Invidiana

This is golden honey swirled with the thick dark cola syrup of labdanum, the last honeyed rays of sunlight succumbing to dusk, making me wish dark honey cola actually existed. It stays pretty linear and never gets to the point of being cloying. I can't wait to see how it's going to age.

This is like the olfactory version of a movie scene where fire burns through a piece of paper only to reveal the next scene. It starts out as a conflagration of burning leaves that gradually crumble in the fire and fall to ashes around a single ripe pomegranate, red and juicy and slightly bitter, waiting for Persephone to return to the underworld and taste its forbidden seeds again. Leaves still smolder around the fruit. It is the myth come to life.

This is mostly fruit on me, with a whisper of patchouli in the background. For some reason my skin amps the sweetness of the fruit so much that I can barely detect the patchouli after it dries down. It turns to pure cloying sugar until the patchouli finally emerges much later. Eel King, you have betrayed me.

I don't know what shenanigans eleven Kabuki actors might have been up to, but they evidently inspired a gorgeous toasted almond cream with a hit of bourbon and the honeyed undertones of mimosa. Mimosa flowers are supposed to smell like honey and almond (I looked it up since I've never actually smelled one in person). As it dries down, a certain warmth emerges from the subtle hay and sandalwood lying underneath. This is as beautiful as the Edo-era art it reflects.

Ethereal and misty, this evokes the painting that inspired it, with a veil of sheer vanilla over an enchanted forest of soft woods and mosses with snakelike tendrils of incense that hint at a deeper magic. It is innocence tiptoeing into the depths of ancient Earth. While this is not a Snake Oil scent per se, there are some aspects of it that do echo Snake Oil, particularly in the vanilla and incense. I imagine this that a dryad or any other woodland fairy wandering through the trees would leave a trail of it behind her.  

Frosted porcelain, spun-sugar snow. This evokes the sweet berry blush on a doll’s cheeks in winter, as if she had been sitting by a cold fireplace but came to life, tiptoeing outside. Petals of withered carnations flutter from her vaguely floral-scented dress along with just the faintest dusting of chimney soot. While this smells nothing like Pediophobia, there is a feeling, a theme, that clings to both of them like a phantom.

Warm, roasted and honeyed, with a dusting of spice, this was made for the chill of autumn and winter nights. The spices here are soft and add warmth to the chestnut and golden honey without overpowering them. It reminds me of going to our town's holiday festival when I was a kid, warming my hands near the roasted chestnut and, and getting them stuck to the roof of my mouth when I ate them. For me, it's a bottled memory. 

Dead leaves are the first thing an imaginary October wind blows out of the bottle, as with all of the Dead Leaves scents, and as much as I love this note alone, as it dries down it gets seriously elevated by roasted marshmallows, down to their crusts of burnt sugar, vanilla cream with the warmth of clove, and a subtle splash of whiskey. The outdoor and indoor elements of autumn are swirled together in an ultimate merging of atmospheric and gourmand notes. 

I lost myself in a fog of heady white florals that took me to the vampire-infested streets of Anne Rice's mythical version of New Orleans. This is not an indolic scent, but lush and humid, an enchanted haze that lingers for hours and hours. Something about Midnight Fog reminds me of my dearly departed Midnight (which I will hoard forever). While they don't seem to have any notes in common, the eerily beautiful perfume of white florals blooming in the middle of the night are a share element of their genealogy. 

Swirled with caramel and golden amber, this is a comforting mug of coffee for the bitter cold. The coffee is more of a backdrop for the caramel and amber syrups that never verge into cloyingly sweet territory. There is also something off an incense undertone to the amber, giving it a slightly mystical feel. This makes me smell like a really expensive latte that lingers far longer than a venti whatever from Starbucks. 

This is like holding a steaming cup of coffee, infused with cardamom and vanilla, up to your nose and deeply inhaling, with tendrils of incense in the background along with a breath of pine from outdoors. Coffee and pine only sound discordant. They actually merge very well, possibly because they are bridged by the myrrh smoke. In the face of all the snow that has been coming down over here lately, this is so enveloping and comforting. 

This takes me right to a library where I'm warming my cold hands, breathing in the warm and bitter steam of espresso, poring over the pages of an old book whose cracked bindings and yellowed pages smell like centuries of history. The vanillic undertone of the paper adds another aromatic element to the espresso. I could get lost in those pages for hours. Of course libraries don't allow coffee, but bear with my fantasy here. 

This is an ethereal veil of snow and white musk, starting out with a blast of bitter cold that gradually softens into a white blanket whose chill clings close to the skin. Everything is white, white and more white. Chionophobia is not so much snow itself as it is the phantom of snow that haunts those who fear it. 

Pages yellowed with age are barely legible in the amber glow of beeswax candles, and dusty leather bindings are covered in the wax of a thousand more candles that have long since burned out. There is a faint smell of ink that touched paper centuries before. Among stacks and stacks that never end, tendrils of incense linger in air that is musty with memory. If someone bottled the lost Library of Alexandria, this would be it.

Besides the label having an embarrassingly creepy resemblance to a sweatshirt I wore as a kid in the '90s, this is a delightful answer to howling winds and driveways slick with ice. Snow bubbles over with champagne and lands softly on musks that cling close to the skin and are flushed like cheeks that were just out in the biting cold. There is just a whisper of lavender, the last glimpse of winter twilight before darkness freezes everything over. 

Wearing this, I feel like a squirrel holed up in a cozy oak tree hollow next to my stash of hazelnuts, which I've somehow managed to toast to perfection in my fireplace without burning the entire tree down, and now I'm sitting in front of that fireplace sipping butterscotch rum to warm me down to my frosty toes. 

This is just like getting the sticky amber sap of a Christmas tree between the seeds of pinecones and on your fingers, and as much as you try to get the sticky stuff off, you secretly don't want it to come off because it smells so good. That was me was a kid and now I'm wearing it as perfume. 

The is all buttery warm spiced pumpkin bread, the kind that fills the house with that unmistakable autumn aroma just like Pumpkin Zucchini Bread and last year's Pumpkin Nut Bread atmo, dredged in chocolate sprinkles that are exactly like the real thing, with a slightly powdery cacao not that is not overwhelmingly sweet. There seems to be an undertone of coffee even though it isn't listed in the notes. The bitter aspect of the cacao is probably translating to having a slice of chocolate pumpkin bread next to a steaming cup of coffee.

Autumn is falling over a seaside town where vacationers have long since gone home and the locals have packed their umbrellas up for the season. Under gloomy skies, blue-gray waves crash against the abandoned shore over and over, as if trying to reach for something that is no longer there. It swallows the ghosts of footprints and sandcastles. Winds moan in the distance, scattering dead leaves at the edge of the sand. Strange magic happens when the salty breath of the ocean mingles with dry leaves further inland, creating a beach scene that attracts few to the shore, but those who experience it are utterly bewitched.

There is something about baking pumpkin bread that just fills the entire house with autumn. There's the yellow-orange warmth of pumpkin and squash, just enough cinnamon, and the slightly caramelized crust you can't help picking pieces off of. Now you don't have to bake an actual loaf of pumpkin bread to inhale that heavenly small all day long.

The first thing you see is a huge cherry clown nose, made even redder with redcurrant, before it settles down into layers and layers of white vanilla cream-to-powder makeup, which is not unlike Clown White. The tattoo ink beneath is subtle, but definitely there. If you loved Clown White, you need Clown Flash. Even the coulrophobes will dig this one. 

Hairy with soft, fuzzy patchouli, this tarantula is covered in red-orange stripes of cranberry and caramelized pumpkin with that golden brown candied crust that makes it all the more tempting, especially with a splash of sweet bourbon venom. Underneath all that deliciousness is an undercurrent of what can only be tattoo ink. Don't worry, this one doesn't bite. 

An overflow of cherry cola fizz spills in the backseat of this hearse, seeping into the cracks of tan leather seats form the '80s. Nothing like cherry cola to mask the smell of death. With a poof of exhaust fumes, the hearse is off to claim its next customer.

Dressed up in a Halloween costume of orange pumpkin-flavored dust and decked out with a subtle sprinkling of spice, buttered popcorn gets into the spirit of the season. You can just feel your fingers turning orange from digging fistfuls of it out of a vintage tin. 

When I was a kid, we used to go apple picking in upstate New York. There were packed dirt roads throughout the orchard so cars could just barely make it through to park on the grass. Tires were always crunching on fallen apples, most of which had already been gnawed on by insects or squirrels, some more fermented with others. There were always apples lying on either side of the road among drifts of dead leaves. This is the scent of deep nostalgia: breaths of crisp autumn air and sweet-tart apples riddled with blotches of brownish fermentation, always with a few dry leaves carried on the wind.