Casablanca

I recently tried Nutella for the first time, so this seemed a good pick. But often when chocolate appears in a notes list, it turns most of the blend into chocolate. I'm not expecting something different here, and I don't need another chocolate-dominant scent, so I almost didn't get this. But I love hazelnut and tonka and pine. So I hope... In the bottle, Joy smells like Nutella pine. Freshly applied: Nice. The black pine sits right up front with the hazelnut and tonka. I'm pleased to find that the chocolate hangs out almost to the side. This mix is really good, at least on my skin. It doesn't smell like the Nutella single note I thought it might be. The blend smells... like its photo, but less dirty and wood chippy. The drydown is mainly hazelnut tonka, fading to a hazelnut tonka skin scent, and then just... tonka. It doesn't last long in glory mode, but mmm. It's one to reapply sometimes, but I'm glad I chanced the bottle.

Tombstone is the general catalogversion of Outlaw, a limited edition scent out at the moment. It's not the same, but it's similar. Less gourmand, more rustic. Wet on my skin, Tombstone is fizzy vanilla root beer on a balsamic cedar background. Outlaw has more of a cream tone that drifts it into root beer float land. Tombstone is more like vanilla-flavored root beer (no vanilla ice cream) and red wood. It's like drinking a cool root beer in a wood shop. The fizziness mellows out from its initial crispness within a few minutes, but stays in play. The blend lasts at least a few hours on me. A good scent.

When I tested this without knowing its notes, I got a caramel-toned rum, leather, and something that reminded me of tobacco, but that didn't seem right. Now I think that something might be the mix of gunpowder, patch, and sarsaparilla -- there's a rugged earthiness to Mary Read that I can't otherwise pin. I didn't know who Mary Read was before trying this on, but I still thought "Pirate." Seeing the notes now, I catch a light spray of the sea in the blend, too. Rum and patch can put me off, but this is very well-blended, and they don't do so here. This better evokes a sea life, for me, than the other female pirate blend, Anne Bonny -- but they are both very good.

This is the Labores Solis: the sun’s rays expressed through frankincense, amber, heliotrope, saffron, and chamomile, crossed with Luna’s Artemisias, manifesting in darkness. I'm a sun worshiper. My favorite days of the year are ones like in this week, when it's warm and golden and lazy, and I get out to walk and feel like I can melt into sunshine, because that's where I'm home. Labores is lovely and, while I wasn't thinking of it when I picked it for today, it perfectly fits this time of year. It smells exactly like how I feel when I get out of the office for a short walk, and tune all my senses into the drying grasses and green reeds rustling in the sun and slow breeze. I smell heliotrope and amber sweetening chamomile's sunny, drying-meadow smell, and the softened grainy texture of saffron and frankincense. Unlike The Sportive Sun, Labores Solis has aged well. It's all very well blended -- I'm surprised to pick out heliotrope most strongly on me, but amber and chamomile are close seconds, and everything else is there, too. I'm glad I got this. On the down side, it lasts less than two hours on me.

I tested my friend's bottle of this with her so we could compare our different skin chemistries. Neither of us remembered the notes for this when we tested it, and to both of us, sniffing blindly, it smelled like nutty chocolate and salty red musk. On my friend, Spider Witch settled into a soft red musk as it dried. The remaining notes were well-blended and pretty. On me, the blend was similar, except somehow even saltier. Then, at around the half hour mark, the red musk turned sour and almost sweaty smelling, as the lab's red musk does on me. An hour later, the inside of my elbow, where I tested this, smelled like an armpit. Yay! Later still, it settled back into something mild and pleasant. I knew what red musk does on me (this perfumer's version of it, anyway), but in the space between the weird initial saltiness and when Spider Witch went sour on me, I thought it was pretty and enticing. Not anything I'd pick up for myself, though, even if it played nicer with my skin.

I tested my friend's bottle of this with her so we could compare it on our different skin chemistries. In the bottle, Reapers smells mostly strongly of musk, but the other listed notes nudge in as well. Once on our skins, Reapers was mostly sandalwood, with a solid background of vanilla musk, in its early life. In contrast to other blends where my skin amped vanilla in comparison with hers, Reapers then went a little more vanilla on my friend than on me. Go figure! The blend was faint on my friend after an hour, but still going strong on me. By that time, the musk was strongest on my skin, rather than the sandalwood -- but Reapers is very well blended throughout its life on my skin. Reapers smells unlike anything else I have. After around 20 minutes, it also started to affect me in a way I didn't expect -- I couldn't get butcher meat and bones out of my head when I sniffed it. I didn't think I was quite that suggestible, but something about this fragrance, once it blends on the skin for a while, reminds me of my high school Anatomy and Physiology course. Sigh. I'm going to need to work to get that out of my head, because there are much more pleasant places to go with Reapers, I'm sure of it.

I tested my friend's bottle of this with her so we could compare it on our different skin chemistries. First off, the liquid was pink. Curiously pink. On both of us, London was all lavender when wet, and grew a bit of aromatic, grassy-ish greenness as it dried. My friend got a sense of herbal tea on her, too, as the blend dried. Then the amber background came out, but more on me than on my friend. Overall, the blend was a little sweeter on me than on my friend, and my version even developed a breath of vanilla. London was faint on both our skins after an hour.

I tested my friend's bottle of this with her so we could compare it on different skin chemistries. On both of us, Outlaw was a vanilla root beer float with leather. At first, it put out more root beer on my friend, and more vanilla cream on me. The leather came out more strongly on both of us as it dried, but it was stronger on her than on me. An hour later, Outlaw was a faint vanilla cream with the ghost of a root beer fizz on both of us.

On me, Little Lady F is a clean, reedy green aquatic with ozone. It actually makes me think of bamboo. As it dries, it turns a little cologne-like, but it's still an ozonic, clean, woody bamboo to me. I was surprised that this made me think of bamboo, given its description, so I pulled out Black Bamboo from Demeter and compared them. While Black Bamboo is darker and less aquatic, with more of a tone of woody spice, my friend and I who were testing her bottles agreed that the two are similar. On her skin, Little Lady came across as a more watery green blend, still ozonic, but less woody than on my skin.

In the bottle, Papyri smells mostly like vanilla cream frosting. On my skin, it's vanilla cream-slathered Egypt for about ten seconds, and then that blends together somehow into a vanilla-toned, aged paper-vellum scroll -- a papyrus scroll with a leathery touch. The myrrh comes forth as Papyri dries, blending in to the old scroll impression I'm getting. And I think: this is the Library of Alexandria. And that's a piece of magic, because this wasn't one of the bottles I ordered, but I've been reading about the Library of Alexandria lately. This blend is what I wanted from Mr. Ibis. As it happened, Papyri didn't work well on my friend's skin, and the bottle has stayed with me. I suppose it was meant to be. Now I owe her a backup of Outlaw.

Rotting herbs and damp earth stuffed with bacterial nasties and the pervasive, days-old stank of red hobo wine sweat. This is many of my least favorite odors in one scent. I love actual red wine, but the lab's red wine notes never work on or for me. I need help. (Help = soap and water and lots of it.)

Potent purple-blue iris. I don't smell anything else for some minutes, and then I start to pick up an herbal mix (including a dash of pepper?) and a grainy touch of frankincense. This is pretty, but iris just isn't my jam.

At first, I pick up orange blossom primarily, then spicy-leaning golden champaca, and then sandalwood. I love the champaca and sandalwood, but neroli sometimes turns to orange lollipops on me, and in the earliest phase, that happens here. After a few minutes, the lollipops settle down into a calm orange bloom, and champaca comes to the fore. The scent is gorgeous after that.

A spicy (especially saffron), orange-lotus incense. I don't know where the impression of orange is coming from. I think maybe it's this lotus, which to me smells partway between bubble gum and orange -- whereas when I've smelled it before, it was more of a pink bubble gum. Besides that, I get a dry and woody background of sandalwood and cedar. This sandalwood is pure loveliness. After drying, the wood is most prominent, followed by spices. I smell mostly cedar, with sandalwood, saffron, clove, cinnamon, and lotus in support. I like it.

Krampus, you so chocolatey. Actually, Krampus was at first just a lovely dark chocolate on my skin, then the woodsmoke made its first subtle appearance after a few minutes -- lingering in the back of the nose. At an hour, it was more subtle woodsmoke on both my friend and I than it was chocolate, as the cocoa had mostly drifted off. A hint of chocolate remained, and this cocoa woodsmoke skin scent was lovely, but a lil too faint for my taste. For a while, though, Krampus is like a pot of chocolate fondue heating over a camping cook fire. Lovely, but, by the time it had the balance I wanted, it was barely there on me.

Chardonnay? With the rest of this heavy stuff? I'm curious... Oof. This blend doesn't mess around. It's heavy and rum-syrupy and darkly tobacco'ed and smoky, sickly sweet, and makes me think of pure pirate sweat, running off an unwashed, sun-darkened body in murky rivers, and it's gross, and I kinda like it, and kinda want to scrape it off. Mostly, I like it. I do smell the chardonnay -- it smells like a faint sparkling chardonnay. I wouldn't have found the tonka without the notes list, and I think it's largely to credit for drawing me in, but this isn't quite for me.

Curious! First impression: lemon, vetiver, pine and maybe spruce and other woods, and sweetness. (I think it's a floral sweetness, but at other times it reminds me of sugar cane.) The sandalwood steps out after a few minutes on my skin, a sandalwood I quite like. I don't know its name, but it doesn't smell burnt to me, and I want more of it. It's dry, rather than burnt. The sweetness fades and the other woods come out stronger. I think of pine, spruce, cypress, oakmoss, and sage, but I don't know. Something... I like it.

It is what it says it is. The myrrh is sweet in this one.

It's possible this is -- by a small margin, anyway -- my most frankincense-heavy blend. It's so grainy in the nose. But also pretty. There's that. I smell frankincense and balsam in a puff of dusty incense smoke. I like it -- yet it smells serious enough to crack smiles off faces, and, for me at least, I think it will be best combined with Lights of Men's Lives or something else to add a slightly different mood. That said, I do love resins. And because my skin eats scents, I really appreciate the longevity of this blend -- it lasts many hours on me.

The first impression of Tzadikim on my skin is of a sweet and lightly floral olive. Then I get a gingery twist from the galangal. I was expecting a wave of frankincense, but I'm not getting that at all in the early stage. Tzadikim doesn't change much on me through its life, except that its frankincense comes out after a couple hours. Tzadikim is beautifully done, especially once the frankincense comes out to balance the sweetness. However, though I can appreciate olive in fragrances, it's not quite what I want on my skin. I'll enjoy the imp over time, but I don't see myself applying this often. If you enjoy olive, this is definitely one to try.

Ah, this is pretty. Wooden Doll has little impact, with each note like a gentle glow, but it smells as described: a woody and rosy amber with golden sandalwood. The wood gives me an impression of oak. This is a soft skin scent on me. I would love it as a bath or body oil.

2009 This is a dark amber-colored oil that smells to me of frankincense, myrrh, balsam, cedar, and pine pitch. It's smooth and deep, heavy and meditative. It will not blast your coworkers with unexpected Catholicism, as it stays fairly close to the skin. The cedar and pine strengthen on me as Mass dries. This is a woody oriental. I have no idea yet which I would prefer between this and In Templum Dei, the Magdelena, and other orientals, but I think they're all lovely.

A houdoun recipe dating back almost 150 years. This blend is favored by prostitutes, exotic dancers and others in the sex industry for its power to attract, seduce, and enthrall. Ensures financial gain and increased profits. Jasmine and a side of honeysuckle. Maybe a little vanilla, maybe a little gardenia. One or more of them leans toward soap on me. Nothing here draws me in.

Soap. I apply this, and smell the thickly chalky tone of a dedicated soap. It has a touch of some white floral, I guess, but mainly it's soap. It's even more soapy than Juliet.

I was pleased to be sent this sample, not having tried a daisy note before, even though I'm not much for peppers in fragrance. High-Strung Daisies smells sweetly springtime when it first meets my skin -- a golden and pink floral with a little sugar and pink pepper. The blend evokes sunshine and flowers in April; it's lovely. The pink pepper doesn't overwhelm here, and it blends seamlessly into the spicy pink carnation. The daisies smell like playful sun rays. Sadly, they don't last. Within a few minutes, the daisies and most of the sugar have melted away, leaving a pink-peppered carnation skin scent. If Daisies continued as it began, I'd bottle it.