chicorymist

In the imp: Red roses and candied orange peel. Oooo.

Wet: All of the above with plum making it richer. This is fancy! I feel like I'm smelling a still life.

Dry: The bergamot's faded out, sandalwood's faded in in the background, and the foreground's like 50/50 rose/plum. That's kinda cool, esp since when I tested it on my mom she got like 50/50 rose/orange. Both combinations work very well.

4/5!

In the bottle: smells like tea and buttery flowers. Cool!

Wet: ...Licorice? - that's probably the honey/ginger/pepper working together - over flowery linen.

Dry: I'm getting a lot of linen/generic white flowers, topped with a little bit of honey. That's kind of disappointing.

Dry, 10-15 min later: the honey has faded, and I'm left with only the strong soapy-smelling linen. Oh well. Maybe on someone else it'll stay truer to the bottle.

1/5

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Update: after 4-5 hours the OMGLINEN has died down and left a nice creamy floral tea scent behind, but sadly, I'm not patient enough to wait that long for a nice perfume. Probably giving to mom.

Got this as a frimp from the lab! In theory, I should really like Maiden - I love tea and roses - but together in a pale floral? This is probably going to be way too feminine for me.

Wet: Yep. This is all white flowers and... citrus?

Dry: This smells gorgeous - I'm getting white roses and spicy carnation, maybe a little tea in the background - but sadly, it's not me.

Gave it to my mom, who loves delicate feminine florals, and she loved this. It lasted about 3-4 hours on her. This was a great surprise holiday gift! Thanks lab.

Edit: After a couple hours this turned to soap on me anyway. It's better on Mom.

2.5/5

Weirdly, this smells like flat cola in the bottle. In a good way.

On me, this is like Dee but softer: less dry, less masculine (more gender-neutral, could easily be feminine with a feminine outfit), less throw. This is still really good - I REALLY LIKE Dee. Antikythera Mechanism is soft round warm vanilla-y polished wood that stays close to my skin like a favorite old shirt worn to flannel softness.

Lasts 9-10 hours.

Will def finish this imp, but I don't feel like I need a bottle right now.

4/5

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Update, 1/4: I've now gotten two separate compliments on Antikythera Mechanism, both saying this smells like spice or incense. I guess it has more throw than I thought! That has to be the tobacco.

This has grown on me! I really like it for days I don't feel butch enough for Dee, lol. Changed my mind - I'm totally getting a bottle of this when I have a few bucks.

5/5

Morphed into cigarette smoke and spearmint as soon as it hit my skin. Blech! My two least favorite scents. Had to wash it off.

What's worse, I can't get anyone else to try it to see if it'd work better on them.

A very disappointed 0/5.

Got this as a frimp from the lab! I'm not very into foody scents, but I rather liked this.

In the bottle: chocolate mint cookies!

Wet: same.

Dry: remains chocolate mint cookies for about two hours, at which point it becomes kind of a floral cedary scent with a faint sweet chocolatey backdrop. At four hours, the cedar fades away too and then it's just faint chocolate.

A lovely festive scent for the cookie-baking season!

4/5

In the bottle: herbs? Sweet herbs.

Wet: sweet herbs, fainter I guess. Maybe let's put some more on - okay, now that I've spilled this all over my hand it's still sweet herbs. Cool.

Dry: still green, but the fig is really starting to come out from under all those herbs.

Dry, 1.5 hrs: wow, I put *way too much* on - this has wicked throw. I think there's some lemon in this?

Later that day, I developed a terrible headache and had to go to sleep, but that may have been unrelated. Or it may have been because I wasn't supposed to slather this. I'm going to have to try this again, but for right now this shows wonderful potential as a summery, gender-neutral fresh green scent.

4/5

In the imp: Sharp, alcoholic, like whiskey with some woods behind. Not really a fan of whiskey, but I'm trying this anyway.

Wet: Whiskey pulls a miraculous disappearing act! Now it smells kind of like men's cologne, but like, a nice, woody men's cologne and not the Lilac Vegetal my dad wears. I could be okay with this.

Dry: Oh my goodness. This has turned warm and dryly sweet and almost floral - that's probably the rosewood - and I think I can smell some parchment deep under there, but for all the sweetness, it's still masculine enough to feel *right.* This is like being in an old, elegant library on a cold day, surrounded by dark wood shelves, sitting next to the fireplace and leafing through a fascinating old book you've just discovered. This is delicious and I want to curl up in it.

Dry, later: I think the tonka and incense are contributing to the sweetness - it's a little bit spicy, but the rosewood's dominating on me. The leather doesn't really make an appearance at all, but I think that's what keeping this as dry as it is.

Lasted a good 10 hours on me, with at least a couple feet of throw.

This sounded so good I was tempted to just ask for a 5 mL for the holidays unsniffed, and it more than met my expectations. Definitely getting a bottle of this!

5/5