Casablanca

A Hundred Years Ago is a fresh, green, sweet, and almost minty blend. I wouldn't guess there was any vetiver in this: the green vetiver simply smells soft and green to me. It blends with sweet citrus from the verbena and bergamot, and a fresh, slightly ozone, almost minty sea mist lays over it all. If I had a bottle of this, I'd put it with my other ocean scent, but it could fit well among other spa scents for any who group things that way. It actually reminds me most of A Balmy 26 Degrees (green tea, aloe, eucalyptus, icy lemon, and French sage), which I tore through a bottle of. This is different, but there's a similar vibe... A Hundred Years Ago stays very close to the skin on me through its life and, unfortunately, it also fades quickly.

Although it's close to the skin on me, this does remind of a salted wooden plank on a ship at first. But it soon warms into a woody spice blend (I think of cardamom, allspice, and pepper over a worn, woody patchouli), and the saltiness recedes. The tonka is also soon noticeable, and a nice touch. With the salt also in play, the pale tonka scent almost reminds of sea foam. I could see tonka + salt as a conceptual sea foam. If this perfume ages as my spice blends usually do, the spice will grow a bit in strength over time. The patchouli is already smooth in this blend, but it might become still more so with age.

This is a bowl of bright, juicy, ebullient strawberries, with a bit of honey drizzled around, smoothing things out. In drydown, I get more of the honey. It has a chewy quality, which is possibly the "-comb," that is completely drawing me in. I didn't expect to want a bottle of this one, but the honeycomb is making a sucker of me.

Freshly on, in the first few seconds, Asleep in the Deep opens with plain airy salt on my skin. (I tend to amp salt.) Dark plum shortly follows, a plum with both purple and blue, possibly the plum blending with indigo benzoin. A little opium creeps in, and we have a salt-encrusted dark plum tinged with opium. After drydown, Asleep is primarily salt on my salt-amping skin, but with a lovely background of dark, smoky, watery complexity. It's not that I'm getting a literal aquatic note, but the darkness, purple, and blue are standing in for it conceptually, and the opium adds a little dark and dreamy smoke. Salt and opium don't normally do much for me. But I nabbed a decant of this on a sparkling whim, and I'm pleased I did. It is resonating for me, albeit in a curious, Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way.

Soon may the wellerman come... and here he is. He is surprisingly dark and fruity on my skin. To open, I get a lovely sugar note, a dark and fruity rum, and a little whiff of faintly astringent black tea. This isn't a sharp booze at all; rather, it's a soft, sweet, dark, and fruity booze that reminds me more of the "booziness" of Smut than straight-up alcohol. Perhaps that's why this also smells a little musky to me, though less so than Smut. Not to leave another "X and X had a baby" perfume review, but I'm going to. 😏 The Wellerman sits on me like Smut and Sugar Skull had a baby. Y'know, I'm kinda digging it... After drydown, I also get a touch of warm spice in the blend. This is nice, a bit more holiday now. ETA: A friend tested my decant of this, and the blend was different enough on her skin for me to postscript this review. What on me was a sweetly dark and fruity booze, on her went brown and caramel-like, like caramelized sugar. She had no fruitiness and little booziness; instead she got an almost coffee-like caramelized sugar. She smelled it on her, smelled it on me, and said, “What the fuck?” Good times. Your mileage (or sea leagues) may vary.

This one's name, Vetiver & Blackcurrant, reflects its note strength. Both on the wand and freshly on skin, this is *vetiver* and then some blackcurrant warms up in the mix later. The vetiver shows up on me as dry and woody with a bit of charred smokiness. Actually, it reminds me of wood that looks dry, but is a bit damp internally and takes a long time to burn. When it does burn, it produces little flame, but it chars and smokes. Blackcurrant casts a shade of dark sweetness over the wood in drydown. This is a welcome change, bringing some fullness... The scent of a dark, forgotten wood with many dark fruits and a few dark animals, but no sun, no visitors, and no movie soundtrack. I'm actually really kind of digging this. It's possibly the signature scent of my inner Queen of Darkness, inasmuch as we all carry the archetype.

Freshly on: Sweet green grasses, dried grasses, and a light whiff of balsam. This balsam is reading as a bit honeyed to me. Oh, this lists beeswax. I'm not getting beeswax, per se, but just a touch of honey. 🙂 I tend to amp balsam, so I'm glad it's reading as light on me. Dried: Grasses, with a green and slightly bitter grassy edge and a bit of airy sweetness. A faint resinous and balsamic quality forms a backdrop.

I received this as a frottle and it is a full winner for me. Freshly applied, a sweet Red Apple leads, gliding along on the arm of Black Tea, waving at the crowd. (I feel like there is a crowd.) A sophisticated vetiver-frankincense base soon arrives to support them. As this dries, the combination is lovely. Black Tea, Vetiver, and Frank add an attractive depth. The three of them together keep reminding me of leather. When I checked which event this was for, I wasn't surprised, because this blend has had me picturing an NYC leather-heavy red carpet event. While NYCC is not exactly red carpet, it can have the long lines to get in, so it has the outside crowd in common.

I received this as a frottle! Applied and scented without looking at the notes, I got frankincense, something honeysuckle-amberish, and a tiny whiff of something spicy-dry. The latter two seem to be how I read the lily-tuberose and black pepper. At first, I don't get any blood-red to these lilies, but rather, something roundly floral, golden, and honey-adjacent. This is more like a fat-petalled golden tuberose. But starting in drydown, some red peers through. I believe the lilies are coming out more here. This is an interesting blend, but far too floral for my tastes, so I'll see about passing it along to some other unsuspecting soul.

I mean... It's a sufganiyot. Yum. This has the cozy, sugary pastry scent you may have come to know and love. The fruit part is closest to that in Fig and Cranberry Sufganiyot, among the ones I've tried. This one lists a little cranberry, so it's not a stretch. I'm really enjoying the tart red jamminess of the pom-cran-currant combination. I'm getting low on the Fig and Cranberry, and this would be a delightful next chapter in the sufganiyot narrative.

Bold red cherries blanketed in white and pink rose petals and backed by rosewood or pinkish wood. Lots of reddish-pink to go around in this one. In drydown, I find a little texture coming in from berries and frankincense, and then smoothness from the resinous amber. These notes add weight to the blend after a more whimsical opening. The scent also becomes heavily perfumey in this stage -- too much so for me. This perfume reminds me of a red- and pink-painted wooden carousel at an incense carnival.

I love red mandarin. This is a bright and juicy red mandarin -- like the mandarin version of a blood orange, where the sweet citrus has that bit of a raspberry-ish twist. The frost has a bit of sweet mint but also leans toward clean freshness, like eucalyptus. Somehow it also gives the impression of being a light frosty coat, like a layer of dust or a sugar coating. This is a simple, likable blend, and I'm low on snow note perfumes. 🙂

This perfume is a love letter to patchouli. Smoky incense wafts off the page, clove plays in the margins, and the love letter's language is weighted with burgundy tar and woods.

Spiced, cooked apple backed by nuts and comfy oatmeal cookies. At first, this has a spiced apple focus, but nuts and oatmeal cookies soon come out. Ample brown sugar appears in early drydown. I'd like to spend some time in this kitchen. The blend as a whole is nearly woody in its combined notes -- and, when it first arrived, I thought I was getting some traces of wood notes stashed away in it. I love the effect. This is the welcoming scent of a cozy brown and wood-toned country kitchen, and I'm more than a little tempted to bottle.

2020 Dusty lavender, plain cakes sweetened with a little honey, and a grainy note I take to be the ale. Definitely getting an image of a dusty drinking hall for this one. Somehow this smells like an older fragrance to me, even made fresh for this past Yule.

2020 I was delighted to see Sugar Cookie return. I haven't tried it and the pandemic has brought about a special love for cookie scents. I almost blind-bottled it. Since the decant arrived, though, I've been going back and forth with it. It had some initial funkiness that seems to have settled down. Now I just wonder if it's too buttery. On the wand, this is a sweet cinnamon sugar over an almond-extract sugar cookie. Freshly applied, this is a sweet cinnamon sugar over a warm cookie -- which quickly morphs into a phenomenally buttery butter cookie. Dear skin: I suspect you. The cinnamon sugar fades, leaving mainly a butter cookie. Mixed feelings.

Sweet-herbal lavender over a sugary butter cookie. Creamy white chocolate smooths the whole, helping everything blend. On the wand, and in the first few seconds on my skin, I also smell a little whiff of red-purple fruit jam, something like red currants, black currants, or blackberries. I wish that lingered on my skin longer, because it's quite pretty. Not what I expected. Regardless, this is a sweet, kind, gentle blend. The lavender keeps it out of the zone of pure gourmand, but it's a close thing. This could easily become a bottle.

I thought I might be blown cold by the peppermint from this one, but I think like others, I got a different impression upon trying it. I got a thin, faint pine, along with a slight cooling in the nose that represented the peppermint. The note was airy and cold and dry, but muted. This duet was all-around thin for both my friend and I, and didn't really resonate for either of us. I hope to hear from her how it ages and changes from when we tried it.

Sweetly beautiful and atmospheric. A gorgeous beeswax with a touch of candle smoke to it sweetened with a little milk chocolate. The two blend well. If I didn't already have four or five beeswax scents, this would certainly be in my cart.

How lovely this is in its opening: an atmospheric fir needle ghosted by a softer, haunting wood smoke. This smelled so beautiful on me for a few minutes, but it faded so quickly. I would love to see more of these two notes together in future blends, though. I wish they found my arm a more hospitable place to remain.

I sampled a friend's bottle of this shortly after it was removed from the website. It was good timing for my budget, because I would have nabbed a bottle for sure. It smelled like its notes, which are all good for me: sweet cream and honey and a mild skin musk. The dust is subtle and pleasant. Yet the blend still had some extra goodness that went above my usual love of these notes and took me by surprise. So cozy and delicious.

A quiet, evocative, meditative blend: soft, pale incense smoke and snow over ancient stone and forgotten shards of frankincense. Little breaths from a distant pine forest on cold stirrings of wind. Klosterruine sets its scene perfectly. I was curious about this blend, but I didn't expect it to soothe me like it does. I might need more of this for meditation.

A brooding and wistful, deep-night blend. Blackened lilac is most prominent for me throughout Winter Night's life on my skin, though indigo musk, plum, opium, and tobacco flower blend into its moody night backdrop. Snow glistens dully in the faint starlight of this night scene, but the focus is on the vast deep blues and purples of the sky. I love the rich, dark colors and mood of Winter Night. The lilac's potency makes it too floral for my tastes these days, but it's an experience and I'm grateful for the chance to try it.

Softly evocative of a quiet, remote winter scene: faint lavender, white tea, a trace of snow, and a whiff of smoke to open. Sometimes I think I get a little hint of bergamot. This is a softer lavender than is present in a lot of Lab scents. There was a different lavender essential oil I got once that was so soft, I needed about twice as much for a similar impact to French lavender. I think it was a Greek lavender. This lavender's softness reminds me of that. The smoke develops a little pine to it in drydown, and sometime after drydown, the lavender fades out. This is a skin-soft scent for me as a whole. I thought I would be wild about it, and I'm enjoying the decant. But it might be a bit faint and short-lived for me to justify a bottle.

Moonlit Winter smells grey and moody. Unfortunately, while it is wet, it also mainly smells astringently chemical to me, though I get a soft touch of iris and lovable, cottony linden blossom around the edges. Looking at the notes list, I don't know what smells so off. After drying, it softens a bit. The chemical smell somewhat resolves into a damp earth note. The flowers grow partly over the chemical, obscuring it. I can read a bit of a maple warmth from it. I think this one is a bit of a mess for me, though.