Third Charm

[torischroeder9]

There’s magic afoot: fiery red musk, luminous elemi, East Indian patchouli, champaca flower, cedar incense, ho wood, and hemlock accord sweetened with a peculiar sweet honey.

 

2012 version.

 

In the bottle: Red musk with something bright and faintly sweet (it's not as sharp as a green note or as tart as a citrus). At this point, I get neither the patchouli nor the honey, which is unusual for me. 

 

On my skin:

 

Wet, the patchouli immediately comes to prominence, so I needn't have worried. It's followed by something I can only describe as a bright, almost lemony floral. 

 

After a few minutes, the patchouli is still there, grounding everything, but the red musk and the honey are much more forward now. At the moment, it seems like patchouli is overshadowing any wood or hemlock that might be coming through, just as honey is beginning to overshadow other sweet notes. 

 

As it settles in, there's a portion of this scent that's red musk and honey with a goodly amount of throw (and, if it behaves anything like red musk and honey usually do on me -- individually -- it should have good wear length). Close to my skin is an added note that's probably at least partly patchouli and at least partly ho wood, but it doesn't have the throw of the other notes. 

 

This seems to be where everything settles: amping the notes I love and that work best with my skin chemistry while downplaying the others. Must be magic.

[Cali]

2012 Version. First thing i proclaimed out loud was ‘Ahh sweet patchouli!’ This is exactly what I imagine it would be from the description on in in the decant. A gritty, witchy and woody (like an expensive furniture type of laquered wood) scent. Dark images of a little cottage in the wood, enveloped by a thick fog of patchouli, champaca and incense, with a big glob of sweet dark orange honey.
On my skin it starts morphing quite quickly to something that’s a little squishier, less gritty and the red musk really comes out to play.

It dries down to a somewhat agressive red musk, veeery vaguely reminding me of Crimson peak’s ‘Crimson’. It’s gotten back to a more dry scent now, there’s still a pretty strong wood and honey behind the red musk, and the gritty, dirty, and fog-smells have all gone to the background.
This is a witch with which you don’t want to fuck around and find out!