tdgnika

In the bottle, this is a wonderful warm, spicy cardamom smell.

Wet on the skin, it's similar to what it was in the bottle, but a little chemically.

As its drying, the amber musk comes on and mixes wonderfully with the other smells. I'm still getting the cardamom and cinnamon, a bit of the cherry and the tea.

This would be a great 'every-day' scent, especially for autumn. As someone else mentions, it does stay very close to the skin. Or I'm just sucking all the excess smell into my nose every two minutes when I huff my wrists.

Why, oh why, must I love a limited edition!? Damn!

I really wanted to like this, just so I could tell people I was wearing Tavern of Hell. I mean, what a cool name. Alas...

In the bottle, it had a chemical flower smell to me.

Wet on the skin, it was incredibly floral. What I'm assuming was the gardenia was incredibly overwhelming. Broadcasting, amping, you name it, it was doing it. On dry down, that horrible sick/sweet amping continued, so I actually washed this one off. And I could still smell it.

In the bottle, orange, orange, orange!!

Wet on the skin, I get the orange with a bit of cloves. This really seems to broadcast/amp orange for me. It's a nice orange, not chemically like orange-cleaners, but it's still broadcasting, and I'm not liking that.

After about an hour of screaming orange, I could smell the patchouli and the clove and then it faded to just patchouli. I don't really like patchouli by itself, so I'm afraid this one is a no.

In the bottle, my first association is with the incense. There is a store, for any familiar with southern Wisconsin, off State Street in Madison, called Mimosa. It has new owners and a new location, but when it was next to the knitting store, down from Fontana, it smelled like this. This thick, lovely smell of a place that burns incense non-stop. I loved going in that store for that smell alone.

Wet on the arm, I could still smell that permeating incense, but then the leather and the thick sweetness of the musk started to come out.

As it dried, it mellowed into a nice blend of the incense, leather with a touch of the musk. Sadly it seems to fade very quickly - only lasting at the intensity I would like for about two hours. This is a wonderfully masculine scent, which I think still suits me (a woman, not a man) just fine.

I shall have to try putting more on the next time. Or maybe my nose just got used to it quickly.

In the bottle and wet on skin, I can smell the cardamom and the clove almost exclusively and quite strongly, which is lovely.

For the first hour that it's drying, if I smell my wrist directly, I still get cardamom and clove. In the air, I catch strong whiffs of the patchouli and I can 'taste' the pepper in my throat. Not a great sensation, but not awful either.

After the first hour, only the smell of patchouli is left, very faintly, and it faded to nothing after a couple hours. Patchouli is not a favorite note, so I wasn't sorry to see it go.

I did, however, put this in my need-to-smell-when-hormone-levels-change pile to try again in a week or so.

In the bottle and wet on the skin: I could smell the milk and honey and a bit of the ginger and pepper. An interesting, many-layered smell, but not very appealing.

On dry down: YUCK. Something has overpowered the layered smell - I think maybe the linen notes? - this smells very chemically and fake to me. Like something that old ladies wear for years and years and don't even know if they like anymore.

I may try this again in a few weeks to see if the smell changes, but right now - this is why I don't walk by perfume counters in department stores.

In the bottle and wet on the wrist: smelled very mellow and dry. I smelled mostly sandalwood, I think.

On drying: all that was left was the cedar smell, a very dry smell. This had excellent staying power on me, but I'm not sure that the solitary cedar is something I want to smell like on an ordinary day. I could see this being a good oil for a ritual setting or feeling like I need to 'cleanse' my emotions, since I think I smelled like a cedar chest.

Probably will wear only for certain occasions.

In the bottle: smells thick, sort of a spoiled or fermented sweetness (newbie alert - I'm not great at picking out individual notes yet)

Wet: The spoiled smell intensified when it first went on, and I was not liking it at all.

Dried: LOVE. The fermented smell seemed to go away and the (musk? amber?) rich notes came through. I imagine that this is how Egyptian temples smelled. I feel like an archaeologist when I wear it.

Lasted all day.