Tombstone

[The_Merf]

A celebration of one of the first commercially produced perfumes of America's Old West. A rugged, warm blend of vanilla, balsam and sassafras layered over Virginia cedar.

In the imp: Mostly leather, with some sassafras and the slightest bit of vanilla.

Wet: The sassafras and vanilla blend to make this smell almost like chocolate leather. It's very appealing. The leather does a great job of keeping the sassafras from going to candied root beer at this stage.

Drydown and wear: This is fantastic--a great scent for leather lovers. It's a warmer version of another favorite of mine, Les Infortunes. This stays grounded with the leather and the sassafras never takes over.

[Beckery]

I don't know if my skin is really wierd, or I can't smell. I'm not getting any of the cedar/woody/masculine smells everyone else has mentioned. All I get is really REALLY sweet vanilla with just a hint of rootbeer. It does last a long time, though. Overall, too pretty and sweet for me. I really wanted to like this a lot, but it just doesn't suit me. It does smell nice, it's just not me.

[Teggy]

Very cedary, but a little soft. Manly...I don't think I would wear this on myself because I keep getting this slight anise-esque hint of a whiff. I hate anise. I'm not quite sure what it is. Maybe it would smell better on someone else.

[ankhfangirl72]

I really wanted to like this one, and I did like it in the imp. But when I tried it on my skin it turned very masculine and way too strong for me to actually want to wear it. In the end I had to try washing it off. It just didn't work for me.

 

Edit- I don't know if my nose has changed or it's down to the imp aging but now I get a warm, soft vanilla with just a little cedar

Edited May 20, 2008 by *Dani*

[Em-]

I love this, both on me and on my husband - this is such a wonderfully warm, sunbaked blend of vanilla and cedar...delish.

[Browneyes]

Imp: Vanilla (as in Snake Oil) + cedar wood

Wet: The same...

Dry: Well, this is pretty much a woodier and manlier Snake Oil to me... and I it!

[Artemis Torch]

I felt a powerful need to comment on this after wearing it to a Static-X show last night. But, first: I bought it over a year ago, opened the imp and said "Wooff! Mothbally closet!" and hadn't touched it since. But I was feeling macho last night, so I put it on, hoping to channel my inner cowboy. To my great surprise, it smelled wonderful on me! Vanilla was the strongest part of it, but the cedar was very present in the background. It'll take another go-round to really analyze it, but it was great! My friend, whose most favored scent is Moonrose (and everything she owns smells like roses), said I smelled somewhat masculine, in a good way. The oddest part was that it was only a tiny bit sweet; most oils smell like candy on me, even ones that shouldn't. The most awesome, excellent thing about it, however, was that it survived two and a half hours (mostly) in a mosh pit. I had beer spilled on me, was sweating like a pig, was covered in sweaty guy sweat, and had poured water all over my self in an optimistic attempt to get clean, and I still smelled beauteous! I'm still shocked! Hence the exclamation points!

 

My point: give those funky-in-the-bottle scents a chance! You never know which will be a winner.

 

This is going on my second-tier-favorites list.

 

Hooray!

[jiggahava]

A really nice blend of vanilla and cedar. For all you cedar-haters, the cedar stays in check with the help of the vanilla. I can't detect any sassafras on my wrist, but I can smell a bit of it wafting off me. I like this, and I'm going to keep my imp. It makes me feel warm and nice. A comforting blend, really.

[citharadraconis]

Smells quite masculine in the imp and goes on pencil-shavings. Stupid cedar. But after a few minutes, it turned into sexy root beer. I had no idea root beer could be sexy, or work as a perfume, but somehow this does. It's a bit more manly than I usually go for, but I like it!

Edited May 5, 2007 by citharadraconis

[rockchickie]

Rugged, wha? This actually smelled rather feminine on both of us.

 

 

On him...

 

His opinion: This is cotton candy and burnt plastic.

My opinion: Spicy vanilla and...latex?

 

 

On me...

 

A similar effect, except after 2 hours it started to smell nice. But at that point, everything had faded except the vanilla. Not worth the wait, IMO.

[sabina_k]

Nooooo!

 

I was so excited to try this, because I think vanilla and cedar are PERFECT for each other. I was imagining this as pretty much just a vanilla and cedar blend, and if it had been, I'd have gotten a bottle or five. But no. I didn't know what balsam and sassafras smelled like, so I didn't factor them into my calculations. Turns out, they don't like me.

 

This smells, to me, like a cheap wooden table that has been scrubbed with vaguely vanilla-scented soap. VAGUELY.

[LadyCrow]

This is definitely in the "baffling, but great" scent category for me, with the rich, deep, sweet vanilla lasting next to my skin for hours. I mean, I don't know exactly what a root-beer float spilled on a cedar floor has to do with cowboys. But then, cowboys are mysterious; I don't know why a musclebound, gun-toting male mercenary would be called "Jayne," either.

 

I would not have thought to pair vanilla and cedar, but mysteriously, it absolutely works on me. If it's masculine, as some have suggested, then it's a geeky, rather citified masculine -- to continue with the Firefly metaphor, Tombstone is much more Simon Tam than Mal Reynolds. The Snake Oil comparison prompts fleeting thoughts that Tombstone is also rather like Western Diamondback lite -- a handy GC similarity in between LE fixes.

 

Very nice. To the extent that this counts as foody, it's not overly heavy the way Gluttony can be.

[modernsaints]

In the imp this is beautiful, vanilla and a hint of delicious sassafras, and I cannot wait to try it on! I am Excited About This Blend! (And better yet, it's a frimp. mmmmmfrimp.)

 

Then it goes on, and dries down immediately to cedar. I smell exactly of the interior of a closet. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfect closet scent, but I don't feel comfortable wearing it, and it's not at all what I expected.

[mrsveteran]

A friend's review really made me want to try this out, as I love "edible" scents, but this one turned out not to be very edible at all.

 

In the imp: A hint of cedar along with a sweet-scented something else that smells rather unfortunately like the urinal cakes my husband refers to as "Toilet Mints."

 

Wet on skin: A little bit of the vanilla and sassafras are starting to come out, and the cedar is stronger. Still a bit of "toilet mint" in there, but it's not so sickly sweet as it was in the imp.

 

Drydown: The sweet scents and wood scents are starting to blend together more nicely as they all settle down together. It's actually rather pleasant, but a little heavy on the cedar for my taste.

 

One hour later: Now it's just a sweetish scent which is more "toilet mint" than anything else and mostly cedar on top of that. Grr. I really wanted to like this, but I don't see how that's possible. I don't mind cedar in drawers and closets, but it's just not me. Plus I can't get over the sickly sweetish smell.

 

Throw: A bit faint. I can't smell it at all unless my nose is very close to my wrist.

 

Verdict: Not buying a bottle and the imp is off to the swap pile. :-(

[500ml]

I got an aged empty frimp as a sniffie (with a few drops of oil left, yay) and my goodness, this is actually good. I usually don't go for vanilla (although there are exceptions) and I was trying my hardest not to like this, but I can't. Wet on my skin I get the mint, the blend is still quite woodsy, almost like herb medicine. Dried down the vanilla and sassafras take over with the cedar roughing the whole scent up. Okay, I'm sold. I'll be signing up for a big bottle.

[PurpleHeather]

In the bottle: Sharply acidic, but not citrus - I guess this is the cedar. initially offputting, but I'll givve it time to mellow.

 

Wet: From far away I can almost smell chocolate. Up close, it is sharp and smoky, with a very faint greenery in the background

 

Later: A gorgeous, warming scent, sort of what I wanted Boomslang to be, but better. I can imagine this being a hot western town, warm and welcoming, but with the cedar bringing a slight edge, like a gun in the holster. A keeper - easy 8/10, possibly a 9.

[Katiedid717]

On me, this one started off smelling almost like cigarette smoke, with very very slight hints of vanilla and cedar. After about 5 minutes, it calmed down to something a bit more like smoky wood, but without much else. Now, after about 30 minutes, I can smell a tiny bit of sassafras

 

I put some on my boyfriend, and it immediately smelled like fresh cedar. During the drydown, it gained a slight touch of vanilla.

 

It smells pretty good both on it, but I think the scents are reversed. I wish it smelled on me like it does on him, and if it smelled on him like it does on me, I'd totally jump him.

 

Who know though, maybe it'll keep shifting around too. Definitely keeping this one though - I can sneak it onto him if nothing else

[enchantedblack]

In the bottle: smoky like a saloon. I'm guessing this is the balsam and cedar. Interesting.

 

Wet on skin: Still a bit smoky smelling. I like that but it took some getting used to.

 

Dry on skin: Holy moly...The smoky scent turns into vanilla and my body chemistry loves vanilla. I'm trying to resist the urge to eat myself.

 

Definitely a smellie that I'm going to buy a full 5ml of.

[cassandrakfreaq]

at first it was a very spicy woody vanilla. totally awesome. very quickly though its morphs me into a very normal vanilla flavor. like bbw warm vanilla sugar. hopefully it morphs back

[Dymphna]

I'm trying to get my huge backlog of reviews posted. This is from the end of April, so I guess I should pull this imp out again soon and give it another try.

 

In the imp: Woody, with a hint of creaminess that may be the vanilla I've heard people rave about.

 

Wet: Wood. Just wood. Lots of wood. Cedar, and something else that's dry and...woody.

 

Dry: A creamy almost-vanilla scent that reminds me of cream soda, totally overwhelmed by the smell of burnt wood. Weird. And somehow beachy. The almost-vanilla reminds me of coconut, and the burnt wood reminds me of the remains of driftwood fires. Together, they leave a definite beachy impression to my nose, which convinces me to keep this for a while and let it age. (A couple of hours later, this is a very light, creamy vanilla with just a hint of burnt wood in the background. Definitely going to let it age and see what happens.)

[LyndaM]

Tombstone started out as vanilla covered cedar, a scent I had no idea I would love so much. Then the leather starts rising...the combo of the leather and the vanilla makes me weak in the knees. I can barely smell the sassafras, it just seems to be lending a sweetness here.

 

While this should be dry, what with the sassafras and cedar, it is actually very creamy and just a bit foody. Longer lasting than most, with decent throw.

 

More, please.

[funkmoppet]

Lab frimp!

 

Sniffing this imp, its cedar so earthy I get a real dirt note. This makes me very excited! There's a sweetness there as well, and when it hits the skin, there's the vanilla.

 

I had wanted to try this one, and it's everything I'd hoped for! Drying down, it's blissful cedar and vanilla on me, neither one overpowering the other. This is the sort of cedar I love - kinda dusty, antique and not a show-pony. The vanilla is like the vanilla in Snake Oil - it's sexy. The "dirt" edge to the cedar fades quickly, but it's still there very faintly underneath.

 

Not much sassafras on me, which might have been fun, but the cedar and vanilla duet is so perfect that I don't miss it.

 

Love it, love it, love it. I'm going to want a bottle, definitely!

[gwynethr]

Oh my heavenly lord. This is just exquisite. I'd bought an imp for a friend for her birthday, and kept asking to try it, but she never remembered, so I finally just bit the bullet and got one myself. And I am just blown away by this scent. So sweet and light and woodsy and it's just... I finally found my GC signature scent. So far the only sig scents have been LEs, for me, and the closest I could come in the GC was Queen of Sheba, but this... this is even better.

 

I love the root beery, planty smell of the sassafrass and balsam, the vanilla is so perfectly creamy, and the cedar! I just love cedar, it isn't pencil shavings for me at all. I grew up in a foresting family, and the smells of cedars and hemlocks and firs is very close to my heart.

 

I'm a western girl, born and bred, and this is another one of those scents, like Western Diamondback, that hurl me back in time to playing in old-growth woods or high desert scrub, riding horses; the smells of places that haven't changed much since the early 19th century and where you can still find that open sense of the west in all its glory.

 

I can't wait to get a bottle, and see how it ages.

[catattack]

Tombstone:

On first sniff from the imp, I did not like it at all. It smelled like a dirty sawmill. But some gals were raving about it, so I pulled it out of storage and tried it.

It was a raw wood smell mixed with grey ash at first, then it started to soften and sweeten to a white sugar and wood. Now, it's a sweet powdery scent with a hint of green leaves and cedar. I never knew I'd like cedar as a scent on me. This is much better on than in the bottle.

[goth_huntress]

HOMG I love this. I can't say more than that it's wonderful. I can't wait to try it on a guy.