Constipated Elephant Alchemy Lab

[LiberAmoris]

Because nothing says “scrappy indie perfumer with authority-figure issues” like a pachyderm who’s too P.O.’ed to poop.

 

Ambergris accord, Mysore sandalwood, ambrette seed, cypress, nagarmotha, and grey agarwood.

 

God, I really hope someone asks me what I'm wearing when I have this on some time.

 

Constipated Elephant Alchemy Lab is a nuzzle-y soft heap of pale greys and browns, earthy and woodsy and with a vocal hit of ambergris that always smells to me salty, caramelized, and resiny. Wet, I get a terpenic shot of the cypress and nagarmotha, outdoorsy and gently bracing. It quickly shifts to whispering woods, with the agarwood and sandalwood both detectible and the ambrette seed adding something both slightly nutty and gourmand but also amberishly, resiny smooth. The ambergris reinforces this smoothness, filling in the wood's grain with a natural sweetness and a touch of the sea. It's beautiful. 

[annemathematics]

First impressions from a bottle that landed this morning:

 

 

Gentle soft unvarnished pale woods. Leans ever-so-slightly powdery in the way that sandalwood can go velvet-fuzzy.  Light sillage. Agree very much with the "nuzzle-y" descriptor used above.  

 

Occasionally I get wafts of the ambergris with the cypress and it reminds me of standing on the California coast. Lovely!

 

eta two weeks later, this now feels like a classic perfume, soft and elegant with no hard edges.  I really like it!

Edited December 30, 2018 by annemathematics

[zankoku_zen]

Fuzzy grey woodsy-earthy - I get swirls of sandalwood, nagarmotha, cypress, ambergris. In general, much more pleasant than I expected. Sophisticated. But yes, grey. It's a very grey blend. Medium throw and wear length.

[Lucchesa]

Soft and smooth, Constipated Elephant has no sharp edges on me, not even wet.  I don't really have a handle on nagarmotha yet, but the cypress is gentle.  There's something much more elegant about this blend than I expected from the name or the description; also, I guess I expected a kind of poopy oudh would go with the concept, and that is not the case here.  I don't get much throw (which is normal for me), and it's pretty faint after not quite 4 hours, but I have a testable empty so I didn't exactly slather.  I'm so glad I got to try this!

[Juushika]

In vial: Cypress, thin and clean and airy.

 

On me: Warm, salty ambergris with a touch of woody, terpenic cypress, drying down to a warm, slightly salted ambergris over an amber-like base. This functions a lot like Haunted (soft golden amber darkened with a touch of murky black musk) on my skin: a warm, velvety base, touched with a bright note (in Haunted it's lemony; here, it's woody/pine), deepened with an indistinct but pleasant incense/perfumyness; very slightly sweet; multifaceted in gentle, unconfrontational ways. Constipated Elephant's salty ambergris makes it unique, and it's a khaki to Haunted's gold tones--a warm gray. Low throw, ~5 hour wear length.

 

Verdict: Interesting! This really suits the accompanying image, particularly in colorway. This is pleasant, although the salt doesn't always vibe with the skin-level amber-resin vibe. But it feels too much like Haunted, despite the differing notes. I don't need a bottle.

[tinyvulture]

I'm getting a strong ambergris...like salt crystals dipped in honey, and something dark and wet with sharp corners. Like wet rocks when the tide's gone out but leaves that wet, salty, masrhy feel. Not aquatic but the scent of the rocks. All that is my rambling way of describing ambergris, ha. So pretty much a single note ambergris on me.