Dead Leaves and Coffee Beans

[ladymeag]

Every leaf tells a story.

In the bottle: Do you remember the way The Seekim smelled in the bottle? That warm but dry cacao scent? This is like a mocha version of that.

 

On my skin: All coffee cherry - and by that I mean, cherries that soaked in some kind of sweet coffee, maybe. It just got sweeter and sweeter and took on a very heavy cherry scent somehow. Entirely bizarre and no leaves at all.

 

On someone else in my house: Warm, wet leaves and slightly sweet coffee. Like having sweet flavored coffee on a porch on a rainy day in the late fall.

 

Too sweet for my tastes, worked out well for my testing partner!

[VetchVesper]

Mmmmmm.... this is nice. The lab's coffee note always smells a bit sweetened to me, like sugared coffee, with a touch of cream. This is no exception. It's not quite as dark and earthy as I was expecting, but it's not super sweet either. The coffee works surprisingly well with the dead leaves note, which I am loving this year. If you like their coffee notes, this is a nice departure from the typical foodie mix-ins. I don't need a bottle, but I'll be hanging on to my imp!

[zankoku_zen]

Coffee, sugared cream, and dead leaves. To me, this is a weird mix, and there's something that ends up almost soapy on me and I think its the sugared cream. Medium throw, and wear length.

[Lucchesa]

This is really nice in the vial, dead leaves with warm sweet coffee. My skin kind of ate it up, so I'm going to rest my decant a couple weeks and try again because I really want this to work on me!

[Dark Alice]

Dead leaves and watered down coffee beans. Again..stomach turning. fail 2.

[kscha2017]

I have tried this numerous times now and I keep getting a deep dark mocha vibe from it, like chocolate-covered coffee beans mixed with dead leaves. I like it, but I wasn't expecting that, and I wonder how it will age.

[Juushika]

In vial: Coffee overtone, dead leaf undertone.

 

On me: A morpher. I've been getting a weird wet note from some of the dead leaf blends which is a sharp, dirty cousin to tobacco. It's gross, and in full force here. Things settle out in drydown, becoming a rich, roasted coffee/leaves combo, deep and warm and red. It reminds me of The Ta-Ta (boiled leather, carnation blossom, coffee absolute, and tobacco), but without the spicy carnation to add texture and bite to the dirty, rich vegetal coffee; this is samey in tone, but I like its warmth. After an hour or two the scent leans sweeter, dead leaves losing the battle to creamy, sugared coffee. I'm not convinced I like it--the creamy/sweet/vegetal combo is a little off-putting. This final stage is long-lasting but has minimal throw.

 

Verdict: If it were just that roasted coffee/dead leaves combo, I'd enjoy this--but the other stages are a little icky. I'm curious if this will come into itself with aging, so I'll hold onto my imp.

 

[clockworkcrypt]

I get a bit of that peppery note with dead leaves, so this turned into a sweet coffee and green pepper combo.... not quite as bad as it might sound. Anyhow it ended up going to an oddly nice cologne route on me. Not much my usual taste, but my friend loved it, in their words "I smell like a cool uncle". So not for me, but for the right person... perfection!

[puellacaerulea]

In the decant, it's a sweetened coffee layered over dead leaves. It's the same kind of sweet coffee note from blends like Europa and Guatemalan Volcanic Coffee Bean SN. There's something about sweeter notes paired with the Lab's dead leaf accord that gives the DL note this rich, sweetly earthy quality -- it's recognizably dead leaves, but it's warmer, richer, and more complex, without the cologne-y or greenness you can get with the DL accord. So: warm, rich, subtly sweet coffee and earthy dead leaves. It works! I've had the decant since it was originally available and I'm not sure why I passed on a full bottle, apart from already having a couple of coffee-based scents I liked.

[Honey]

This blend goes on my skin as a strong cologne, very masculine.

It’s also very balsamic, warm, earthy and rich.

I can almost detect a spiciness that reminds me of gingerbread with actual ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper.

The “coffee bean” in this one reads more like cacao to me: Rich, grounded, luxurious and only a tad bit sweet.

This is not a coffee blend, but it reminds me of a very stylish coffeehouse that serves cinnamon buns, hot chocolate and is filled with an autumn spices air refresher.

[fairybites]

I got the coffee beans when first applied, but as it dried down this turned into pretty much a dead leaves single note. It's smoky and woodsy with the faintest traces of piping hot black coffee. Very fall and dark, this is not a sugary sweet coffee at all. Definitely wish I got the cacao that other reviewers have mentioned, but nope it's all dead, burning leaves next to the coffee shop.

 

Not too bad, I am a little picky with what Dead Leaves scents I like and I'm glad this is not bad. Definitely wanted more coffee bean, and maybe some sweetness, but I do enjoy it and this would make a great oil to layer with.