Casablanca
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Everything posted by Casablanca
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Strange and highly chemical. Certainly unsettling. Soft mineral turpentine, canvas, and wet clay -- oh, no, there is the lampblack. Acrid, chemical black Sharpies. This is the smell of a workshop for making something unwholesome.
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A lovely, atmospheric smoky candle wax blend. The candle has just blown out (did a ghost do it, or was it just a draft?) and beeswax smoke -- heavy with vetiver -- now drifts in the spot where the flame had been. The smoky vetiver reminds me a lot of that from Two Sheep and Two Goats Resting Together in a Field from the Weenies two years ago.
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Staircase opens on me with glorious, wood-dusty oak but, like Forspecial, I soon get an aldehyde, almost champagne-like note. The aldehyde pretty much takes over on me, diminishing the lovely oak down to the barest background wood impression. After the potent amber of It Was Just a Cat, I'm surprised not to find any amber.
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So much amber fur! This is the concept scent of a ginger cat who is, by turns of her mood, elegant or snuggly. The amber-red of her well-groomed coat has picked up some lightly spiced incense scent from her wanderings around the house, but now she just wants to curl up in a study by the fire and pass the rest of the evening in slumber.
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Icy, lemony, powdery white musk. The ice grape comes out early in drydown, but the individual notes are soon mostly buried in fluffy heaps of perfumey white musk powder. This is my friend's decant, which I'm grateful to try. But this blend is a cautionary tale in how some white musk perfumes don't work on me. 🙂
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Cracked Mirrors immediately reminds of glass, offering a silvery, reflective orris and muguet. Borderline aquatic at first, the blend brings something more chalky or porcelain on my skin as it starts to dry down, as though I can smell some of the glass backing. The white sandalwood blends well with this. I can find ambergris, but only if I go looking. I also seem to smell narcissus, though none is listed. Evocative of its name.
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Upscale dark chocolate pumpkin pie, with a fudge-rich chocolate truffle note that I think is the ganache over pumpkin spice and soft chocolate crust. In drydown, more of the pumpkin cream cheese comes out, but it doesn't overwhelm the balance.
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Salt-spritzed sea air over cedars, gardenia, and (for the first moment or so) a little black currant. Once Circe has dried, her flowers fill in the salt air. I notice mostly tuberose and cedar here. The background is hard to distinguish. This is one of those perfumes with so many blended notes that everything comes out soft. In that way, Circe reminds me of some of the Moon lunacy perfumes. An hour or so after applying, Circe is floral, clean, and sophisticated.
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Ah, this pumpkin reminds me of the rich stuff in Shadowed Veil, which I love. Sweet, dark cinnamon pumpkin and a little thin vanilla crust. The musk is very well blended and doesn't stand out much at first, but comes out into its own more in time.
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Pleasant, woody oud softened with hints of spices and bready crust. Later, I get a little pecan that reads as dry, savory, and woody -- picking its traits up from the blended oud, I think. And then, it's so good, if you like savory and woody. A bit patchouli-like. Ung.
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Cherry Cream Pie Chypre
Casablanca replied to zankoku_zen's topic in Gifts with Donation or Purchase
My skin likes this and so do I. Cherries in smooth cream. The cherries start out a bit maraschino on me, but mature into regular cherries in drydown. While that happens, some warm, buttery crust develops. Once this has dried, it's actually mostly a buttery, creamy vanilla crust on me, with a faint cherry whiff. This is really asking for some ice cream by this point. -
Gobby black cherry syrup and a hint of bitter almond. Sometimes I think I smell pomegranate. But mostly it's gobs of cherry jam and whiffs of almond.
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This is the first Please Scream I've tried. I can see the comparisons to churros and French toast. And I could see this twist on it being pumpkin spice churros for many. But while part of my brain can read that, most of it yells "Pumpkin spice mattress foam topper!" and it will not be consoled.
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Amber-honeyed golden apples cascading down a sunbeam. Honeyed apple with amber, saffron, cedar, and a little orange blossom. Golden, and a bit waxy after drydown. Essentially this is a fable about the color gold.
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Open Grave is surprisingly sweet when first applied on me, but that starts to settle quickly. Still, I get something floral amongst its herby green grasses, something that reminds me of the cool, blue-green pool vibe of one of the Blue Moons. Clean, a bit like lettuce or cucumber, like melon, like water, like blue flowers. I can see many of the comparisons made in earlier reviews. My brain keeps going to Blue Moon, but I finished the bottle a while ago, so I can't line them up. The grasses are soft, and the hay is barely there for me. For the herbs, I think this might have a little white sage. Maybe mugwort? I don't know, but it's all well-blended, gentle, and clean.
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Soft, chewy cinnamon-bun dough and gooey, sugar-white icing. The cinnamon has some throw, while the rest hangs fairly close to the skin. This is the pumpkin spice; I don't find the pumpkin. In a few moments, the icing dims into a faded sugary vanilla backdrop for general doughy cinnamon treats. During this phase, I start to want one non-foody surprise twist: some polished woods or a little warm melted beeswax or something. This is comforting, though, and a bottle is in consideration. 🙂
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When this first arrived, it was all the spiced crust and scant currant. Days later, I'm getting a dark, jammy fruit that's both sweet and a little bitter on my skin. It's like black currant half-begrudgingly became a pie. The spices are light but add warmth. The crust is only a faint presence. The bit of bitterness fades. The spices strengthen some after drydown, but never overwhelm. I'd love to find a strong black currant blend that works on my skin, but I'm not sure what to make of this one. It may be one to check back on later.
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My first impression of this out of the mail was limited to "Yep. Apple vodka." Days later, though, this offers a lot of maraschino cherry fresh on, alongside green apple and clear, room-temperature vodka. In drydown, the cherry and apple dissipate and the vodka develops an unfortunate clear vinyl smell on my skin. It reads as though it might smell like ice cubes on someone else, but took a wrong turn on me. I start to find a little creaminess from the butterscotch, but never notice cranberry. This blend winds up as a slightly creamy, somewhat boozy, clear vinyl on me. Time for a drink switch. 🍸
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Pumpkin Southern Comfort! This has been resting a few days. Even without reading the notes, the booze was (and is, in testing today) clearly bourbon and the orange spices are strongly present. Freshly applied, the bourbon goes potently boozy-fumes for a moment or two before settling into a gentler, warm holiday bev. I like this once it gentles. I get a whiff of buttery warmth among the pumpkin, orange, spiced bourbon. It's that extra touch that feels like a holiday drink with more fuss in its preparation than just a quick pour of fluids over ice. This is a cocktail-recipe-book drink, rather than an already-two-sheets-out-so-just-refill-ASAP drink.
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From this I got lots of olive blossom with touches of gentle rain, and some Spanish moss and powdery orris. Curiously, oak was only a faint presence at our sniff-tests. Lots of olive blossom, though, and the rain note was a pleasing one. YMMV.
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The pumpkin sugar scent on the wand lured me to try this on, despite red musk's status as a gross note on me. I quickly amped the musk to high heaven and low hell, and couldn't much find other notes. This was much better balanced on my red musk-friendly companion (whose decants we were sampling). The early-stage mix of pumpkin sugar-musk was definitively and pleasantly autumn.
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For me, this was a meditative and fairly simple blend. It reminded me of a meditation chamber, a place of serenity -- very similar in mood to Challenge of the Ascetic from this year's Lupers. White sandalwood was the main note, with some mingling of a faint herbal nature behind it. I kept thinking I also smelled palo santo, though none is listed.
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This opened on me as a smoky lavender cognac -- a lovely mix. The smoke, especially, drew me in. It's a note that resonates for me, and what a lovely trio for it. But the blend turned perfumey and powdery on my skin after drydown. White musk isn't on such kindly terms with me as the other notes.
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I enjoyed this. It was cozy and kind. Sweet, almost sugary lavender with a mingling of paper and warm cotton. (I actually got a little something like white sugar from this at times.) The cotton smelled well-worn but also well-loved -- there was a sweetness there that was not quite a laundry scent, but perhaps closer to the scent of a person who smells good naturally, unadorned.
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This was really good. Rosin, leather, and steel suffused with golden amber against a forest background. It's like a D&D party taking a break from their travels in a sunlit grove.