MissLily

In the bottle: I smell a pine forest - the whole forest, not just the trees - by the ocean. This must be how a Californian interprets "snow." I didn't even know snow had a smell. No cakes. Those goblins must have eaten them all up. Wet: Still no cakes. Darn goblins. I smell the crushed flowers now along with the cold coastal forest, and they smell wonderful - like I trampled them on the trail, and am now enjoying the endorphin rush of having finished a hard hike up a hill to the lookout point. Drydown: Maybe someone has cakes at the bottom of the hill. But maybe I'm imagining things. The eucalyptus is very strong. Despite the Icelandic intention, this is very evocative of Northern California in December for me. I don't smell goblins at all; I smell cold hippies who've scrubbed in Dr. Bronner's. This would be an unusual scent to wear, although perhaps less so for a man, but it's fascinating and I am buying a bottle from another forumite. I will probably use it a lot this Christmas.

I ordered an imp of this in my very first order, and loved it so much I bought a bottle, and the soap. In the bottle: Sweet, sweet Irish coffee in a dusty room. The more I huff it (and I must confess, a few times a day at least I do) the more the oak is perceptible. Wet: the sweetness amps up to a pitch that would be obnoxious if the oak, whisky, and freshroasted coffee didn't roar up as well. This is an incredible, complex scent. Drydown: the dust note (how does Beth DO that?) becomes more prominent, reminding me of the secondhand bookstores I'd beg to be taken to in small seaside towns on family vacations. Dusty books sometimes make me a little ill now so it's a really special thing for me to be able to enjoy the scent and the memories without coming down with a nauseous headache. The only bad thing I have to say about MiskU is when I attempted to scent some homemade flaxseed hairgel with half an imp, everything but the dust note completely disappeared. I really wanted my hair to smell like Irish coffee. I do not want my hair to smell like dust.

In the bottle: Linen, ginger, and honey, but like many people I interpret the ginger as lemon. I know it's not lemon, though, because like many people, I interpret most lemon as Pledge. Wet: Linen, ginger, and honey, but warmer. There's a soapy clean smell developing but not bad soap - more like a very well-scrubbed child. Drydown: TEA. Black tea with milk and honey. Cup after cup after cup. This is the scent I want my son to associate with me. This is the scent I will use to Proustically wire his brain so that he smells tea or honey or ginger decades from now and remembers how much I love him. It smells so sweet and good and maternal I don't even want to perceive the separate notes - I just want to ABSORB IT. It smells like me, amplified - or the ideal me. This is my Platonic ideal of perfume.

In the bottle: Expensive peach candy. Wet: Midrange peach candy, and grape bubblegum. Drydown: Cheap peach candy, and chewed up grape bubblegum. That makes it sound like I don't like it, but I do! I think the progression from the little hard candies you get at the opera in the pretty tins with French paintings on to the candy I remember buying at day camp and eating on the bus on the way home from miniature golf is a pretty rad mnemonic sequence to have encapsulated in a perfume. It's just not what I think when I think "queen of the fairies." It seems to me to be a scent that captures the amazing range of experiences available in America. I would have called it "Goddess of Democracy."

In the bottle: I smell gardenia, neroli, and sandalwood. However, I see from the description that only one of those three notes should be there. Olfactory hallucinations are symptomatic of a brain tumor. I am concerned. Wet: this is an inoffensive white floral. There isn't much else to say about it. Drydown: Whatever I think is sandalwood, but apparently isn't, is trying very hard to convince me of its existence. At the same time this oil is actually getting sweeter with the drydown which is a rare quality I appreciate very much. I think I'd wear this if I wanted to convince someone of my innocence, good intentions, and complete freedom from any desire to manipulate them. Heh, heh, heh.

I see that Gaidig beat me to the Reepicheep poem. That was my first thought too: "Where sky and water meet, Where the waves grow sweet, Doubt not, Reepicheep, To find all you seek, There is the utter east." I will make an earthier comparison. When I was a girl, when you went out with your friends to some place where desirable young men could be found in abundance, you doused your proto-gothy self with the small bottle of China Rain that someone had probably shoplifted from the store on Telegraph. Sea of Glass smells like what we thought we smelled like then.

In the bottle: Amber and sandalwood. Wet: Amber, sandalwood, and oranges. Drydown: Amber, sandalwood, tiny hint of nutmeg, turning soapy. I am sure this would be nice on other people, but I'm disappointed. It's just boring on me. Maybe it would be better if it smelled like Baghdad 2007 - eau de Dick Cheney and Al Quaeda. No, wait, probably not.

In the bottle: hot wonderful cakes coming out of the oven, with a spicy background note. Wet: A bakery next door to a church. Dry: If anyone hears of a vacant apartment in the same neighborhood as the bakery and the church, please let me know, because this smells like home.

As a soap, this is wonderful - it's moisturizing and lathers up nicely. I would be perfectly happy with it if I hadn't been expecting to smell coffee, but there's no coffee. I had the same problem using an imp of Miskatonic U to scent flaxseed hairgel - the coffee note evaporated, leaving nothing but dust. It's not what I was looking forward too. Still, it's a lovely soap.

There's so much going on in the bottle, but on me, wet or dry, it's Sucrets cough drops. Medicinal cherry yuck. If I'd been Alice, I'd have never gotten small, because I would never have put this in my mouth.

In the bottle: someone is trying to murder me with a bottle of grapefruit floor wax. On my wrist: now they're spraying my corpse with floral scented Lysol. I don't think that will fool the K-9 unit. Drydown: Hotel air-freshener. My corpse has been abandoned in a Motel 6. I'm menstruating au mome, but when I wasn't, I adored this scent - it was grapefruit with glorious breadth and gorgeous depth. None of the other notes were identifiable but they were a lovely collective supporting cast. At this point in my cycle it crawls into my sinuses and does a chachacha in shoes made of grapefuit peel. Ah, womanhood.

In the bottle: Sugar and spice, burn everything twice - that's what dragon girls are made of! I see a lot of commenters find this to be a masculine scent; I find a redheaded sixteen year girl with an IQ of 180 - or, possibly, a dragon in the form of a redheaded sixteen year old girl with an IQ of 180. First application: Squeaky clean, showered dragon-redhead. Our dragon in human form is fascinated by indoor plumbing and is taking an hour-long hot shower with lots of soap. Drydown: Soap, soap, soap. If I wanted to smell like soap, this is the kind of soap I would want to smell like. It's very nice soap. It's a letdown from dragon-girl, though.

In the bottle: A big, burly, but oddly feminine bouncer named Violet hauls me out of a barfight in a fireman's carry. While I've got my nose smashed against her armpit, I can smell a whiff of sandalwood and musk, but mostly I'm manhandled by Violet. First application: The next day I see Violet at Waffle House having breakfast and apologize for my drunken behavior the night before. She smiles with frightening sweetness and pats my head. Boom, boom, boom, ow. "That's ok, kid, but don't do it again." Drydown: Violet's grandma, wearing Chanel No. 5 - that's the neroli + sandalwood, I imagine.