Violaine

This is going to win some lovers and haters, I'd wager, but... Edith, to me, is SERIOUSLY reminiscent of B&BW's Warm Vanilla Sugar. Just without the chemical garbage and a little more grown up. And to me, that is a very, very good thing.

This is pretty much straight up, perfectly balanced orange and amber to me. It's so nice!

I legitimately had to scrub this off. This is nothing but a melange of department store perfume, which is the same thing I got out of OLLA Ava. I'm not saying these two smell the same, but it's the same overall tone to me. I can't smell anything beyond a very strong, very heady perfume. :\

A glittering golden amber chypre whose facets reflect bright flickers of cardamom, galbanum, guaiac, neroli, and sharp cedar. To my nose, on my skin, this is a dead ringer for Obsession and it is GLORIOUS! I get mostly amber with this black pepper like spiciness that I can only assume is the cardamom. It's absolutely gorgeous. This is the scent of being curled up in front of a fireplace on a winter night after a terribly fancy dinner party.... perhaps naked on a fur rug. The throw is heavy enough to envelop you in the scent but not offend anyone near you, and it's one that only gets more beautiful with wear and heat.

This smells almost EXACTLY like LUSH's Twilight bath bomb to me. TKO has always been similar but where it falls short, A Moment In Time takes up the slack. This is utterly amazing. A sweet, floral, vanilla lavender with a bit of patch to ground it. Absolutely superb. I need a backup.

I don't really know what benzoin smells like, but after spilling a huge drop of Kit into the speakers of my cell phone 3 weeks ago I can thoroughly say that I adore this scent. And yes, my phone still smells like it. It's this syrupy, sweet, wonderfully deep sandalwood that isn't at all dry. I'm not the best at describing scents, but this one is remarkably and wonderfully simple to me. Love!

This is a gorgeous, stable, long lasting, creamy white musk on me. So much so it's almost single note. I absolutely adore it and I bought a backup.

I hate to say it, but this has such a loud Yankee Candle-ness about it that I had to scrub it off before it made me too nauseous. I'm sad that I can't experience the beauty of it, but it's just all heavily perfumed retail candle on me.

5ml: Dolly Kei Glowing Vulva at Ryogoku Bridge Les Bijoux (mostly or completely empty!) Love Lay Upon Her Eyes Sumatran Red Patchouli The Girl Youth's Disengagement Imps/Decants: Alcie Aphrogenes Brisingamen The Butterfly Chimera Comforting Plush Companion Glowing Vulva at Ryogoku Bridge Harigata II Iole Kypris Lady Macbeth Le Serpent Qui Danse Luna Male Nude, Arms Upstretched Molly Grue Odin Pandy The Penitent Magdalen The Ring Skuld Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs Spicebush Swallowtail Tea Urd I generally love honey, vanilla, all musks except red, patchouli, amber, resins, peach, rose, tonka, sandalwood, saffron.... Try me!

This was the runaway hit for me at East Coast Will Call, and totally unexpected. I love amber and I like rose, but rose is extremely volatile and iffy on me. The wrong rose can easily overpower, go sour, or even give me a migraine. But Love Lay Upon Her Eyes is so perfectly blended that the rose never takes over completely. The amber and the rose dance together and they each have their seperate showy moves, but in the end it's a seamless integration, one body moving on he floor. Ahem. Metaphors aside, this scent is sweet, warm, resinous, and sensual. It reminds me greatly of Morocco. It took me a while to pin that similarity down, but that's absolutely it. For me... it's better than Morocco. I bought two bottles at Will Call. We'll see if that's going to be enough.

This may be my shortest review to date. Wet: Spicy bananas. Dry: Gilly Hicks La Perouse. That is all. Provided I can get through the spicy banana phase, I will love and adore this!

I am not entirely sure why I haven't ever tried this before. Maybe it seemed like nothing special by the description and other Shungas won out. ANYWAY. Yeah, in the bottle I smell those grains, and it's an odd smell. But I tend to uncap, sniff the cap... then keep sniffing. It's like as the air hits it, the scent changes and you can smell everything in it. The only thing I can't pick out is the ginger, but I'm sure it's there. I get this gentle lemon fragrance - not at all sharp. The honey is there, and that and the grains keep it wonderfully... warm? Round? The black tea lends this sophistication to it, and I dunno... it's just this glorious, sunshiney, gentle scent that clings to you like you were rolling around in a field of lemon blossoms. I love it.

2010 version Man, there isn't a lot I can say here that hasn't already been said. But maybe this will help some people: I'm not a Snake Oil fan. My MIL wears it and that's a big no-no for me, but I also smelled and tested it long before her and it just wasn't for me. It was too overwhelming and too... can I say unrefined? I don't mean it in a bad way, but it's a strong, strong blend, and it makes no excuses for itself. For me, those three honeys in Womb Furie are Snake Oil's "excuse". It mellows it out for me, rounds it into a nice, honeyed, sweet, incense that snuggles closely against my skin, yet has a great throw. It doesn't insist upon itself like Snake Oil does. I really love Womb Furie, and I'm happy that it give me a Snake Oil to love. 2011 version This version is much sweeter on my skin. The Snake Oil is there, and the honey is there, but the honey dominates the blend. I prefer the 2010 iteration, but I'll wear 2011 too. Give them to me AALLLLL!

Oh, but I had high hopes for this one. In the bottle and wet on my skin it is vomitously powdery, floral soap to me. I'm begging it to taper off into this wonderful vanilla honey muskiness that other people are smelling. Then on the drydown it goes sweeter and even more powdery. At the tail end of my inhale, there's a...savory foodiness that just... wait. Is that pickle? XO Let me um... layer this with Paladin and see what happens. But at this point I really don't think I can get past the... ugh factor. I weep!

This is really beautiful. Sniffing it in the bottle, I thought, "Oh, this is Korea!" And by that I mean that it smells like a throng of generic, sweet, teenage girl-aimed Korean body sprays. But don't take that in the wrong way!! I love those scents! I spent a lot of my time in Korea shopping at places like Etude House and Holika Holika for those sweet, almost effervescent sprays! But while it reminds me of those scents, Loosening of the Obi is more grown up. The rice wine stays very high in the blend, always there, but it's like the sandalwood, vanilla bean, and musk are wrapping their arms around it and pulling it back down to earth. It's sweet, enveloping, and while I'd consider it "perfumey", it's also very unique and mysterious in a lightly feminine way. I absolutely love and adore this. If you're one of those people who feel like the Shungas are "made for you", then you gotta try this.