Since There’s No Help

[zankoku_zen]

A cold scent, a severing: silver-frosted white musk, juniper, and cade with bitter carrot seed, lemon peel, davana, and white tea.

[Casablanca]

Cold white juniper tea, slightly astringent and powdery. 

 

A sweet and sugary lemon peers out in drydown. Somehow it's reading more as sugary lemon drops to me than lemon peel.

 

I get no impression of frost or snow, but the scent is cold and white, and then cool, bright yellow when the lemon appears. This is a blend for late winter/early spring.

[surlygurl]

This scent is the biggest morpher of the bunch so far. 

 

Fresh on, it's lemon peel, woods, and white tea. Nothing spectacular. Something between spa-like and cleaning product. Mmmkay.

 

Then it warms up/ dries down and the carrot seed sashays out like a wealthy model vacationing on her lover's yacht in the French riviera (carrot seed always does this on me lol). Woody lemon peel wants to be her friend but is kept at a distance until drydown. Davana - which isn't a note I'm familiar with, but is used in high end perfume - and the white musk come out in their finery to mingle with the lemony riff-raff, and they wind up becoming best of friends. 

 

At extreme drydown, this is quite soft and subtle. Lemon peel carries the whole thing but, at this point, it reads as "freshness with a bite". 

Edited May 1, 2021 by surlygurl
Better description

[zankoku_zen]

Juniper, cade, and white musk. This one is a very gender neutral fresh scent. Good throw and wear length.

[puellacaerulea]

In the decant, it's a chilly, bright, fresh scent, but with a distinctly bitter undertone from the juniper and cade. Once applied, it has a brief period where the bitterness recedes and I get just the fresh notes...but then something goes wrong and it becomes both astringent and powdery. Not sure which of the notes went off my skin here, but it stays in that sharp powdery place the rest of the wear time. I had high hopes for this one, but it seems to be a miss with my skin chemistry.

[SophieCedar]

I mean... Is there something wrong with me that I find this refreshing and uplifting? Or does it make me gother than goth? Please say its the latter.

 

I love it. Herbal sweet juniper white tea with lemon, amplified by white musk. The davana is brilliantly white as usual. What is WITH davana anyways? I mean is it a god/dess in perfume form?!

 

Perfect summer refresher. Grab a bottle for sweltering heat days or the winter-bummers.

[Threemoons]

I love this, but it doesn't last long on me. In the bottle: Bracing lemon peel and bitter herbs.  On, wet:  More bitter lemon and fresh bitter herbs.  Getting a hint of juniper also.  Drydown:  Alas, fades very fast, but while it's there I get a really clean soapy spa smell, like something you would want in a wet sauna.  Needs a few re-applications during the day.

[wordortwo]

I tried this one shortly after I received a decant and was simply bored by it. A month of rest has improved it, made it smoother and crisper -- the scent of a clean break.

 

Wet on the skin, this is clean, bright, and clear lemon peel and green-grassy juniper. The lemon fades fast and is replaced by a tannic bitterness and something almost like a wisp of smoke, all of which I love. Something else, that I can only seem to describe as "elegant," steps in alongside the juniper and takes this fragrance out of air freshener territory.

 

I agree with the spa and sauna references above. It is a bit like walking into a sauna from the cold, with some bracing essential oils wafting in behind you. Maybe, like SophieCedar, I am just extra goth, but I find this uplifting and relaxing.

 

Unfortunately, this behaves on me the way many tea fragrances do. The dry down is faint, hollow, and flat (I know that description is not terribly helpful, but that's the best way I can describe it). I should say my S.O. actually said this phase smelled nice - I think he understood it as the scent of light tea, which I do not.

 

Though I find the first 30-60 minutes spent with this fragrance to be interesting and fresh, the dry down disappoints me.

 

Update: Ultimately, I found this unwearable, even after resting. Too flat, too scented candle-ish.

 

Update 2: Months later, I lost and found this decant. I find it quite nice, more like my initial impression of a lemony spa scent. 

Edited January 16, 2022 by wordortwo