White Flowers, Red Ink, Black Paper

[doomsday_disco]

If this year’s Lupercalia fragrance collection was a book, it would be printed in blood-red ink rolled across the soft, stubborn bodies of dream-pale flowers, and stamped onto heavy black paper. We’d pass it around before the letters had a chance to dry, staining fingers with the turn of every page, marking the curious as aspiring erotes, as fellow Lupercalians. The sanguine contents of this text were made to be devoured by the eyes, the skin, the heart, and then the story continued by its readers, passed along to others.

 

(As ever, please do not consume the perfumes internally or apply them to sensitive body parts. Don’t make us regret deploying such a fragrant metaphor, we’re trusting you to hang onto at least that much cognition.)

[Little Bird]

I think this smells like opium poppy, red musk, and ink.  It reminds me of the glittery, almost-but-not-quite soapy, white floral, opium poppy note, splashing around in a pool of red musk and ink.  The ink smells like pen ink, black and mineral and a bit resinous itself.  I picked up a decant of this blend out of curiosity but I am enjoying it enough to consider ordering a full bottle if I can afford it after buying my must-haves.  It feels like a more mature red musk scent (if there is red musk in here; I feel like I can smell it strongly) and the red part is sweet enough to soften the sharper floral-esque part.  It smells romantic and gothic to me, like a love letter with blood, sweet red wine, and a spritz of vintage floral perfume splayed over its pages.

[Lucchesa]

White Flowers. It kind of stopped there on me and for hours was something akin to single-note magnolia. Or gardenia or one of those exceptionally heady, fleshy white flowers that I never wear without some red ink or black paper dirtying them up. So I was hoping for maybe something ashy in the black note, maybe blood or red musk in the ink. I envy the minerals and resins and red musk Little Bird is getting; the florals are just drowning everything else out for me.