Casablanca

Another pretty and golden scent today! On the wand, Progressus is a woodsy, saffron-threaded amber. Coming out onto the skin, the oil is a lovely amber color. It warms up and blooms on my skin immediately, with more throw than I expected. It throws out even more saffron, along with the lovely amber, and now the cedar and a light honeyed and floral sweetness. The cedar adds a bit of a rustic quality, but the blend is polish-smooth. This is really balsamic, and solar, and I love it.

I loved Hanerot Halalu. I was concerned about the olive oil, but it blends in wonderfully, and adds some richness and spirituality. (To me, HH feels like a more spiritual scent than Lights of Men's Lives or Flickering Lantern, but it's hard to write that for a recommendation, because it's so personal and varies with everyone...) The 2018 Luper Dalliances by Candlelight reminds me a lot of Hanerot Halalu, but more honey-saucy and sexy than spiritual. In its opening, it's my current favorite beeswax-honey blend! I wish that phase lasted longer on me.

While I don't mostly think of it as a vanilla scent, the overall moods of Lullaby and Zorya P feel very similar to me. Lullaby is more lavender to me than vanilla, though it does list vanilla orchid. I think the mood comes from the moonflower-vanilla combination that they share. I get such a gossamer, night-fairy feeling from it. I wonder if that would be worth playing with?

Sept is gorgeous, a rose blend for those who love golden scents. Sept gives a first impression of creamy, warm, golden frankincense, the height of ancient world elegance. The vanilla bean and pale rose open up, too, but very blended in. The frankincense, with its texture that sometimes reminds me of lightly encrusted gold jewelry, is the star. The vanilla bean is beany and the rose seems yellow-white, and the three listed notes blur into one another. This smells like the warmth and rich, gold-suffused light of a late-afternoon summer sun.

Oh, this is so lovely. Polished, white, pearly, creamy, soft, sophisticated, elegant, educated. Besides the amber cream, and a tasteful mahogany, there's a blend in it that reminds me some of orris butter, some of a soft white vanilla, and some of blonde woods. I take it these are the tortoiseshell and ivory. Whatever they are, I'm in love.

Softly cool (not chilly at all), fresh, and herbal. First on my skin, I get mugwort, bay, and green tea most prominently, with blue juniper and powdery iris hints, on a blended, complex background. After a bit, sometimes I get whiffs of fresh lettuce and cucumber, sometimes tropical ylang ylang and cooler flowers. Once Blue Moon dries, I mostly get a soft, floral aloe. The powdery quality lingers. Sometimes it seems to come from the iris, sometimes from the herbs. Maybe it's a bit of both. This is a low-throw, personal skin scent. Overall, I'm getting the clear, moonlit pool in an herb garden that I sought. I wish it were less powdery, but I'm liking it.

Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs is intensely pink rose on my skin, with a vanilla cream hint. It reminds me a great deal of Rose Mallow Cream from Solstice Scents, if one took away the mallow. I was also hoping for more cotton candy and vanilla sugar, but I'll see how it settles over more time.

Sugared lemon-vanilla cream, swirled with a little waxy honey, atop a barely detectable Snake Oil base that will perhaps come out more with age. I worried about the mentions of lemon, but it's soft and plays nicely. Lovely.

Profoundly sensual. The echo of caresses: raw black coconut, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, champaca flower, and sugar cane. 2018: Body, Remember is a surprise because I get all listed notes from the first inhale. Strongest on me is a very green and syrupy sugar cane, followed by a more floral than usual champaca (it seems like there might be other hidden flowers with it), dark coconut, and a musky and almost woody ambergris-ambrette mix. An appealing blend that would be interesting to pair with The Pleasure of Aristocratic Women, with its coconut-almond-teak thing.

Wet on my skin, Alabaster Vulva strongly features the Florentine orris butter from Mythological Scene, one of the Unicorns. That note grew on me over time, and I'm pleased to find it here. A silky vanilla and narcissus blend is draped over the iris butter, like some lingerie tossed lazily onto a pale, satiny cushion. A waft of summer bergamot now and then lifts a corner of the draped silk, like a breeze from a sunlit window that no one is troubled to close. This reads as privileged, idle, floating, and refined. Love it.

Wild Rabbit has a dominant -- but delicate -- vanilla floral white tea. Behind that is a sort of chewy, waxy support that I assume is the honeycomb. It seems to be how beeswax notes might smell without their smoky and hot-melting tones: it's plain, pale, and soft, and somehow malleable. I barely pick up sandalwood. A curious blend. Mostly I see it as a variant of vanilla flower white tea.

Dalliances opens on me as beeswax dominant, and the beeswax is beautiful. I'd been picturing it having a White Bees Swarming sort of honey, but instead I get a saucy, caramel-toned honey that isn't at all gourmand or candy-like. This opening is gorgeous. Within a couple minutes, the white patchouli ghosts in, dry and a little dusty. I like this stage, too. Before long, though, the beeswax and caramelish tones burn off my skin, leaving a white patchouli dominance with a backing of sweet honey. The blend is much less striking then, but still pretty. I'm glad I bottled this! But because my favorite phases are so far short-lived, I think I'll stop at one.

Eucalyptus and cerulean aodh, iris padilla, dried blueberry, and blue musk. In the bottle, blueberry dominates, though eucalyptus is the first scent to hit my nose. The blueberry is more pervasive, though. There's something solid and inviting, like an oudh, but the whole is swathed in blue. Under the other notes, I get a little light blue musk that reminds me just a bit of that in Bestiaire du Moyen Age. On my hair, my first thought is blue linen. The part I'm perceiving as lineny reminds me of Boo. Then the note mostly resolves into iris, except that I like it better than I usually like iris. I can imagine getting a laundry impression from this blend, though, even though that's not quite it. Anyway, it's blue. No fear on that account. Blueberry, blue musk. On my hair, there's only a trace of eucalyptus. I'm wearing this with Aquae bath oil and kinda like how they go together. Blue Roman bathhouse, or something.

Champaca, jasmine, and lavender are three of my favorite notes, so I had to bottle this. I shared it with a friend last night. On her wrist: Strongly lavender. A serene, balanced herbal-floral lavender, with an almost vanillic champaca warmth along the edge, on a dim other-floral backdrop. On my wrist: More evenly champaca and lavender, with champaca just slightly stronger. The jasmine is also very subtle on me, and is like some vague floral scenery. An hour later, it's mostly a soft champaca on me. This Fortuna is tranquil. I'll probably want a backup.

I like to pair Moon Reflected HG with last year's Luper Maiko with Hair Unbound perfume: Goats milk, coconut, rice milk, honey carnation, and sugar. I miss my TKO MO, too.

If you can find it, possibly the LE Heavenly Spark: The echoes of the incense smoke of hundreds upon hundreds of years curling around roses and oak branches. The rose doesn't dominate on me, but its mood is definitely smoky and pensive and a little mystical, and I can see it reminding of rosary beads.

If you might get into the addition of a light, airy exotic musk to a soft vanilla tea, try Ashlultum: Babylonian musk, vanilla tea, tonka, tobacco, coconut, hyssop, and lilac. I liked it when I first wore it, but it grew on me into a love and repeat wear. Last time, I got a stranger's compliment on it.

Coconut TKO, as others have said. Except something else, too. There's a hard candy smell mingling with the lavender that reminds me of something I tried last year. Maybe Pere Noel? Yes, just checked: Pere N. also had a "lavender candy" note. Otherwise, it was quite different. But the hard lavender candy smell in Daybreak makes me think a little bit of winter because of it!

LunasMuse: For Illustrated Woman, try the current Lilith, Do All the Good You Can: Madagascar vanilla and sweet patchouli with Yule pine, white fig, and almond blossom.

This smells so pretty in the bottle. It smells to me there like an aquatic tulip sort of Luper, with a light edge of hibiscus. My first impression from the bottle was "aquatic honeysuckle," but I don't get the same depth. It reminds me more of Qui Aime Bien Châtie Bien (daffodil petals and lavender tulips, blonde woods, freesia, and a touch of pale honey) from last spring. There's just a little honey to it, and it's very spring flowers. Also a bit like Amsterdam. On my skin, it begins the same, but the aquatic tone and tulip thing soon fade. It becomes more its own flower: soft and golden-coral, somewhere between tulip, honeysuckle, and hibiscus, not quite like any of them. It's very soft once dried, a skin scent. I'm suckered.

Beautiful. I've never smelled bluebonnet so I can't compare, but this smells like a watery blue wildflower to me. It almost smells aquatic, but is primarily floral. In this one way it reminds me of blue musk: mostly floral to me, but leaning aquatic. It has the wild part of the wildflower, too, where it smells like something a bee would crave. Very glad I have this.

Mm, wow. In the bottle I get bourbon vanilla and cinnamon buns. Things are held in check, though. Pretty tame. The ride hasn't taken off yet. Then on my skin, ho-whoa, leather-cinnamon stickysticky buns. The bourbon vanilla and a woody oudh are a solid structure holding this leather-cinnamon contraption in place. As it settles, the leather-cinnamon also calms down and the blend gets very woody on me. It makes me think of structures and platforms. ETA: On my friend's skin, this shows no pastry at all. It's all cinnamon leather, with a hint of oudh after drydown. I wore it again to show her the difference on me. She took one whiff, and: "Hellooo Cinnabon!" I'm amping the sticky buns.

I passed over this initially because of the cacao, and then purchased when reviews suggested the chocolate is light. Happy to report that it's light on me, too -- just a warming edge to the blend. In order of strength: I get honey, but the cardamom and myrrh are right up there, very close. After them, I get amber and vanilla, and lastly the cacao. There's a dry, textured desert edge that reminds me of saffron, though it's not listed. Very nice, though it goes too faint on me, too quickly. It's probably a good companion on the arm to either Small Brown Cat or Sun's Treasure.

2016 (edit: I mean 2017. What year is it again?) version I don't always get along with patchouli, but I love this. On my skin, it's a sultry vanilla-patchouli pine, at once grounding, soothing, and sexy. Overall I think pine is strongest in the opening, but a soft, smoky vanilla-patch deeply colors it. The blend is woody and resinous, just a little sweetened with the vanilla and a light breath of honeyed tobacco. The patchouli is dark but smooth, and never reads as dirty or even textured to me. I'll need a backup at some point to age.

Non-foody creamy is probably my favorite type overall! I would just second several mentioned here already, and add Audumla, if you can find it (four streams of milk, white honey, frankincense, motherwort, and angelica root).