Casablanca

Mm, this lavender lady is soft on me, rather than sharp, but herbal and quite present. She is dried and cushy as raked piles on the lawn, relaxed as a drifting leaf. The leaves note, which is mostly a rustic edge to the lavender at first, rounds out some as this dries, adding an arboreal brown to the light purple scent. Some musk wafts out, but it doesn't smell strange on me. This could become what bedtime in November smells like.

Santa Eularia opens on me with a loud, piercing citrus and jasmine mix. The citrus part is lovely: a fleshy, incredibly juicy lemon-grapefruit blend (I think). This is light-colored, pulpy citrus juice spraying about and running down your arm when you take a bite, no matter how careful you tried to be. But the jasmine paired with it is a shrill sort. I get a sprinkling of herb smells with these: lavender, thyme, and oregano, at least, I think. After a bit, the jasmine quiets down behind the citrus. This is really a glimmering citrus scent, fresh fruit placed center stage. The herbs make it feel special, like a kitchen of conscientious cooking and personal touches. I like it. I didn't expect to.

The first impression of this on my skin is of blackberries and a weird, thin musky cologne that many have mentioned for the Dead Leaves perfumes. The blackberries smell tart and dark and pretty. Their tartness reminds me of black currants. Maybe there are also black currants in this. Either way, I like that part of the mix. As this dries, the chemical-smelling musk burns off and I smell blackberries with a hint of leaves, with the leaves mainly giving a rustic edge to the berries, as if a part of them. In a half hour or so, it's a subtle blackberry skin scent.

Pomegranate is often high-impact, but this one has more restraint than I expected. It's dark in a way that reminds me of how the black cherries in Yipe! were dark. But it's much softer than they were. A pomegranate with poise. The amber blends into it beautifully, smelling less like some external sunlight than some native, polished warmth to the fruit. I think I'm getting some bergamot from the chypre, too. And then I seem to smell neroli. And then, I smell a lot of neroli. I know I amp this note to high heaven, but the neroli is crazy on me now. I pick up pom coloring it, but this isn't mostly pom anymore. I'll test later and see if my skin or nose is just being weird.

This sounds weird. I... yes, that's weird. The strongest impression on me when wet is fruity sugar, chiefly blackberry sugar, with mandarin and strawberry and... wood. A wood almost like a sawdust. Lobster dries on me into a vague, impressionistic still-life painting of sawdusted fruit.

Jabber is a menthol burst on me at first. I like these notes, usually, but this is one for the vaporizer. Pine strengthens on me once the exploded menthol starts to settle. Then I enjoy this: it's a softer camphoraceous eucalyptus-pine colored playfully orange.

Wet on my skin, this is a sweet, flowery honey with an utterly frivolous mood. Unfortunately, right away on me, the honey all but vanishes and the flowers turn to sweet powder-blast poofs. The powder. She is mighty. I don't think "sweet powder poof" expresses me very well. This is one for the go-away pile.

Fresh on my skin, this is Honeycrisp primarily, and honey in solid support. I also seem to get a little floral something... honeysuckle hiding in the honey? Sunflower? I don't think I have any sunflower notes from the lab, but something in this reminds me of a sunflower body spray I used to have. Some golden flower, smelling like late-afternoon sunshine... and apricot? I'm getting an apricot tone blended into the apple. As Honeyed Apple dries, its colorful notes dip below the horizon and musk emerges. It becomes a subtle apple- and gold-toned musky skin scent on me at this point. It's an autumn sun in a bottle.

Pumpkin Sugar smells to me like sugary spicy pumpkin in the bottle. But fresh on my skin, it's spicy pumpkin cookie dough. Cinnamon-nutmeg pumpkin cookie dough. Great if that's what you're after. Either way, the doughy part of the scent settles down over time, leaving more pumpkin spice. Good throw.

The notes description has me brace for impact, but Fire surprises me with softness. It mostly smells like a glimmering coals concept scent, reminding me of Djinn and Demeter's Bonfire, but more cindering smoke, and this one is barely present on my skin. And... it's gone in 10 minutes. I like a lot of elemental scents, and I enjoy what I can smell of this, but I need it to stay awhile.

On my skin, Boober is cottony laundry and soap bubbles. There's a side of flowers, but I'm not familiar with linden other than to notice it gets used for clean or cotton themes sometimes. There's a little sugared vanilla, just a bit like vanilla cupcake frosting, or vanilla-flavored sprinkles, but it's small and quiet, and doesn't give a vanilla frosting impression in the way that say Funerary Papyri does. It doesn't change on me. This isn't for me.

Opening the bottle, this is potent stuff, a wave of creamy black cherry. On my skin, it's sweet, creamy, fleshy black cherry like whoa. There isn't much to break down here, but I'll try: the sweetness isn't granular sugar, but syrupy. The cream is vanillic and almondy and secondary to the cherry. The cherry is black and fleshy-chewy, and the strongest note. I don't smell blackberries as a standalone, but the cherry seems a little extra dark. The vanilla in the cream strengthens in drydown and is the strongest note on me once this dries. The dark cherries linger, but quietly now. I can pick out blackberries now, but they are even quieter, ever so faint, almost absent. They're like a hint of dark berry dryness compared with the cherries. (And then I look at the notes again and realize they're dried. I guess that's them.)

As simple as it is, I'm fond of this one. It smells predominantly golden-orange, like a mango turned floral, and also greenly spring-like, like dandelions given larger, bolder flowers. Despite being a fall-themed scent, it makes me think of Easter, from American Gods. It changes little on my skin, and sadly doesn't last long.

Baobhan Sith opens with a wave of gingery grapefruit, sweetened with red apple. Grapefruit doesn't usually excite me in fragrance (though I love the fruit), but this is a nice trio. I smell the clean white tea afterward. The whole blends into a mostly grapefruit white tea on me after drydown (no more ginger or apple). To me this smells too tropical to evoke its Highland namesake, but it's still a nice fragrance, good for spring.

In the bottle I smell only a faint beeswax, but on my skin this is at first more of the crunchy-sweet honey from O, but with a nutty, slightly creamy-musky tone from the ambergris. The initial honey rush calms quickly, though, and allows the beeswax and white incense through. After the first 30 seconds, beeswax dominates, followed by ambergris and white incense. I don't pick out patchouli at this stage. The vanilla tone in the beeswax grows after drydown, becoming about as strong as the waxy smell. I still don't smell patchouli, but the incense note has grown, pale but champaca-like. I like it, but it's mostly gone in 40 minutes.

Salty, sea-breezy kelp and moist greenery, a blue juniper scent, a ponderous cypress, a vague floral impression, and a hint of sage. The sage is nicely fresh-smelling. This is what I get on my skin at first. After a few minutes, soap lurks on the horizon of that sea, a little shape with a little sail, but coming closer. Fast. OK, well, it's here already. Now Ogygia is sea-scented soap, lightly saged. A very pretty bar of soap, if still a bit salty... I would use this soap.

Olokun has none of the gloom mentioned in the notes -- I'd been half expecting something like The Deep Ones. Instead, I get a cool-toned, lightly salty oceanic melon that's only a faint presence on me. All very soft. All very gone in a short time.

I have no prominent licorice blends and want more teakwood around, because I love it, so this one was an easy pick for me. Kneeling Child's first impression on my skin is black licorice in black musk. Then I pick up the pervasive teakwood, with its sleek, darkly polished wood scent, adding the sophistication that I love. The licorice is sweet, but not overly so, mingled with the teak and this sort of lemon myrtle-vetiver musk. It's a nice thing I like black musk, or I might have been disappointed here. But this is a lovely dark, darkscent for those who are good with these notes.

October Dusk is beautiful. I agree with biocarolyn: this reminds a little bit of maple syrup, but without most of the sugar -- just that soft red maple note, with a little redwood behind it. It's also not very woody or leafy. Instead it's a nice balance between wood, leaves, and sweetness. It smells like October made romantically red.

King Pursued was more oak and amber than pine on me, but YMMV. It did. I got a lot of a very softly camphoraceous pine pitch, and little amber.

Sweet mints. On the second sniff, it smells like cold, hard mint candies hovering above a bed of slightly nutty (which is how the lab's ambergris smells to me) moss. The moss and ambergris blend together, but the mints stand out entirely, not blending at all -- this is this, and that is that. In drydown the notes start to settle and blend. Later, Cathode turns to a flat toothpaste. Meh.

Some kind of warm, buttery-apple sweetness -- a bit almond-like, a bit maple-like -- and spiced with cinnamon-clove. A fall scent, unchanging on my skin, except to later fade.

BPAL's red musk goes all icky armpits on me after a while. But let's try this here freebie. I do love the spice part of this. The initial hit of Scherezade isn't bad -- I don't hate red musk before it turns foul on me. At least not anymore. However, the blend starts to smell gross on me after about 15 minutes. I have a friend whose skin doesn't hate red musk, so she will get this.

On the wand, Seraglio is... almond. And orange. But mostly almond, as its high-impact, heavy-hitting self. Almond in boxing gloves. On my skin, the orange and orange blossoms bloom, but almond still slugs away. The neroli turns toward orange lollipops on me, as it does sometimes, but the almond and a little spice seem to hold it partly in check. In the drydown, I catch clove, and then nutmeg. But after that, the nutmeg seems stronger. The rose then does something unusual for rose and sneaks up on me. This is a lovely rose that pairs well with the orange and spice. The almond starts to settle down and let a better balance through. A quite nice balance -- this rose shows restraint, and doesn't bully through the heart of the fragrance in its turn. The only drawback for me now is the slight lollipop tone of the neroli, but that's just my skin. Once the almond settles, this is a pleasant blend. Not long-lived on me, though.

Strong spiced tea! The leaves seem like a mix that may include a little black tea, but mostly green. Kind of a smoky green, like a gunpowder, that blends into a little tobacco. Otherwise, I smell lots of spice, including the allspice. But in this blend, tea dominates on me. In the drydown, I find the sandalwood, but it blends well into the spices, and I don't find its edges. Plunder takes on a dry, grainy quality at this point, on the edge of dusty, but not powdery. It mostly fades from me in a couple hours. I like this, but I'm not drawn to bottle it.