Shollin

First sniff: Hee hee! F5 is indeed quite refreshing. It’s along the same lines as Shanghai or Embalming Fluid, that soft citrus-tea combination, with a little extra zing of mint.

 

Wearing: Limey minty tea-y goodness!

First sniff: Dragon’s blood and heavy sweet florals.

Wearing: It’s quite floral with the heavy red of dragon’s blood behind it.

But if you want to find reviews for those short names, check out this list. The scent description will be in the first post of every page.

 

Also, I think the Lab site's search engine hasn't been updated in a while, so if you're looking for a recently released scent, it may not be there. But despite a few limitations, it's a very handy tool!

First sniff: Snickerdoodle cake. Does that exist? It’s crazy buttery, very spicy and completely cakey.

 

Wearing: Superyummy. I really like this one.

First sniff: Dark, dark, dark. I can’t tell if it’s a resinous dark or a woody dark, but it’s seriously dark. (Also, I’ve been quite lucky not to get any decapitated imps so far – this is the first one I’ve run across [ordered in August, yes I’m really that far behind on reviews].)

 

Wearing: Dark and warm and a little bit carnationy-spicy. Nice, but not a huge standout.

I fell madly in love with this one at a Seattle meet’n’sniff, and Thursdae graciously allowed it to come home with me. After the meet I was covered in probably seven or eight different scents, and this is the one I kept going back to (not to mention my guy’s nose was buried in the crook of my elbow where I applied it for quite some time).

 

First revisited sniff: Oh so resiny, warm woods and incense and it totally smells like something that would go very very wrong on my skin. Looking back at the notes, it strikes me as a much darker, heavier Morocco.

 

Wearing: Darker Morocco seems to be pretty accurate. It’s the same sort of muskywoodyspicy warmth, but there’s more oomph to it.

First sniff: Decidedly unusual. I’m getting tropical fruits and chili powder.

 

Wearing: It’s a big ol’ burst of melon and something darker, liberally sprinkled with chili powder. Strange, but good!

First sniff: One great big heaping helping of seriously juicy fruit and candied ginger. It’s sweet, but with a ravenous bite.

 

Wearing: This is so incredibly juicyfruitysweet! And the ginger is perfect. I madly adore ginger scents (the original Siren is still one of my absolute favorites) and the candied version is a very happy shift from the root-scent of Siren and the spice-scent that’s shown up in lots of other places. Damn, this is good.

First sniff: Oh, this is just funny. It’s lemon, and linens, and powderfluff, and completely innocuous. One might think this just an ordinary rrrabbit and overlook the big nasty pointy teeth.

 

Wearing: And there it is… glorious shimmering white musk that turns this into SO much more than a powdery lemon scent. I’ve gone from laughing to swooning – this is gorgeous.

DCXCI (691)

 

First sniff: CAKE. My Chaos Theory smells like cake! Dense yellow cake with mint frosting. And vanilla ice cream. This is the CT3 I was meant to have. Hooray for single-bottle karma!

 

Wearing: The mint is predominant, but there’s a whole lot of vanilla goodness going on behind it. It’s not super-buttery or super-sweet, but there’s definitely something cakey in here, which gets more honeyish as it dries. This is fan-bloody-tastic.

First sniff: Blue fruit? Dark bluish-purple fruit. Very round and juicy and blue. It’s very strange for me to associate a fruity scent with blue – blue scents are almost always aquatic.

 

Wearing: Blue-fruity with a background of incense. Like a farmers market in church. It’s a weird combination, but it works really well.

First sniff: Oh, WOW. I don’t know if I can pull this off, but it’s pheomenally beautiful. A dark, earthy beautiful. It’s musky and deep and a little bit fruity and hippielicious. [stalkerfangirl]Is it creepy that I can totally imagine Beth’s hair smelling like this?[/stalkerfangirl]

 

Wearing: This scent has got some serious presence going on. It seems subtle at first, but I kept getting wafts of it all day. Definitely one to apply with restraint. Over the course of the evening, a fantastic soft cedar scent showed up. I generally can’t wear cedar, but this was so soft and warm, no rough edges at all. Simply wonderful.

First sniff: It smells like a cocktail. Is it supposed to smell like a cocktail? *checks* Nope, I guess not. But it does… there’s nothing specifically boozey, but all the different citrus notes make me think of a vodka tonic, a bubbly vodka tonic with lots of lime.

 

Wearing: All kinds of sophisticated citrus. This isn’t a bubbly bouncey scent; it’s elegant and a little snooty.

First sniff: There’s so much going on in this scent, but the only thing I can really pin down is clean crisp apples, with a fruity richness underneath.

Wearing: It’s just gorgeous and rich and fruity and so, so deep. Velvety rich fruit. I love this.

First sniff: And there was light! This is another gorgeous golden shiny happy scent. It’s less warm than Litha, and quite a bit fresher.

 

Wearing: Oh, this reminds me of Snow Angel. It’s the same sort of fantastic sparkly sweet lemon, with an added swish of fresh sunny flowers.

First sniff: Slinky sexy man. (And no, I’m not talking specifically about Brian. ) There’s a weird disconnect going on with my nose and this scent. The leather is really subtle – my usual experience with leather scents is that they come screaming LEATHER out of the bottle – but even though it doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the blend, it’s still the only note I can make out.

 

Wearing: It’s decidedly masculine, and as always the leather amps on my skin. There are some manly blends I can get away with, but sadly, Doc isn’t one of them.

First sniff: So. Very. Chocolate. Super-creamy smooth rich chocolate. Vosges chocolate, which would be eye-rollingly swoonworthy even if it didn’t have neat stuff in it.

 

Wearing: This lady morphed in all kinds of strange directions. Sniffing it directly, it stayed very firmly in the creamy rich chocolate category, but I kept getting wafts of vanilla (specifically, BBW’s Warm Vanilla Sugar scent!) and berries. Quite the weirdness. But every variation on the theme was truly droolworthy, I must say!

First sniff: Warm, golden-y sweet without being too cloying. Yum.

 

Wearing: It’s almost a honey scent on my skin, straight sweetness without going smoky (as Lab honey sometimes does). Of course there’s no honey in it at all. Hee! But overall it’s gorgeous, despite my fears of bubblegum.

First sniff: Quiet, gentle, pale and watery and a hint of citrus.

 

Wearing: It’s a beautifully clean, soft scent with a tinge of sadness. The artwork shows Orpheus charming the beasts; I’m trying to remember the myth, and whether the beast-charming happened before or after he lost Eurydice in the underworld, because this scent speaks quietly of loss. The white musk blossoms as it dries. Just lovely.

First sniff: Allow me to wax poetic (or at least musical) for a moment:

This scent is the olfactory incarnation of that song. It’s incredibly golden. Smooth, sweet, flowing and enveloping.

 

Wearing: Liquid summer. Warm sunshine and a delicious breeze that keeps it from being too hot.

First sniff: I haven’t tried the “top” three chakras yet, but starting with the Heart, they seem to be getting progressively darker. Like slightly deeper versions of the same shade of color. They’re all resiny-sweet, but get richer and more profound as they travel down the body. Swadhisthana is glorious. Almost all the sweetness is gone, and it’s a wonderful round rich resin.

 

Wearing: Round fruity resin, warm wood, and as it dries, a gorgeous deep musky base. It’s very red and slighty sweet and wonderful.

First sniff: This one breaks the sequence of the previous three. Anahata, Manipura and Swadhisthana seem to be progressively darker versions of the same resiny-sweet scent; Muladhara, while still resinous, is completely different. No hint of sweetness – it’s got a bite to it, and it’s much more like wood than the others.

 

Wearing: Vetiver and mint? It’s very woody-bitey-sharp and cold. Not liking. It’s going weirdly peppery as it dries.

First sniff: A bit darker than the Heart. Still resiny-sweet, but more serious.

 

Wearing: This has quite a bit of spice to it. Alas, as it dried it turned to straight swampy vetiver.

First sniff: Wonderfully sweet resins, just this side of sticky.

 

Wearing: I swiped this on in the usual places and added a dab just over my heart. Seemed appropriate. On my skin, it’s… fantastic. Stunning. Resins sometimes don’t work on me, but whatever is in this, I love it. It’s light and sweet, but at the same time, it’s solid and grounded. Like white flowers blooming in the sunlit topmost branches of a very old tree.

First sniff: Like biting into the juiciest piece of honeydew imaginable.

 

Wearing: Pretty much straight-up honeydew. It’s brilliant green, very wet, and incredibly melony. And it vanishes within a couple of hours. Dang.