Casablanca

La Prostitution 2020! This also reminds me of La Prostitution et la Folie Dominent le Monde (sweet cream vanilla, white sugar, jasmine blossom, star anise). La Prostitution's jasmine vanilla cream gets a little meditative here with what appears on me as a prominent sandalwood. It's a pleasing change: this jasmine cream becomes more mature and thoughtful, perhaps a little more wise. The honey and cognac are beautifully blended in, and I had to look for them. Having found them, it's easy to just chill and huff and appreciate what they're contributing; I think the cognac is adding to the impression of gracious maturity I get from this blend.

Whoa, that's a bright lantern! Fresh on my skin, this is a searing, almost shrill, yellow yuzu alongside orange bergamot. The image this fragrance brings to mind is a modern canvas of bold, brazen yellow and orange streaks slashing diagonally. This might wake me up without coffee. I'm not finding that this one has changed over time on my skin; I don't find cedar or musk, just yellow and orange citrus streaks, band over band.

Unique. My first-blink impression of Chushu is lemon-honey maple syrup. I get images of warm red maple leaves, maples being tapped, jars of honey, and bright, sunny lemon groves. As the blend develops, I definitely also get the vibe that someone upped their hot lemon-honey drink game with a teaspoon of maple syrup. It's kind of the ultimate cold-season comfort. The maple and honey shift this away from lemon candy -- because it is quite sweet, and could be a candy -- or, at least, it's an interesting Trader Joe's version of lemon candy. Happily, the musk is light. The beeswax appears only after drydown, and I love the smoothness it adds. I can't stop huffing this, and it's lifting my mood, so I might need more than the decant. I also like the way the notes complement the colors in the art.

Pink mermaid musk, yes! This is another one of the more delicate Lupers this year, where there are many light touches of notes forming a cohesive whole. Abalone is a soft, creamy pinkness with tones of pearls in an iridescent sea, a fleeting grapefruit, a pale orris root, a gentle musk, and an innocent lotus. The ambers are also in light use, just suffusing the blend with warmth. Abalone has the compassion of Poor Monkey (pink lotus root, fig milk, ylang ylang, bourbon vanilla, soft myrrh, fir, khus, sandalwood incense) and the creamy warmth of Alabaster Vulva (white amber, sheer vanilla, orris butter, Italian bergamot, narcissus). This is their love child.

Heavily spiced mahogany, especially with a sort of black peppery saffron. I'm getting great wafts of dry, powdery clouds of saffron and black pepper mahogany. In drydown (and this scent reads as very dry even when wet), I notice oudh blending into the mahogany. It's a sort of polished-wood variety of agarwood, with nothing animalic. A little pleasant patch suffuses the blend. Whoever abides in this wooden living space must cook with saffron every day, and black pepper three times a week. I don't find rosewood or nutmeg as such, but I can imagine them blending right into this spiced wood ambiance.

O my. Unexpectedly, right out of the decant, I get a glorious, foodie vanilla. I can't stop huffing; nor can I quite identify what's driving this vanilla (or vanillas?) to such a high pitch of attraction for me. Is there a Tahitian vanilla? What I seem to be getting -- for some reason -- is a caramel-beeswax-coconut tone to it, along with the hints of copal and patchouli. Whatever the damn is going on, it's good. As this dries, I get more copal, and the blend as a whole softens considerably. But it doesn't otherwise shift much for me. A nice one.

Bat's a dark and intriguing blend, rapidly shifting at first. My first impression of it is a shadow of smoky, earthy patchouli sweetened with honey. The patchouli deepens while the honey fades, and out creeps something like animalistic leather. In the next moments, the blend shifts through dapplings of white sandalwood and shades of smoky cola. It's like watching a complex kaleidoscope of night woods, where the trees stretch and bend impossibly while large-eyed animals lurk and skitter among their leaves and branches. The drying blend settles into a smoky, woodsy patchouli with undertones of sweet, dark cola and black tar. That was a ride.

Initial dreamy pinkness: pink rose, pink cherry flowers, and a smooth, almost creamy cognac. And then I get sandalwood? (Looks at notes.) Yes, okay. Red sandalwood. Curious -- the initial dream-like blend of pink flowers has morphed into more red sandalwood than pink blossoms. The flowers also take on a resinous quality, almost as though a red benzoin, or something, is contributing. The cognac fades. Pink flowers, red sandalwood, and anonymous resins.

Oh, this is a thickly creamy amber cream, with -- somehow, for me -- creamy cognac. Or perhaps creamy Cointreau... once the bergamot weighs in. Compared with my memories of Novel Ideas for Secret Amusements (polished tortoiseshell, ivory, mahogany, amber cream) and Amber Lace (sweet amber, golden oudh, vanilla cream, white cognac, saffron, warm golden musk), the amber cream in Golden Sunrise feels thicker, heavier, and richer to me. It's a cream lover's amber cream. As this blend dries, I find the ambrette, and I think it's adding to the weight. I'm a cream devotee, so I will need to consider a bottle of this one, even though I already love on bottles of the others above.

An ultra-realistic swirl of canned peaches and syrup ... and, um, fuzzy peach skin? This one is a head-scratcher, because I smell both syrupy canned peaches (sans skin) and, separately, fresh, fuzzy peach skin. Soon, my skin amps the peach fuzz over the syrupy version. In drydown, Egoyomi's peaches turn overripe and mushy on me. But the cream is nice... I have three peach blends that play nicely with my skin, but this is one of the overripe fruit ones instead. It was interesting before my skin changed it!

Oh, hi. I've walked in on a musky Bacchanalian love fest of red and purple fruits in an oakmoss bower. This is what it smells like when blackberry, red currant, and plum get sauced on blackberry, red currant, and plum wines and get all sex-musky deep in the oak woods. I keep thinking I also smell wood violet. I experience violet (except for the fun parma violet in Elf) as the note that's diametrically opposite of me. It really might just be part of the plum... but it's making me shrink back a bit, even as I enjoy the rest. At any rate, you're in for a wild ride with this one.

Hopes and dreams: A soothing evergreen spa scent. My well-loved bottle of Balmy 26 Degrees is quickly running dry in these strange times. Wet: Jumping juniper! Some tree berries turn icky on my skin, but this is playing kindly enough. It's really more the evergreen than the berry for me: a little blue-green juniper, a little blue-green sap, and just a hint of woody berry. The mood is remote, cool, and forested. Drying: I feared the green tea might have gotten lost on the way to this woods party, but I start to glimpse it now and then, arm-in-arm with bamboo. Mostly, this is still juniper's event. Dry: Green tea and bamboo wander in and things calm down. Juniper stops singing and puts down its gin on the rocks to sober up. Time to chill and watch clouds or something. This is a soft and simple blend on me. It doesn't evoke quite the heart-eyed love response that Balmy 26 did, but I'm enjoying it and would use a full bottle gladly.

This is very delicate on me; it takes its time to warm up and come out on my skin. Once it does, I have a light but lovely creamy-vanilla rice milk, warm and sugared with some hay grains in a bowl. The hay note reminds me of that in Harvest of the Empress. Well after drydown, this blend suggests cardamom-cashmere, or something similar, like a warm sweater scent. For me it brings up the memory of Unicorn and Ram's cozy sweater feel (wooly musk, soft leather, cashmere, cardamom, leather oudh). This is a beauty and I hope it will amp a bit as it settles.

Rice milk can turn me into a drooling idiot, and that starts to happen here. At first, this is such a creamy and dreamy white-grain milk with perhaps also that gorgeous rice flower from Castitas bath oil, and there's only a hint of golden champaca and amber. Then fortunes reverse, and mighty champaca takes the lead, with tropical frangipani soon to follow. From then on, this is a full, queenly, heady blend, and the delicate rice notes get a bit lost in the grandeur. The blend is lovely but, after the first few seconds, it mostly misses the rice notes I sought. I'd recommend it for those seeking big tropical florals with supporting creamy rice-ness.

Sun-ripened blackberry, juicy and bright, is the dominant note. It's mingling with orangey bergamot, papery rice milk, and a little whiff of white tea. Something in here is tickling my nose in a light, powdery way; it might be a little white musk or something else. This juicy blackberry is giving me some blackberry wine craving in the worst/best way. 🍷🍷 I wish the powdery bit were not present, but otherwise this is a very pleasing, delicate, and joy-sparking combination.