Casablanca

Crane Moon is surprisingly soft and subtle on me. Primarily, it's vanilla orris, suggesting pale feathers --- and also the pale powder of a cockatoo. I find a suggestion of white cocoa powder, as well, but just a tease.

In drydown, some warmth builds from cedar and cardamom, though again they are soft. This phase makes me think of nest-building, and by extension homemaking... But then, I already associate cedar with the idea of Home.

This one is a soft, delicate, powdery-pale bird with hints of dry warmth.

I amp balsam, and the balsam here is in line with that. Mary Magdalene is hyper-balsamic on my skin, shrill and a little acidic, bringing to mind balsamic vinaigrette.

Somewhere past the heavy balsam clouds, I can make out a golden sandalwood and frankincense and, later, the redness of the oud. Back there, past the salad-dressing swamp, is a land that suggests contemplative serenity. I just can't quite get there.

I need to stop sniffing this, because down that road lies headaches.

Thicc fudgey-brownie with some rich, smoky black coffee beans somewhere nearby in this kitchen. I catch little whiffs of cardamom and caramel now and then; they come and go. 

When Muffinhead dries, she brings almost as much coffee as brownie. These roasted black coffee beans are amazing, and a thing I want more of.

I wouldn't normally need a bottle of fudge brownie, but Muffinhead tempts me to upgrade, anyway, through her coffee.

I don't usually get cherries from nuts, but this one goes there with bags packed.

After a few minutes, the cherries settle down and I can focus on the other friends. Pistachio (I can only see him with a mustachio), dapper fellow, is both a little nutty and a little like melted green pistachio ice cream when arm-in-arm with his associate Vanilla Cream. They skip together in perfect sync, in sepia, twin moustaches and Victorian carpet bags.

But later Macadamia shows up and turns the scene toward a more tropical thing... time for vacation, boys. I try to pull away from these associations and just think of nuts, not tropical nuts versus dapper nuts, just nuts, because it's getting a little disjointed.

Nuts. This is very nutty, and also creamy, and I'm good with it.

Delicate, creamy coconut.

The coconut has a bit of a tropical coconut-water vibe to it, but it mingles with the cream into more of a milky note ultimately.

The fig is present but almost untraceably light.

Subtle and clearly summery.

For a long time, this is just a sort of more orangey peach on me.

The bay rum-fougere vibe is mellow and takes an hour or so to develop. Sometimes I think I get a small suggestion of frankincense, but that's all.

I don't find a lot of depth to this, but it might settle more into that.

Musky, musky peaches. For a good while, it's just hyper-musky peaches and something of a deep resin vibe.

Then during drydown, suddenly, yeeps. Funk? Mingling in each whiff, it makes me think of civet. The funk comes and goes.

I'm sure others will have better luck with this.

Peaches with a bright, cold glint of silvery steel.

This is car chrome, painted peach and freshly waxed and polished. As the blend shifts toward dry, I catch a little whiff of motor oil?

Here we have a quirky little springtime garage scent... except that it's more of a driveway scent. This could be a concept scent for handwashing your peach-painted, vintage pinup car in the driveway on a sunny spring afternoon.

Pomegranate plastic or vinyl. I recognize the latter as a vodka note, and it does grow more overtly alcoholic on me as it starts to dry. But at first blush, it's mostly vinyl, chemical, thin, and tinny to my nose.

The pom isn't as loud on me as it often is as a note; the peach is softer but present.

Later on, I get more of a fruit-syrupy booze. I can see Fruit Nyquil at this point.

Note: I'm testing my friend's bottle. Vodka notes haven't worked on me before, and I don't think they start to here. That is okay. 

Sugared blackberry in the house! 🤩

I'm reveling in just how much jammy-ass sugar this holds. The scent nearly sparkles with fruit-jam white sugar, and I'm here for it.

This reminds me of a childhood day of collecting raspberries and then making raspberry jam... and marveling at the quantity of white sugar going into the mix.

The fruits themselves are bright, bold (even bombastic), and balanced. Blackberry led the trio when freshly applied, but all fruits were present, and as the blend settles, its fruits even out. 

This is one for devotees of sugar and fruit.

Sweet, lightly syrupy golden peaches cozied up in hints of soft milk. 

The milk is a mild and creamy one with some creme brulee hints. I'm not quite getting the toasted condensed milk from Snek Milk, but that note took some rest to really come out on me... so that may come later.

This awaited me on the doorstep yesterday along with a new "fresh milk" lotion I'm trying. I wore them together to bed and they're a beautiful pair. 🤗

This baby has rested a day.

Primarily peach coconut cream, with a healthy, homey whiff of almond nougat.

Comforting and kind, this Peach leans into summer with its peachy coconut, but the nougat hints at early fall. I feel like this scent's prime time is June through September, and I'm so happy to have a bottle.

Obsequies smells like a complex relic of the ancient world... and also like spiced, earthy cacao.

Resinous resins and saffron, pepper, and patchouli mingling with dry cacao. Most of the latter note's strength fades quickly on me, leaving peppery, saffron-laced resins and earthy, dusty patchouli. I'm surprised to never quite find the rose in this tomb.

This is a conceptual scent for digging in ancient, dusty tomb-earth for relics, but without quite seeming to have a literal dirt note. I appreciate. 

I've been waiting for another good, cozy cedar scent to come along, and this comes closest to that for a while now.

Creating the World is woodsy and cedar-dominant, only slightly charred, with a potent bergamot musk/cologne vibe wafting out alongside. Red fruits and indigo soon combine with this to add sweetness and complexity; later I get a touch of leather that works well with the cedar. I'm appreciating what's going on here -- at the same time, it feels like a bit of a wild jumble.

Ultimately, this one settles into a likable vanilla-cedar on me, but there's too much musk and cologne happening first for my preferences. I'll keep waiting.

As others have said: watery lilies, green parsley, and cilantro. It's a bit cypress-swampy, too.

Lilies generally go soapy on me, and this does as well, cascading like falling water into a soapy, herbal-green swampland. It's clean rather than murky.

I don't notice any redness, cedar, or palo santo: just clean-soapy-green.

Eep. What's going on with my skin and this one?

At a glance, I'd imagine this would be similar to Abduction of Persephone by a Unicorn (white sandalwood, black currant, and pomegranate). I finished that bottle long ago, so I can't compare... but this is nothing like my memory of it.

At first it smells like fruity, raw stomach bile on my skin. And I'm queasy. Who the, what the?

Over time, the bile thing calms down. Mostly... Something here that isn't like any pom or sandalwood note I've tried is repelling me, unfortunately. It reminds me of wine trying to come back up? As more time passes, this aspect keeps settling. But it's a lot, and I'm going to set this aside now.

At the earliest blush, this brings a golden-honeyed honeysuckle with a backing of shrill jasmine on me. 

After a moment or so, I find a pale, powdery thing I associate with white musk, and the flowers start to veer soapy. There's a soft, pleasant greenery trying to come out, like the fresh green touch to the jasmine of The Bindle. But I struggle to get past the strong, soapy flowers and powder to enjoy it.

I rarely wear florals anymore, so I'm not really the audience for this one. But it's also not the norm that a perfume gives me a headache... and this one is trying hard to buck that trend.

Wake up and smell the fresh! Cold-iced lemon and a soft eucalyptus.

What is, at first, a nearly absent absinthe grows in drydown into a licorice-like lot of absinthe. Which is any-absinthe too much for me, but at least it's soon balanced by a mellow sandalwood.

This is, like Fuck This Heat, a reasonable rescue perfume for if your AC breaks down or you are simply stuck out under the summer sun too long. (Add whatever charm against that here...)

Many flowers are so blendy to me when put in a bouquet. Such is how Spring comes across, at first: a vivid bouquet of spring flowers against a background trace of incense.

The flowers blend into one another such that I can't really call them out, but I could see lilies of the valley and peonies being somewhere in the bunch. 

In drydown, the incense smoke drifts out more; as I'm not much of a floral person, I really enjoy this aspect. On my skin, the incense smoke comes to the fore and manages to tone down and background the flowers in their turn. I like the blend better at this point.

Once dried, this is more of a smoky incense blend with a soft, indistinct floral backdrop.

Green greenness and greenery. It's pretty easy being green here, with this bright green tea, swampy green moss, green-wooded bamboo, and grainy green wasabi.

At first, I mostly notice the green tea, swampy moss, and a general, sort of atmospheric bright green vibe that reminds me a little of a similar green brightness in Emerald Lace.

But that brightness fades quickly, and the wasabi amps up, in drydown. By the time Frog has dried, it's mostly a thick, bamboo-woody wasabi on my skin, as I seem to dial the wasabi up to 9, at least.

This would be a wonderful scent for me if I'd like to smell like wooded wasabi for a bit. If that ever becomes a goal (and I can't rule anything out), I'll think of this scent.

Torch opens with a blare of black cloves and pine pitch ready to take paint off a car. I'm just here appreciating.

This smells like late-night pines come to life to light smoky fires and dance and perform secret sap rituals. For those brave enough to sniff it up close, the cloves offer a delicious little dark sweetness. The dragon's blood is another sort of sweetness underneath: red, resinous, and slightly spiced. 

This blend smells delightfully and dreadfully devil-Yule to me. Respect.

Wear this to your next midnight Krampus parade.

Sticky-sweet myrrh resin mingles with a sweet dark rose and... actually, amber.

Here I'm reminded of labdanum's contribution as an ingredient of amber in perfumery, because as it blends with the myrrh, I keep smelling an especially resinous amber -- sometimes with accompanying hints of cola and leather. The resins almost overtake the rose on my skin, but the flower resolutely continues to offer some dark red sweetness.

The black musk remains softer on me than expected. This is mostly about the resins, accented with breaths of blood-red rose.

At first, there's just a dry, smoky red saffron.

After a few moments, a soft honey, red-touched with spices, emerges alongside a reddish metallic musk. The honey stays quiet. The reddish elements of the musk remind me of rust crumbs that have flaked off some tarnished antique, but the musk is the stronger of the notes. Although this musk smells a bit spicy and reddish, it isn't otherwise much like red musk, leaning instead toward an odd metallic tang.

The blend as a whole doesn't smell filled out at this point, and may benefit from some age.

Dried red fruits and whole peppercorns, the sort that look decorative as yet unground in a shaker.

The dried red fruits smell mostly to me like dried cherries, red currants, and plums.

The peppercorns remind me of the look of table peppercorns from when I was a kid -- especially the reddish ones -- but the scent isn't an aggressive black pepper. It's also less playful than "pink pepper" notes usually read to me. It rests in a warm, almost festive space between the two, and combines with the dried fruits to remind me in a pleasant way of decorated tables for late-year holidays. I'm really enjoying how this blend spices without the usual spices.

The fig, which wafts in during drydown, further warms the whole and adds to that fall-winter holiday ambience. There's a tiny bit of a warm smoky-char note in the perfume before it dries. Other than that, I don't come across anything vetiver-like.

Breathing Destruction wasn't in my focus initially, but I'm getting such an unexpected warmth and nostalgia from it that I'm considering a bottle. It's unlike anything in my collection now, and I might want it as a friend for the cold months.

In the throw of a soft cloud, this one brings an orris-vanilla musk, creamy and smooth as butter and infused with sugary roses.

From Whose Eyes makes me imagine a fluffy serving of rose-scented, perfumey cotton candy in a carnival hosted by unicorns. It should be the perfume of ombre hair with at least three pastel colors.

This one is too musky for me, but I can see why the fuss. 🦄