Casablanca

Baklava, is that you? This blend is almost a ringer for the sweet, sticky, nutty baklava I used to get at a Mediterranean takeout place near my last home. It's a little more almond-scented, which is lovely, but otherwise quite like that pastry's aroma at first. Warm, syrupy honeyed almond pastry with some sweet fig and a little cinnamon. I don't notice any overt myrrh until after drydown; even then, it blends well and just gives the perfume a touch of the non-gourmand.

Cade leather! Surprisingly, I get a cade-juniper scent as the first impression, and a little smoky leather follows close after. Not a berry to be found (sadly). After a few minutes, black currant creeps out, but it's shy and hides under the leather. I love the Lab's black currant notes and always hope for a black currant-heavy blend that works on my skin. The leather has become the most prominent note in this by now, with just airy hints of cade and black currant. Later, I get more of a leathery, dark berry black musk. The berry remains faint, though. This one may fill out with time.

Sweet and tart black raspberry and cherry (or raspberry and black cherry -- something smells like a darker fruit) jam. This is a fun fruity jam scent. I didn't anticipate the darker fruit scent I'm getting from something here, and I love it. I want to find the food version and smear it on a scone.

Feminist Cenobyte opens as a pink cherry ZOT to the nose, like a pink lightning strike in a comic. The cherry is pinkish-red, syrupy, and maraschino-like. I don't smell anything else at first. The cherry settles down quickly on me. It's still present after drydown, but as a cherry wisp, soft and close to the skin. Also after drydown, I get faint impressions of citrus, probably from the chypre. On the whole, the blend stays a bit faint and hollow on me after drydown, which has sometimes meant it needs time to rest... a week to a few months, maybe.

I love this and it will definitely become a bottle. Tart Honeycrisp apples (with a bit of that honey quality to them that Honeycrisp has), a little clean tea, and lots of cedar pencil shavings or cedar chest. Jasmine is present, but only as a light accent note that blends well into the apples and tea. Some of the honey impression I'm getting from the Honeycrisp could be the honeycomb; it reads at first like a part of the Honeycrisp apple type. I also get a little pinkness in this, reminding me of little pink flowers. In drydown, the honey impression grows a little and the apple tartness settles down. After drydown, the cedar is the strongest note, but it's still blended with the melange of other notes and the whole smells sweet and delightful.

Pink laundry: flowery, cottony, clean, and powdery. Between Classes is a floral, cottony-clean laundry blend. I'm getting a lot of floral from this -- more than just carnations and lavender, I think of peony and sweet pea and other such sweet, innocent blooms. The carnation is even only faintly spicy; everything in this blend has been gentled and softened for a gentle occasion. ETA: Long after drydown, I get pink roses from this.

Oh, I like this. A lot. (Drat!) Cozy but tart apple cider, dried sage and grass, with a little backyard dirt and dandelions. A bit after drydown, it seems that there is also... a little light brown musk? Once this dries, I get occasional whiffs of soft, fuzzy, dry-grass musk that reminds me of Coyote. I wonder if "squirreltail" isn't just a grass, here... But then that settles back into the blend, if it was ever even a thing. Ghost squirrel! After that, this is a mild cider and dried grass blend. It's cider in a field, and it makes me want to drink a cold hard cider... in a field.

Gorgeous country oak blend. Ellocentipede's description is spot on: This is a happy memory of oak trees, and the sun-limned fields and scattered woods around them, tinted a deeper gold in the remembering, like some honeyed sepia. Oak trees, Spanish moss, and golden honey on a natural ground of oakmoss and little mushrooms, and scattered other earth-stuff: faint impressions of leaves, grass, and needles, and even a little whiff of lavender. Alongside Forest of the Empress and the Forest in Winter at Sunset, this could become one of my favorite woodsy blends.

Aoedae seems to have something in it like the butter note from White Larry, and also something almost plastic-like. I can smell sugary vanilla cream, and a little caramel, and a little sandalwood if I hunt for it, but the odd butter-plastic is standing out in front. On the wand, Aoedae smells buttery to me, but not plasticky, so safe to say the latter part is my skin doing a thing. I don't usually have issues with blends turning plastic on me, but this appears to be an exception.

I smell the sticky-ripe banana-ness of this one even as I open it two feet away. This opens as the stickiest, banana-est bread you might ever know. It smells too sticky to detach from my finger into my mouth. As in DiesMali's review, the banana smells kinda overripe -- almost mushy -- but it's baked into a warm banana bread with a nice light spice to it. The spice and bread become more prominent for me as this dries. The sticky banana also settles down. This is a fun gourmand blend.

This is a curiosity and an oddity, the way black grease oozes out, and then blends right into chocolate. Brain: Urg, motor-oily black grease... brown grease... chocolate, is that you? The cookie note is there with the chocolate, but Brain is a little too hung up on the weird grease-to-chocolate progression to notice it much. With drydown, the notes become less sequential and more blended. This may not be for me, but it's definitely a Glad I Tried It.

Surprisingly oak-forward! Deep, rich oak -- an oak of antiquities -- set with a dish of vanilla beans. Perhaps for a spell. I'm barely catching any cookie. It's like a faint, sweet, fresh-baked fragrance drifting in from the kitchen, while you're studying at an oak desk. With a dish of vanilla beans beside you. The cookie scent grows as the blend develops, as though they've come out of the oven now. Cozy, domestic, contenting.

Sugar-cardamom fairy! Oodles of sugary, cake battery cardamom. And then, after a moment, floofs of vanilla marshmallows. Very foodie. The cardamom takes this down one notch from Xtreme Gourmand. Also, this is cozy. A dream scent for soft, enfolding winter blankets.

This was quite pretty and would be a win for most Dorian lovers. On me, Dorian led the other notes in strength, but the orange-bergamot, lavender, and bourbon vanilla were close behind. I never noticed oakmoss. This blend is sweet, and almost made me think I'd layered Dorian with Pere Noel -- but this smelled more fresh and less candylike.

Starting out, this was teak laced with iron and pine resin, and just a whiff of tobacco. While drying, the metal grew to dominate the scent. After drydown, this went full cologne, with the earlier notes of wood and metal but minor players within it.

I've let this sit a month or two to see how it would fill out, as it initially smelled fig-like but rather hollow. In that time, the brown sugar has been the main note to fill out and take the lead. Lots of sweet brown sugar, some fig (which smells more brown than black to me because... brown sugar), and a scarce hint of dark oak. And then more brown sugar. For an oak fix, I'd sooner recommend Cocoa and Oak Bark, which had lots of the lovely note. But if you seek a simple sweet brown sugar and fig, this could be the one.

I got to try this from a friend's bottle. On my skin, it was Tombstone with much more balsam and no root beer. I seemed to amp the balsamic quality more than my friend did. It wasn't as balsamic as balsamic vinegar, but definitely on the road, and less approachable than Tombstone. On my friend, this was more balanced -- a more user-friendly rustic.

This blend is a fresh, ancient York Peppermint Patty commercial -- not the patty, but the person in white on a mountain top in the whistling wind. Sweet white mint and eucalyptus. The lemon is quieter on me at first. In drydown, the lemon comes out more. It reminds me of Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat more than straight-up lemon peel -- it's blending with the sweet mint and coming out like sugary lemon frosting. After an hour, this is mainly a soft sweet mint, with just hints of the other two notes.

Harvest Moon comes out complex and lovely, dries down to more simplicity. Freshly applied, this blend brings spiced and smoky apples with a smear of warm pumpkin. A little black fig (definitely the black sort of fig) and red wine are soft but present over a distant background of... woodsiness. Leafy tree stuff. This phase is nuanced and multilayered, like many of the Moons. After drydown, I get mainly a sweet plum wine, with a touch of lingering smoke and Other-stuff-ness. Occasional sage whiffs, even. This later life of the blend is more simple and straightforward on my skin.

A liquid iron core encased by swirls of iced lavender swimming through a subsurface ocean, dotted by palimpsests of dark oudh. Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system at more than twice the mass of Earth's moon, appears here as an almost clear oil. I'd like to say its water ice and iron-rich core are well represented here, but I don't pick up much of either of those. The first impression on my skin is a burst of lavender, a bit harsh, with a faint tint of ice when I look for it. Around 10 minutes later, an earthy, smooth note comes out, which I'm guessing is the lab's oudh. It's less heavy than oudhs I've tried from other perfumers in the past, and friendlier on the nose. I still get lavender, but nothing else now. I like this, but I don't smell the metal I had hoped for. I'll see how it settles. Edit: On a retest after this cooled off in my dark basement for a few days, I smell lots of iron in the bottle, and on me, there is also iron in that cool lavender. It's an interesting effect for a planet theme, though very simple-smelling. The lavender isn't as harsh now, either, but the metal gives it a bit of hard personality: like, this is the lavender that sets its fist on the table and won't budge on anything. This lavender doesn't care what you think of it; it just does what it means to do, uncomplicated, not mysterious. At around 15 mins when the oudh comes into play, it's downright friendly, comparatively. Lavender after hours, still a command character, but more relaxed and less steely-eyed. I think aging will help.

Black cacao pa-pow. In the bottle, I smell cacao and amber, but on my skin, this is all cacao and copal at first. For both inhales, it's really Cacao and Darkness: the first more perfumey, the second more woody, but still Darkness. Copal begins by sharing a seat with cacao, but gradually takes it over during the wet phase. I've amped copal before, and that may be happening here, because this woody/spicy/incensey dark note that is copal mostly nudges cacao out. I'm not picking up amber at all through this. After this dries, it develops some sweetness. I think that's the amber's sole contribution as this plays out on my skin, but I like the blend.

No one reviewed this yet? Well, here's one. I amp mallow in most blends that have it, as far as I can tell, and that's also happening here. In the bottle, this smells mostly like oats, cake, and cardamom to me. But my very first impression on skin is cardamom marshmallows (!)... Dry grasses and hay emerge shortly, though -- very pretty, very late-summer-to-autumn-reminiscent with the soft cardamom spice. After a few minutes the mallow calms down, and I notice wheat, oats, and a dribble of honey. It does smell like dry honey. (What is that scent of dryness sticking to the honey? I love it.) This is a gentle autumn harvest blend, a scent of soft abundance before winter.

In the bottle, this smells like a light, sweet herbal honey with a blend of citrus notes and what I thought was some red fruit before reading "blackberries" in the description. Fresh on my skin -- and whoa, I applied a lot -- the ginger comes out as part of the herbal quality. (But, then I look up gruit, and it's also herbal: yarrow and rosemary. I am Gruit!) I love herbal blends, so I've really climbed onto the Mead Moon bandwagon at this point. But the herbs are just part of it: the honey is light and quite sweet, not overtly effervescent for me, but playful in hinting at it. Blackberries are also salient in this phase, with a little uplift from citrus. The spices are mild and blendy; I can separate clove and cinnamon during the wet phase, but it's kinda more pleasant not to try. I need to be careful not to huff this too much, because I can feel how its sweetness could bring on a headache. But the blend of herbs, fruits, and spices keeps attracting me, like some honeybee, to take more in. This one does go skin-soft quickly on me, but I'm still glad I picked up a bottle.

A pretty and serene red sandalwood warmed with rosy palmarosa and woodsy-pale cedar. The myrrh was a gentle resinous presence suffusing the blend. This was a lovely sandalwood blend, and it lingered on my skin longer than most perfumes do.

Pots and pots of beeswax and honey drizzled over orange flowers and peel. Beeswax and honey were most prominent for me, with the orange-grove things close behind. Very spring-like, very sweet, very pretty, but with an airy-clean astringency, too, from the ti leaf. The ti leaf added intrigue for me in the early stage; without it, this perfume might have smelled less distinct from some other spring blends. But I noticed the leaf and it added a lot. An appealing blend.