zankoku_zen

"A new year’s blessing! Peony, China’s national flower, with bamboo for flexibility, plum blossom for perseverance, courage, and hope, tangerine for wealth, lychee for strong family relationships and peace in the home, orange for happiness, pine resin for constancy, golden kumquat and quince for prosperity, narcissus and King mandarin for good fortune, coconut for longevity, and candied melon for good health, with a splash of blazing red of dragon’s blood… to help you scare away the rampaging Nian."

A solemn paean to the dreams, destruction, despair, and delusions of the Gold Rush: sarsaparilla, cedar, and tobacco glittering with a Fool’s Gold bounty of brittle amber and mineralic aldehydes.

A spray of rose-tinted blades: rose otto, razor-sharp white musk, white sandalwood, sugar musk, red currant, vanilla, green cognac, and guava.

Wild plum, sweet incense smoke, white ginger, red sandalwood, labdanum, white tea, and pink pepper.

Golden peach and black oudh with lychee, auburn musk, and Italian bergamot. Peach, lychee, and musky oudh. I get a fair bit of both lychee and bergamot on wet, but it dries to a peachy-musky type of blend. I am really intrigued by the auburn musk in this blend and hope that it makes an appearance in others, so I can get a better sense of it. Fruity, peachy, and definitely with whiff of lychee in it. Medium throw, medium wear length on me.

Dismissively forbidding: white musk, honeyed orange blossom, and orris slammed by black pepper, tobacco absolute, blue musk, and cedar. No Pls, you win as the strangest of the Dragon blends this year. I get mainly blue musk, cedar, whiffs of both tobacco and black pepper with just a hint of orange blossom. To me, you smell like a perfume pencil. Its like if you dreamed that you had this pencil, and instead of writing, it just squirted perfume. Yup. That's how I envision this working out. Great throw and wear length though, so A+ for performance, and A++ for weirdness.

No additional scent description.

No additional scent description.

A fertile scent, generous, life-affirming, and swelling with a sense of triumph, warmth, and abundance: sweet milk, golden honey, fig fruit, cedarwood, olive leaf, and dates.

Goldfish-orange overripe mangoes, blackcurrant, strawberry pulp, red benzoin, honey, streaks of white ginger, a splatter of star anise, an erratic jolt of eucalyptus and mint, and a dribble of absinthe.

Dusk-purple jasmine and wild plum, orris absolute, honeysuckle, red mandarin, and benzoin.

Pumpkin pulp, pumpkin seeds, and a little bit of hay all smashed into a pile of funnel cake

A paean to the emergence of wisdom, to the wondrous wisdom that comes with passion: skin musk and chilled apple wine dappled with a scattering of discarded pale petals.

Marshmallow, strawberry pulp, and cream.

No additional scent description.

Candied ginger, orange blossom, benzoin, and clove.

Frankincense, galangal, styrax, cinnamon bark, and onycha accord.

Polished oak and mahogany, crumbling pages and cracked leather, all thick with dust and strewn with sandalwood cobwebs.

Skin musk and soap, smoldering with ash and exorcism incense.

After much looking via CTRL+F, I couldn't come up with a topic. SFM3 smells like a sophisticated, manly cologne. I get hints of a fougere, bergamot, and some musk. Urban, sophisticated, dark.

Sweet myrrh, Oman frankincense, gum acacia, and white sandalwood.

Coconut milk, lavender, lilac. This is a soft, cuddly coconut and flowers. Medium throw and wear length.

Subtle chocolate, whiff of raspberry, and glamour. Honestly, this also has a foodie gourmand note beyond the chocolate that makes you think Magnolia Bakery and Carrie Bradshaw. This is the perfume equivalent of Carrie Bradshaw in a fabulous outfit, with great shoes, eating a frosted chocolate cupcake in New York. It's an absolute fantasy. It's pink but not overly so, its chocolate but not overly sweet, its girlie but grown up, and its expensive. It's the fantasy that you too can have it all, while also being able to afford an apartment in NYC. It's absolute nonsense but you can't help wish it were real. Medium throw and wear length.

Great Birnam Wood didn’t just come to high Dunsinane Hill – it marched all over Los Angeles: apple wood, apple buds, squished apples, and apple blossom.

Sweet oakmoss, vetiver, and white sandalwood.