fragrance. Clean iris, sweet coconut, earthy hazelnut. It clings gently for hours of wear, and has a mellowing effect on me. I'll need more at some point...

Bloos Kiss takes the sex scent of O, and carries it off for a bloody good time elsewhere. It's the sort of romp that would leave you with torn clothes, wine in your hair, mud on your hands, and bruises for a week. Let's call it a 'maybe'.

The burning heart on the label of Corazon is well-matched to the warmth and sweetness of the fragrance. The opening notes for me are mango, and lavender, joined later by a peppery sage. Musk and amber make the blend glow. This is sweet without being sugary, and Corazon is something that I could wear comfortably throughout the day.

Very glad to have ordered Chiroptera. It's got the sleep-inducing qualities of a cool summer night after a sticky hot day. The scent isn't specifically floral, it's more reminiscent of dainty-stalked plants with velvety leaves and tissue-thin blossoms. Picture contented little brown bats flitting about their work in a cloud of lemon balm...

Manila is an enchanting tropical fragrance -- less airy than Machu Picchu, more spicy humid earth. And the banana leaf note is bright and carefree, giving a nice lift to the florals. I'll add this to the short list.

The green notes in Delphi wrestle each other for a while; I was initially alarmed by the bay note, which reminded me of the negative reaction I had to Nero. However: at equilibrium this fragrance becomes a very pale green smoke, backed by the light spicy-sweetness of the honey mead. I've never tried anything quite like it

No miswiring! Glowing white starched linen, steaming black tea, and little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.... Followed by a tiny amount of milk, and a bit of honey slathered on bread towards the end. Strange and happy, I suspect White Rabbit may be a good scent for napping.

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof, you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya. Gotta dig out the Leonard Cohen records, now. Bathsheba is soap-and-water clean, spicy floral with a bit of fruit. It works on the part of your brain that makes you suddenly want to bite someone, even if you had no specific intentions to start out with.

Dad? This is turning into old home week. Dracul reminds me very much of my father, clean-shaven, a bit of hair pomade, smoking out in the sun with his dark glasses on. It fades away quickly; I have time to be surprised, but not saddened. Not sure what I'm going to do with this one...

On me this is cinnamon Red Hots and sarsparilla. Sweet and smoky. The name 'Love Me' and the scent itself gave me a strong visual: a little girl running towards someone, arms outstretched, and absolutely assured of an uplifting embrace. A visual nothing like my own childhood, where I was always in doubt as to how I'd be received. This is a fascinating fragrance for me, in light of that initial impression...

It was late summer, approaching dusk, and I was taking a laneway from my house to the grocery. The leaves rustled, the tall grass smelled like baked bread, winter sky. An unleashed dog came up from behind me, I caught him in my peripheral vision. Very large, cocoa brown, possibly a mastiff, his pointed ears were easily shoulder-height on me. Not even turning his head, the dog made a deep sound: 'Whuff'. 'I see you', I said. We walked together around a curve, and the dog loped away into some nearby alley. I wasn't afraid, and Cerberus reminds me of that day. Warm, earthy, and comforting.

Eve is another one I sample at odd intervals, trying to figure out if it is or isn't for me. The ingredients jostle each other for a few minutes, in the end I come out with an almost lemon-y apply blossom, sugar-sweet roses, and a little ylang-ylang/honey for skin warmth. A young and inviting fragrance that doesn't know how much trouble it's in for. This has possibilities, but not for me.

My initial few tests of the sample, all I could get was a very sticky rose fragrance. Now that the vial has been hanging around for a while, I'm guessing the magic of oxidation has made for more balance. Currently the oil is an initial burst of pomegranate, followed by a dewy tea rose. It is very much like the Turkish Delight fragrance I got from Black Cat (minus the catnip). Roses tend to become cloying and sugary on me, but I can see my wearing this as a femme-y, juicy floral by adding a dab of Swank to cut the sweetness.

On me Iago is smoky leather; on the husband it's green and feral, slightly musky. Overall, for us it's more reminiscent of the leather worn by smiths and carpenters, than of frenetic mink sex. A pleasant scent, but I wouldn't knock me down to get some.