Casablanca
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Everything posted by Casablanca
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I don't know how, I don't know why --- but when I first tested this, it smelled like a perfectly nice floral-toned green weed on me. On this test, though, it's coming out as listed: packed mud, moss, and the other sort of weed, the stray, wild grasses. Though, still with a touch of wild, floral sweetness. On my skin, the mud stands out, but the grasses are close behind. This smells specifically like wild grasses tamped down in, and stained with, damp mud. Some moss adds extra green, and somewhere behind, woods lurk.
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Look, okay... It smells like smoky, richly sooty gunpowder. It smells like what it says on the tin... or on the barrel. Few things in life seem nicely simple anymore, but this is. If you love smoke (as I do) or gunpowder, seek it out. If you don't, run away --- or walk away slowly and casually so as to not attract its notice.
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Simply the coziest productive wood shop. No cedar is listed, but I seem to be getting a lot of it among the lovely woods here---warm, comfortable cedar and well-used tan leather ahead of a melange of oak and other woods, and a smudge of dark, natural tar. Something gives an impression of sweetened snow outside and woody warmth within, as though a single sugared snowflake has made its way through the door, but is easily missed and already melting. And, somehow, a whiff of opium combines with the woods to make them more welcoming. A wonderful wood and leather blend.
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Lavender- and vanilla-forward from the start, On Wednesday could easily enjoy a spot next to TKO or Daybreak in a perfume box. Here the gentle lavender-vanilla cloud is tinged with extra blue-purple from the wisteria, and a lighter touch of sultry gold from ylang ylang. The myrrh is also light, and sweet, for a grounding note. This wears like a cloud, or like soft, silky lingerie. It could be a sleep-scent pleaser.
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Crystal Gazers opens up like lemony-gold blooms on my skin, with lemon verbena leading and mingling with orange neroli and hints of greenery. The scent brings a picture of my old green, leafy verbena plant to mind, though I think the green I'm smelling is green cognac. As it happens, green cognac comes out more on me during drydown. It smooths out the lemon and orange into an emerging plum. A glassy note that reminds me of clear flower vases also emerges, and powdery white musk. On balance, it becomes a pretty, glassy citrus blend, with plum and green cognac bringing some interest.
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Ghosts at Aldershot smells like an early 20th-century try at making medicine taste better, or perhaps like the scent of something out of a vintage "curiously strong" Altoids tin (you know the one). What I think is the "boiled" part of the scent reads as steamy and waxy and odd, and ultimately medicinal; it overlays lemon peppermint candy and a little gloopy marshmallow. There's also a metallic quality to the blend... which may be how the Altoids tin is coming to mind for me. Quirky blend. For me, it's more for the experience than for the everyday.
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Sugared coffee bean, black musk, and sugar cane. This one takes me back to college days, when I inhabited a rickety chair in an off-campus cafe back courtyard, drinking a pint-sized iced coffee and scribbling on crosswords. The coffee I drank then was black and sweetened, resurrected here in a black coffee scent blackened further by a mellow vetiver musk, and then sugared and a little vanilla'ed. I even think sometimes I smell a little half-melted, last-surviving ice cube in it. It lasts a few hours on me, longer than average. This is what I wanted.
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I remember my second-grade class needing to memorize and recite the first couple stanzas of this poem, and there's some nostalgia captured in this blend. On the wand, the Garden of Shut-Eye Town gives off lavender and wisteria against a melange of soft, faintly herbal flowers. On my skin, it's a soft flower bed, with the lavender, wisteria, and chamomile leaning it toward a bed for dreaming. These are flowers to attract fresh dewdrops by morning and faeries by evening---though they be drowsy fey more inclined toward rest than mischief. A soft floral blend with a chamomile herbal touch.
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Horses is a golden honey glowing with deep resinous amber. It's like the concept scent of golden stained-glass windows illuminated from within, or of a Thomas Kinkade painting. I also get a lot of a soft, cushy vanillic note. What is it called, the one with coumarin in it? Aging brain doesn't remember names. Tonka. (Thanks, internet.) Tonka and/or the amber's vanilla amp on me considerably as Horses dries. They suffuse the whole blend with a fluffy, cloud-like creaminess. Perhaps they are the mist, perhaps they are the air that was "white like wet bread." Perhaps they just are. For the fire, there's a warmth that seems to blend into this like distant red cinders, a bit like that in Gingerbread Campfire, without so much strength and smoke. It's gentle and brings depth rather than drama. An artfully balanced golden, honey-vanilla glow of a scent.
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I wasn't really prepared for how much I like this. On the wand and when first applied, it's a burst of warm, fruity wine, just lightly spiced. But on my skin, it soon shifts toward smoky grey wool as the stronger note, with the wine left a bit behind in the glass. It's like you're wrapped in a blanket left for several nights by a smoky fire, and the blanket is closer than the wine glass cradled in your hand. The early burst of mulled wine is nice, but the hearth smoke and wool coming forward---with mulled wine in the background---have me on the hook. This stronger smoky wool phase doesn't last long either, though, before wine, smoke, and wool all settle back together into a fireside skin-softness once the blend has dried. This goes well with drinking hot mulled wine, too.
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Raspberry, tangerine, and cottony cotton candy. Fruity jam and spun sugar. The notes start as bright and distinct. But before long, they turn toward a slightly powdery, chewable fruit vitamin smell in drydown. That's less fun, but the opening was cheerful.
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Sugary, super-gooey apricot raspberry jam. Compared with the other sufganiyots I've tried, this one is bringing out soo much goo... and less pastry, at least in the opening. The gooey-ness soon turns a bit plasticky on my skin, and the pastry doesn't show up as much as in earlier sufganiyots. I'll see how this settles, but right now, it's a relief to not want to bottle one thing from this Yule collection. Previous sufs have been lovely on me, but something in this one just isn't gelling. So to speak. 🙂
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Mm. Toasty-warm, bready spice cake with honey and... fruit? Cranberries? While this is wet on my skin, I also get something the fruit spectrum, like cranberries and raisins. Yum. This fades in drydown, however. Warm, cozy, delicious. Hildegard's Cakes reminds me of Amber Incense and Honey Cakes, and it could be a similarly sacred offering... albeit one that leans more gourmand (spicy and fruity) and with less incense and honey. The cakes of AIHC were sopping with honey; here, they are warm and dry, but honey-sweetened. I finished my bottle of Amber Incense and Honey Cakes last month, and Hildegard's Cakes would make a lovely replacement.
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"Venerable honeyed cacao." At least, that was my first thought when Chocolate Cat was newly applied on my skin: like, a dry, mature scent that's nevertheless mostly honey and cocoa. The aged vetiver seems to age the whole scent to me, somehow: to bring it up a few decades into some dignity and a dry wit cultivated from life lessons. It's an intriguing effect, and I keep huffing my wrist to explore it more. The whole scent is suffused with a toasted, caramel tone that only seems to add to the sense of maturity and life-seasoning. In another scent, it could be playful or sexy... but I think this vetiver is taking the other notes along a different road. Vetiver sometimes turns dank on my shelf if I ignore it instead of airing it periodically, and that might happen here, but it's dry and smoky for now. I'm happy to say the musk is softer than I expected. Dry, toasted, and honeyed cocoa steeped and aged in dark vetiver. I like.
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I've been lamenting that I'm out of cozy cedar blends---I associate cedar strongly with the concept of "home"---and looking for a new one. This one sounded swampy, which is a different vibe, but I hoped the cedar might stand out. Freshly applied, this perfume gives off green swamp. Spanish moss hangs everywhere in the mind's eye view of this scent. The cedar is a warm presence, though... rooting and grounding this wet, murky wood. In drydown, I find a little gingerbread mingling with the cedar. It's a lovely portion of the scent, and I think a Gingerbread and Smoky Cedar blend just became a wish for my future. But this for one, it's a little too swampy for what I'm usually drawn to. Swampy moss, warmed with cedar and a little gingerbread.
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2021 version Milky hot chocolate blackened with coffee, softened with brown sugar. I'm not getting much cinnamon. It's present, but rather less than I'd hoped for. This may be simply because I've been an absolute cinnamon addict this winter, making cinnamon soup and dusting every hot milky drink with it... El Dia is mostly about the milky hot cocoa, with brown sugared coffee and a little cinnamon whiff on the side.
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Gingerbread Campfire is heavy on the campfire, both on the wand and my skin. Billowing wafts of smoke and burning sparks when I inhale a bit away from the skin, and something a little odd when I sniff up close. Mostly, though, this blend offers the smoke and fire in abundance. It's not an office scent. I don't notice gingerbread until drydown, when it peers out, black-eyed, choked in smoke and soot. Even then, I don't find much of it---just glimpses between black clouds. I love a good smoky blend, but hoped for more gingerbread in the balance. I'll see how this one settles.
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Fresh on my skin, Gingerbread and Rose Incense surprised me with a sugary pink rose blast devoid of gingerbread. It soon shifted toward a sheer (and less sugary) pink rose, which quickly powders up in a white-musky way. Sometimes I thought I smelled a little something like bergamot or petitgrain, too. This blend goes more perfumey and powdery on me as it headed into drydown. I started to get a ginger hint, but little in the way of gingerbread. Once dried, this one had gone full-tilt pink-powder-musk rose. This is a better perfume for others.
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Extra-thick and glossy sugar glaze slathers cinnamon-ginger buns. Freshly applied, this smells like glaze four inches deep. This glaze isn't fooling around---I can imagine "icing"-fishing for the buns buried and waiting within its shining, sticky depths. As Gingerbread Sticky Buns dries, I start to pick up some nice, earthy base note(s) that remind me of what I loved in Gingerbread and Leather from last year's Yules. There might be some well-blended patchouli or something similar grounding this one, and it's lovely. Gingerbread is a softer presence here, melting into the bready part of the buns and mostly adding ginger as a standout spice.
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Gingerbread, coconut bark (woof!), toasted pecan, and a surprise boat-load of saffron. In the first whiff from the wand, I also get a nice amount of sugar, but this drops back when I apply the blend to my skin. After a moment to warm up, the clove wafts out, joining the gingerbread, coconut, toasty nuts, and dry saffron. Cozy, warm, spiced and nutty gingerbread. Love.
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Sugar Cookies/Popcorn Garland smells like kettle-browned butter over popcorn. I don't get a lot of cookie from this one, but there's stove-melted butter to spare.
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Erm. This is closer to what I thought Sugar Cookie Snek would smell like. Actually. It may be a muskier version, but it has all the heavy, sexy cookie. A cookie with impact. Spices, woods, and heavy-ass musks smother a maple-toned brown sugar cookie. Satyr plus Sugar Cookie really remind me, here, of Snake Oil and Smut. Kind of like a Snake Smut Sugar Cookie. I think for me, the red musk part of this is a little heavy to warrant a bottle. But, you know, regardless... I can smell there's something good happening here, in this part of the woodlands.
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Sugar Cookie Cathedral, freshly applied on my skin, is a buttery sugar cookie with something like a faint, half-hearted wood polish beneath. While wet, the blend continues on this course... and it smells a bit like something is missing. While I wait for Cathedral's base notes to better emerge, I also keep thinking I smell a whiff of glue with the wood polish. Much later, I find that the incense has finally emerged, but the cookie has mostly vanished on my skin by that point. For me, at least, this one is Sugar Cookie... and later Cathedral, rather than Sugar Cookie Cathedral.
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Last night in testing this, without remembering what Snake Oil was combined with for its making, I thought it smelled like cherry Snek... and morphed into cherry tobacco Snek. That's mostly what I'm getting from Snekhellden this morning, too -- with the addition of leather as the blend warms on my skin. The whole is fairly soft, and not much else is coming through for me. This is a comfortable hearthside blend, almost cozy. I'm not sure I need a bottle, but I've much enjoyed the sampling.
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Rich chocolate-pumpkin cheesecake with crumbling graham cracker crust. Last night, I didn't get much cherry glaze until drydown, but this morning, the glaze is more potent and present. This pumpkin combines with the chocolate to lean toward peanut butter on my skin. When I tried this on last night, before I saw the notes list, I thought this was chocolate and peanut butter with graham crackers. One for gourmand lovers. Rich, heavy, foodie.
