Casablanca
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Everything posted by Casablanca
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I've enjoyed so many of the Duets and Menages I've tried, and this, too, is a love. Sugared red poison. I get white sugar, red currant, and opium in about that order of strength, though they are closely balanced. I like this as a sleep scent, but it doubles as naughty. This fruit is downtown in the depths of night, wrapped in red dress and sugar gems, looking for a kill.
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Delicate, golden apricot cream with hints of coconut and magnolia while wet; more magnolia blooming in drydown. Sweet brown fig is present, but soft. The delicacy of this reminds me of some rice milk blends, although this is not strongly rice milky. I really enjoy this one. I was looking for a new creamy spring-fruit blend, so this is on the Luper upgrade short list.
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This has rested for a week or two so it’s probably ready for me and… I… what? Body odor? Sniffsniffsniffsniff This is a nice little vial of skin-soft, indolic BO that I have donned freshly showered. On my friend’s skin, much the same. Eventually, we glimpse a little magnolia wallowing in the body vibe. But, you see, on the wand, it’s more… fresh lemon flowers, cedar, and a breath of mint. That is the dream of this perfume before it meets our skin.
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Row of Trees begins its life on my skin as an herbal lavender salon blowout, but quickly morphs into a much more green herbal blend in the style of Lavender and Lichen. Well after drydown, I get a whiff of some wayward cologne note peeping from the sideline. Not a fan of that development. I liked this earlier. Buuuuut… If you like your lavenders green and herbal — even a bit dewy and wild with evergreen — this may just work for you.
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My review is an echo of @VetchVesper’s — this is absolutely the enticing blueberry musk of Jinbari. For the first minute. After that, it slinks to the background, and this is thereafter a gardenia blend on my skin. Clouds of coconut and neroli drift about this garden, but it’s mainly the gardenia in bloom.
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Vanilla Husk, Nutmeg, & Hay Absolute
Casablanca replied to Seajewel's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
Lovely blend in the vein of other sweet vanilla-hay scents. Specifically, it makes me think of the vanilla in Antique Lace added to Hay Moon. On my skin, the nutmeg mostly vanishes after the first few seconds (unfortunately). There's also a certain floof to the vanilla that smells like a little marshmallow hides in it. And, after drydown, I seem to smell some skin musk in the mix. I'm trying to tell myself I don't need a bottle of this because I have Antique Lace and Hay Moon. Not sure if I'll convince. -
Here's one that smells much as I imagined---it's really an occasion of "It is what it says it is." Smooth beeswax merges with a deep, rich, balsamic amber. A good deal of warmth suffuses this blend, from the gold of the amber to the honeyed sweetness of beeswax, but the balsamic note adds an acidic sauciness. I tend to amp balsam, but for this one, I smell a lot of it on the wand, as well. Lovely, smooth blend for beeswax and resin lovers.
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A lovely herbal lavender mingles with lichen, which adds a dry, greenish woodsiness and even seems to amp the herbal tones of the whole. Lavender is certainly the queen here, with lichen her supporting retinue. This court, though, lives not in the halls of civilization, but in the gentle, mossy wooded spaces, attended by the fey of wild herbs and wildflowers.
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Governing Dark is a slow opener, creeping into its own like sundown shadows. Against a background chill of soft, minty eucalyptus, black patchouli and black currant skulk along the earth. Somewhat confusingly, a sweet, warm amber soon joins in, adding shafts of gold in contrast to the cool eucalyptus and dark, earthy fruit. I want so much of this black patchouli and black currant together---how lovely they would be with woodsmoke in a Menage, ung---but mingling them with the starkly contrasting eucalyptus and amber isn't connecting with me. The mindscape of it is creating some sort of cognitive dissonance. But this black patchouli and black currant... Mm.
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Hm... A curious, caramel chestnut vetiver... wrapped in soft, dry wool. Within a minute or so, something sweet and golden warms it up. There's the amber, carrying with it a well-blended, cedary rustic quality. The vetiver---well-mannered and a little smoky---combines with the wool to remind of Two Sheep and Two Goats. But there's a distinctive caramel nuttiness here, and the amber-cedar vibe, to set this one apart. Despite loving absolutely everything in this, and appreciating them in combination... I'm not sure the blend is suckering me in as completely and immediately as I thought it would. But it's intriguing, and I can imagine sampling it several times before deciding whether to upgrade.
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Cozy concoction of soft, spiced, and fruity wine and oven-warmed, smoky bread, along with some oats and honey. It's a quiet mix on my skin, soft as if a little diluted by its multitude of notes. The sense of diluted complexity reminds me of some of the Lunacy moon perfumes. It's sweet and detailed up close, and mainly smoky and fruity from further away. I love it and will probably bottle it if it settles well.
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Spiced cherry Nyquil. This also takes me there. The cherry and booze fall back after this dries, leaving a more vague spiced fruitiness that oddly reminds me of cologne or men's deodorant.
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Creamy, grainy, wholesome,. These are the main impressions. On my skin, this is only very lightly spiced, but sweetened with some buttery currants. I wish this had more spice and less butter, but I like it overall. It makes me want a hot breakfast on this winter morning.
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Bracing peppermint oil candy. It's sweet and candied, bringing it away from the raw peppermint essential oil on my stank shelves... but it's stronger on the mint than the sugar.
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Usually I amp salt, but I'm only getting a speckle of it here. Mostly, this is sugary blue goo.
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Despite the sweet candy and grape qualities of the plum, there's a depth to this that I love --- a sensation that the plum sinks down and down into the dark vanilla woods and spice of Snake Oil. The blend has a longer life on my skin than most, and only seems to deepen as it wears. I tend to think I don't need more SO variants, having so many --- but I'll need more of this one.
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This is immediately different on my skin from Sugar Plum Black Phoenix. Sugar plum makes a nice addition to Villain, adding sweetness and a darker fruitiness to the lavender-lilac-citrus fougere. If the dark fruit adds any naughtiness, it's a playful type of naughty, like an imp. The lilac and lavender still keep a floral vibe over the whole, and the fougere quality is clear. But the plum amps the fruitiness up, and the complexity.
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Two months and no one has reviewed this? OK, well. Sugar plum (more plum than sugar) overlays a dark, opium-ish fruit syrup. Black Phoenix lists no notes, but I smell an opium-poison type thing, cherry syrup, and almond. Add plum and a little sugar to that and that's the idea.
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A fresh, cool aquatic with a whiff of fruit that reminds me of kiwi and golden melon. Mostly kiwi. Amber comes out more in drydown, blended with the fruitiness.
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Pines, softly menthol and freshened with sage, make up the body of this scent on my skin, but they're rounded out with stones, lichens, dry grasses, and a bit of a smoky/ozone thing that I think is the fog. Smells like dry, scrubby foothills.
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There's a lot of violet floral going on in this one. Up front, I get a lot of violet flowers, lavender, and orris, with a whiff of sandalwood. Champaca contributes from golden, tropical vibe, which manages to blend with the pale, cool, powdery, and delicate personality of the other notes, despite its contrast. In drydown, I stop noticing sandalwood. The blend settles into a powder-puff violet-lavender-champaca-orris mix, and there it more or less remains.
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Leaden Fog is mostly orris on me---a thick, slathered orris, almost orris butter. It's little powdery, but more cottony and clean. Drydown brings out a bit of parched, bone-dry sandalwood. Looking back at the notes, I realize that what I'm reading as super-dry, almost scorched-dry, is the blackened quality. But mostly... for me, this is orris, more orris, and some orris butter.
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A lazy gray haze hanging over the sea, and in no hurry to burn off for the day --- that's the image this scent brings to mind. When Sea Smoke first arrived, it smelled like silver and more silver obscuring a bit of aquatic. Now, on a second test, the silvered quality lingers, but it doesn't overwhelm the sea or sea kelp it colors. The created effect is a silvering film over the whole picture: gray haze, ocean, torn strands of kelp adrift and aimless, and general airborne sea spray. To me, the smoke here sort of evokes smog, but in a way that feels more like inertia than panic-worthy air pollution. That's how the smog felt to me when I lived in the Valley as a kid in the early 80s; when we'd drive up into the San Bernardino Mountains, we'd reach a magical point of rising just above the smog. Then we would look down on its sea-like thick spread, and be amazed that we were submerged in that without seeing it as clearly. This scent reminds me of those moments.
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What smells like a roadside manor of Victorian attractions on the decant wand turns into a bit of a hot chemical mess on my skin. At least on the wand, I get iron, polished wood, and a melange of odd background objects... I picture all manner of obscure instruments shaped from metal, glass, and wood. On my skin, it's like... let's call it a garage lab for making vinyl. If that isn't a thing in reality, it's at least being concept-pitched by my arm right now.
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Shocking Affair is a scent of conflict: in one corner of the ring, a fiesty, coppery clove and red musk, and in the far corner, a ghostly, fresh eucalyptus mint. They open the match as you might expect. Copper-clove-musk rushes out headlong, swinging wildly, and eucalyptus-mint slithers along the ropes, refusing to engage. At some length, eucalyptus-mint falls into copper-clove-musk's arms out of sheer boredom and ennui. They start to blend... and, for me at least, the culmination doesn't add any allure or interest. However, this is my friend's decant, and these aren't the sort of contrast notes I'm normally drawn to. So, take this review with that bit o' salt. 🙂