Black Eyeliner

[doomsday_disco]

A 99-cent drugstore eyeliner freshly melted with a Bic lighter, in concert with the leathery metallic gleam of a well-loved pyramid spike bracelet.

[bheansidhe]

I love when Beth takes a challenging (or fun!) note and noodles with it across several iterations, playing the perfume version of "Will it waffle?" I'm specifically thinking of the recent variants on bread dough, lipstick accord, milk/scorched milk, motor oil, and kerosene/gasoline. 

 

Black Eyeliner is a complicated blend when sniffed, and I suspect it's a duo play on the kerosene (Bic lighter) and makeup base accords. Right off the (sic) bat, there's a note that reminds me of Prop Chainsaw or Pumpkin Gas Can (sans pumpkin), a waxen sweetness, and a definite pop of scorched plastic. It's overlaid with waxy, gothic black leather and what my nose infers might be rosewood or soft fir (to represent the pencil aspect?).

 

When first applied it's sweet like sweet wood notes and sweet makeup base, but also petro-chemically altered, stoned to the gills on whatever was being passed behind the gym at fifth period (senior class), liberally wrapped in a worn black (NOT brown) leather cuff. 

 

As it wears, this smells like the back racks of PVC and vinyl fetish clothes at Hot Topic before it went sparklegoth. There's some perfumed makeup samples open in the store, sure, but you're pawing through the dino bones rendered down into gleaming faux patent corsets and metallicized black poly lamé, filled with offgassing and adrenaline, back when the suburban mall punk experience was as close as you'd ever get to Picadilly Square.

 

I'm not getting any incense or headshop notes, but you could convince me there's a sticky resin binder in the eyeliner. (It quickly loses the plastic scorch, if that part worried you.) Now that I sniff some more, I think the sweetness reminds me of black anise or licorice, so that might be contributing to the eyeliner vibe (however, I wouldn't call this a licorice blend like Black Plastic Rats). There's a light infusion of Beth's mirrored glass or silver needle note, to represent the pyramid spikes (were yours hematite or stainless?).

 

Anyway - artificial and offputting as a black mohawk, fun as illicit clubbing in high school, leatherpunk AF, and deeply nostalgic for this OG new waver. It smells about as dangerous as a goth My Little Pony, and it makes me want to pinch the cheeks of the precious baby batses clopping by in their 12-inch platform Docs. I don't know that I need a bottle, but I would definitely use it for layering on Halloween. 

Edited September 8 by bheansidhe