The Decrepit House

[dreamingjune]

An architectural doppelganger reflecting a ruined soul: dilapidated planks of mahogany and cypress wood perched feebly on a grim foundation of long-dead leaves, black musk, patchouli, galbanum, tobacco absolute, fragonia, and oakmoss.

This is such a hard one to pin down.

In bottle: Like a bottle of wine where all of the wine evaporated and then someone used it for cigarette and incense ash?

Wet: I like this. There is something bright and almost floral along with a sweet wood and subtle smokeyness.

Dry: Very well blended. The black musk is there keeping things dark and powdery, but in a good way. There are definitely sweet woods and smoke. I am picking up on some floral, but it reminds me more of something like champaca. The Decrepit House is not a floral blend necessarily, however there is definitely something feminine about this.

Overall: It looses some of the initial brightness but remains a unique, sweet wood and incense blend. I would put this in the family of scents like Dancing Koi and Al Azif, only more feminine.

[pinkgyrl]

Oak moss is the first note that I get when I apply this - it's really intense. As it settles in, I definitey get a dusty smell - but not in a bad way. I can't pick out a lot of the notes; it's very well-blended - I mostly get sweet, oak moss, a dusty feeling, and a waft of an incense smell.

 

It's that abandoned house that you discover and badly want to refurbish. The greenery and woods have grown to disarray and the inside is slighty dusty and filled with old wooden furniture and memories. It's a lot sweeter than anticipated - and I love the counterbalance of the heady oakmoss with the sweet greenery. This is very much a "create an image" in your mind scent. Lovely.

Edited May 9, 2011 by GirlinDenial

[calivianya]

I received a tester of this from a wonderful forumite.

 

This is much sweeter than I imagined from the notes. I am getting a very sweet, dusty smelling wood, with something a little off in the background. I'd label the off smell as the black musk, because sometimes that can have a faint pee tinge on my skin. I'm not exactly sure where the faint sweetness is coming from - I don't know what fragonia smells like, so maybe that's the culprit. Either way, I think this might be a favorite if the black musk wasn't turning sour on my skin.

[porcelina]

damp wood, dead leaves and resin. there's a lot of black musk, too, which can sometimes get kind of powdery but stays strong alongside the woodsy notes.

 

it's sharp, not at all sweet, and sort of wild. it reminds me of another scent i own that i can't quite pinpoint. i like it, but i don't know if i need it in my collection. hm.

[Poenari]

I'm finally reviewing this after having my decant for a year, although I tried it initially. I am re-trying some of last year's Halloween scents in anticipation of what's to come for this year, so this review is for the scent after my decant has been aged for a year.

 

This is a sweet woody scent. I was surprised at the sweetness in it, but not disappointed. The woodsy notes definitely remind me of the scent of the hardwood floors in the 85 year old house that I used to live in. The black musk gives it a powdery dry-down. It's not extremely long-lasting and doesn't amp up any particular note on my skin. Nice enough, but one decant will suffice.

[theredkilt]

This is a dusty woody scent. I get the sweet black musk dustiness, the tobacco sweetness and the mahogany base. To me it reads as a dryer and dustier version of The Black Rider.

[t_for_tau]

This one took me on a weird and interesting journey...

 

In the imp:

every "masculine" bpal I tried around '10/'11, which is to say, Generic Straight Man. Well, I'm going to give it a try...

 

Wet:

yep, sharp headachey DudeTM, with something florals trying to tiptoe out so that it smells like the point the men's & women's section of the perfume aisle collides; I agree with the person upthread who compared it to champaca. If the fragonia is flowers rather than leaves, it could be that? I'm not getting the tobacco at all, which is a shame, because it might smooth this out a lot. Right now the mahogany and oakmoss are doing the olfactory equivalent of manspreading all over the scent, and I'm really hoping they'll back off.

 

Bit later:

Okay, now it's beginning to warm up and smooth out a bit. There's a faint medicinal back note which could be the resins from the galbanum; there's a slight resemblance, too, to Loup Garou, with cypress & maybe fragonia (if leaves) standing in for cypress and eucalyptus. It really needs something slightly sweeter to pull it together - not as much so as something like Golden Priapus, which'd take it too far away from the inspiration, but something to mix it together. It's better than it was, but I'm really hoping it's going to pull it out and get a bit further from "bunch of teenage boys on public transport".

 

Bit later:

Oh, here comes the tobacco! Thank god. It's a sweet tobacco, a bit like in Herr Dross, so it's doing what I hoped for above. I waved it under my partner's nose (also a perfume person) & got a guess of sandalwood and honey, so you can tell how far it's come from the start.

 

Drydown:

Whoa, now the tobacco is really storming out front: old pipe tobacco and dark heavy wood furniture complete with polish, with a slight dustiness. Less a Decrepit house than just an old one; a small stately home whose last, pipe-smoking owner has passed away, and the polished mahogany furniture has been dust-sheeted and the whole thing is waiting empty before it's put up for auction/bought by an American/turned into flats I'm amazed by how nice this is now! Rich, faintly sweet, faintly spicy, and sad.

[lilacea]

Sweet polished mahogany, how I love it so. There’s little decrepit about this, autumnal leaves and softly warming patchouli and oakmoss. None of the dankness I was expecting, but I love it so. Comforting, swirling, with a delightful sweetness to it.