Casablanca

In the bottle, this is a soft, green mossy-bamboo floral. On my skin, it’s similar, but a little more floral. I love lotus and ylang ylang together, and they are lovely here, both together and matched up with mossy bamboo. The green notes lean toward aquatic but don’t quite get there for me, which I feel is a nice place. This smells like lounging in the summer under willow and bamboo trees by a lotus-floaty pond. This only lasts through the wet phase, though. I don’t pick up any vanilla sandalwood until the oil dries, and then it’s faint powdery vanilla and a hint of green. A soft, beautifully serene blend on me while wet; faint and powdery when dry.

When I first apply Liaison, and from the bottle, I get mostly cypress -- but it's deep and interesting. A blend to make me like cypress more! But the note steps back in a few minutes, and then there's a soft, quiet lotus up front. Lotus has her turn being complicated and interesting because of the other notes. Then lotus steps back, and I get a stronger sandalwood. Now this is a soft blend: meditative, textured like grainy wood and champaca dust. Complex, morphy, soft, and pretty.

In the bottle, I get tuberose in a thin cloud of incense. It smells to me like the tuberose from Humanite, but mellowed some. On my skin, I smell in order: tuberose, incense, wisteria, and lastly a little oakmoss. Then I smell quite a bit of oakmoss in it. A lovely oakmoss. Interesting. Between the waxy, tropical tuberose, the incense and wisteria, and the woodsy oakmoss, this seems to hit a lot of different areas and mental impressions. It’s coming across to me as likable in its parts, but not cohesive overall. As it dries, the wisteria and oakmoss blend into the mood of a deep, rainy forest, with incense adding a meditative mood. Yay! But the tropical tuberose still stands apart and up front, doing its own, entirely different thing. Thankfully, the tuberose slips from dominance as the blend finishes drydown. Now I’m getting more of the wisteria I wanted (I loved Night Scene). It mingles nicely with oakmoss and incense, and the whole blend is softer. The tuberose is just a hint. I like the balance once it’s dried.

On my skin, this is a creamy floral, both in tone and in the color it brings to mind. I get vanilla in this creaminess, but this blend is mostly about the bloom. Different orchids can smell quite different (or not like anything). This is creamy, pale, and airy, and only light-handedly perfumey. I find it understated rather than heady. Early on it has a little leaning toward violets, in some small part of it, but that fades from me before it dries. Then it becomes a little cleaner and greener.

In the bottle, I smell strawberries and a soft mingling of flowers and honey. On my skin, it’s strawberries in honeyed and lightly sugared spring flowers. Pretty! The mood of this reminds me of Bilquis and Libra 2016, but lighter and pinker, and more delicate. For the flowers, I get pink carnation, peony, and phlox — this was great with Phlox bath oil last night. The rest of the flowers are a floral blur. No, actually… I also smell a little of that creamy, slightly waxy yellow floral from Qui Aime Bien Châtie Bien. Daffodil? Love it. And a tiny bit of vanilla. The carnation’s spice keeps this from getting too sweet. This barely lasts two hours on me, and it goes soft quickly. But it’s a lovely spring scent.

On the wand: cold, windblown leaves, cold fir, and warm honey-sweet musk. Strange together. On my skin, I get the cold leaves and fir. There’s something green, lichenous, and oakmossy about the blend at first, but somehow, after that I mostly get an herbal powdered ginger. The honey musk from the wand never appears on my skin. Usually those notes show up on me OK, if I can smell them from the bottle or wand, but not this time. A head scratcher. This one really does a jig on my skin — and then, in about 20 minutes, it’s mostly gone.

On the wand, I smell fir and, surprisingly, a woody oakmoss. I don’t usually smell that until something has dried. There’s also a dimly glowing edge of apricot, scarcely there. On my skin, this turns into an astringent, whiny-pitched trio of fir, ginger, and white tea. I have an initial mental impression of some sort of yokai shrieking, but this settles in drydown. After that, I get a little pale amber, but not much else. The other notes mostly fade. This one isn’t a match for my chemistry.

On the wand, clean white flowers (maybe a little plumeria in them?), white musk, a little something that reminds me of the vanilla-cognac in Pediophobia, and juicy pom. On my skin, this goes quite faint. I just get ghostly traces of floral pomegranate and slightly powdery white musk. The latter is not as powdery as some white musks go on me. Pretty, dainty, and light, but I’ll stick with Abduction of Proserpine for my pom needs.

On the wand, this starts as an ethereal, slightly powdery perfumey note (the chalk?), and then twang, snap. Rubbery latex. The latex snaps you in the nose when it emerges, like a rubber band from across the room. On my skin — ho boy! Nasty chemical rubber that manages to smell “thin” like latex. I can’t get too close to this. When the rubber starts to calm, I get a little of the powdery chalk back. Not an attractive note, but better than rubber hell. Impressively bad (for one or two meanings of bad).

On the wand, I smell everything but the leather. Primarily jasmine, followed by white tea, and then a slightly powdery musk. On my skin, a pretty jasmine white tea with some powdery white musk. I would bottle this if it weren’t so powdery, because the jasmine tea is so fresh and attractive. (I’m still tempted.) I’m going through a jasmine phase and this jasmine is soft rather than super-sharp or high-pitched. I’m drawn to this blend, but I get no leather at all from it until it dries. Then it slowly creeps in, but stays soft, and seems mostly white leathery. The leather doesn’t seem to quite mesh with the rest of it, but I still like it.

On the wand, this is kind of an odd black leather-powdery orris mix. On my skin, it instead becomes powdery orris and red sandalwood on a patchouli background, initially, and patchouli quickly amps into a dominant, dry dirtiness. Not sure where the leather is in this earthy party. Not my thing.

On the wand, black leather in clouds of amber and dark myrrh. On my skin, at first, the amber is there, but the leather relaxes into a softer note, and the myrrh hides. As this dries, the black leather comes out more and the amber (which might have a little vetiver in it) sweetens. Then, kind of abruptly, the lovely amber drops out and I’m left with a soft black leather and a hint of myrrh. Still, sexy brew. This is my friend’s decant, and I can’t figure out if I need a bottle. I thought I was done ordering, but I’m tempted, because I love the way this amber plays with the other notes while it lasts.

On the wand: white notes, some tan to the leather. I get an ethereal and pretty sweetness in the tobacco. On my skin, the sweetness in the tobacco amps likably, followed by the pale sandalwood. I like both notes. The blend as a whole becomes dry-smelling as it dries on me. It takes on a bit of a bleached desert-like quality that reminds me of It Lifts from Leaden Sieves: maybe it’s the same white sandalwood. This also reminds me of White Rider, but it’s been a long time since I smelled that one. I want to say that WR was more powdery and had less depth on me than this one, but it’s kind of a guess impression by now. This is my friend’s decant, and I can’t figure out if I need a bottle.

Smoky deep leather. First impression was birch tar and leather. This lasted two or three hours on me with little change.

This starts as beautiful smoked honey and tobacco on me, with an edge of sweet cinnamon, and ends as cinnamon broomstick craft shop on my skin. Bummer.

This is a stunning leather. Sniffing this is like sticking your head into an overstocked, intimate shop of well-worked and oiled leather goods (where some of that oil is Snake Oil). Something here also reminds me of teakwood, which I love. Good stuff! I gave some to a friend and she fainted.

I actually got this to use in a car diffuser, because orange blossom is usually a world conquerer on my skin and bullies all else out of existence, and I thought I'd like all the notes if they weren't on my skin. But, actually, I never detect orange blossom on my skin. And it turns out the other notes just don't work on my skin. So it might be the diffuser for this one, but for a different reason. On my skin, this is caramelized white peach and tuberose. The peach (quite a different peach from the Dragon Con ones I sampled) is really caramelized. Uber-caramelized. My sunset on the beach just smells a bit weird and artificial to me. :-/ Going to try in a diffuser later and see how that goes.

This was another last-minute decant for me. I like everything listed except black pepper. Maybe it will be slight enough for this to work. On the wand: Black pepper dominates. Wuh wuh wuuuh. After that I get champaca, and then a wisteria-lilac mix. Nothing else yet. On my skin: Black pepper! That’s almost all I get, but there’s the ghostly blue-purple wisteria-lilac mix behind it. That mix is pretty, but it’s like the flowers of this garden are hidden behind a fence of black pepper. As this begins drydown, the pepper eases up. Then I get primarily wisteria-lilac mingling with some smooth benzoin and hints of champaca and sandalwood. It’s a soft sent. Nice at this point, reminding me a little of Night Scene from last year’s Lupers. I’m not sure it’s nice enough for me to climb the pepper fence again, though. ETA: I tried this again after a few weeks and the pepper had settled a lot. Really like this now.

On the wand: A glistening pear is strongest, followed by white musk and rice milk about equally. On my skin: The pear is no longer strongest, or at least by as much. It lasts only a short time on my skin, though. This smells simpler and cleaner to me than Maiko with Hair Unbound, and perhaps not as sweet. It’s also a little powdery on me, which I don’t get from Maiko. White musk sometimes goes powdery on my skin, but this might also be the rice milk powder from Moon Reflected in Every Rice Paddy HG, which has a creamy malted rice thing going on to me that I seem to be getting here. Overall, the blend is delicate, ethereal.

Love this one. It’s chrysanthemum incense and red carnation on me, as the notes read. The chrysanthemum smells golden-orange to me and is the stronger of the flowers during the wet phase, and red carnation comes to the front as it dries, but both are present. I think this is incense is somewhere in the champa family, but it’s less strong than the flowers on me.

I went for this decant only at the last minute. I’m down with the other notes, but not usually an opium girl. Maybe it will work here. On the wand: Opium-champaca musk. Double-down on the head shop! Wet on my skin: Powdery opium-champaca musk with a swatch of leather and a hint of clove. With the opium in here, this reads as even more head-shoppy to me than the champaca-heavy Keichu. Dry on my skin: Mainly powdery opium, champaca, and leather. Then I have a thought that the leather is pleasantly sweet, and realize it’s paired with honey. I love champaca and this honeyed leather, but the opium here just brings a little too much whoa for me.

On the wand: Smoky incense, beeswax, and antique pinkish-purple roses. Wet on my skin: The same as on the wand, except the roses are softer. I really get an antique mood from this blend that reminds me of Pediophobia, even though the listed notes are different. I think I might be getting a vibe that reminds me of Pediophobia’s “white cognac and vanilla filigree,” but if so, it’s blending well into the beeswax. I’m not sure what it is. Anyway! I quite like this smoky incense and beeswax. Little roses lurk. Dry on my skin: This continues as mainly smoky incense and beeswax with a few mini pinkish-purple roses sewn on. A wisp of tobacco comes and goes with the drafts of this old house.

While this is wet on my skin, it’s the chocolate blend of my dreams. A marshmallow-cocoa butter mix seems the strongest on me, followed by white chocolate and goat’s milk, and then some dripping golden honey. It’s glorious. Once this dries, however, it becomes a plainer honeyed white chocolate on me. I don’t wear chocolate blends often and already have more of them than I’m using, but I still want to bottle this for the wet phase. Yum.

On the wand: Rose-watered cognac! The note that seems to be the cognac is reading very funky to my nose. Wet on my skin: Pink rose water and boozy cognac. And something very funky. It seems to come from the cognac note, but I can’t tell. It’s not good. Dry on my skin: The funk partially settles, and I get pink rose-watered cognac. I can see how this would be a beautiful and unique scent for someone else, but although I love many rose blends, this one is not for me.

In the bottle, I get suede leather and a hint of patchouli. Wet on my skin, I smell suede leather, vanilla, and at first — for the first few seconds — a hint of patchouli. Then the patchouli bows out, and the blend morphs into something like Unicorn and Ram. Cozy sweater thing! That’s the cashmere, I’m guessing. The whole blend is complex, though. I’m getting an added softness to it from the tonka, along with hints of black tea and coconut. I do pick up a wisp of patchouli on the back end, but it’s subtle, and I’m grateful. The vanilla is keeping things smooth. Once dried, Hoîru is softer, even more well blended, and beautiful. The only notes I can isolate at all at this point are vanilla, suede, and cashmere. I also get something like anise. This is gorgeous, and I’m glad I set aside my patchouli fear to give it a chance.