The Woman Behind It

[doomsday_disco]

By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

 

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

 

I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind,—that dim sub-pattern,—but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

A perfume of veils and bars, moonlight slashing through prison walls: silvered lavender and white iris shuddering like lamplight on stained plaster, ambergris frothing through vanilla husk, and the phantom outline of a rose-touched woman’s silhouette.

[Invidiana]

The Woman Behind It All is reminiscent of gauzy off-white curtains, of shadows flitting back and forth on plaster walls, making you wonder if the vaguely human silhouettes are a trick of light or something more. Something like the fuzzy glow of lamplight buzzes in the background. Phantoms of a woman's perfume hang in the air. Haunting and realistic, this is a dimly room where ghosts are not afraid to show themselves in some form. 

Edited October 19 by Invidiana

[Amoraexcena]

Darn. In the bottle, this one has some complexity and promise, on my skin the white iris overwhelms everything else, it's practically an iris single note. ~30 min in, I can occasionally get a ghostly hint of something else undernearth that's shifty and gauzy and compelling - but I take a second closer sniff and it's all iris again.

 

I'll let it sit for a bit and see where it goes, but this is likely getting passed on to someone whose skin would appreciate it more. 

[ghoulnextdoor]

Sneaking into Deborah Turbeville's Unseen Versailles, elegant ghost stories and hazy hallucinations of antique decadence. A sliver of lavender soap worn translucent, the waxy trace of vintage lipstick on forgotten drinking glasses, pale powdery woods exhaling through dust-shrouded chambers. Those fleeting witnesses—hairpins, papers, cosmetics left in neglected storage rooms—so delicate an open window might blow them all away. The specific scent of beauty rituals frozen mid-performance, isolation and romanticism suspended in abandoned gilt, the haunting intimacy and immersion of faded grandeur where pristine splendor once might have kept you behind velvet ropes.

Edited October 31 by ghoulnextdoor

[feyofthefellwood]

Initially, this is heavy on the iris. Over time, the lavender peeks through, then the rose (which has a bruised rose petals smell to me rather than a rose in bloom). Then finally the vanilla comes through, which sweetens the scent a lot. The iris shares some of the spotlight but remains dominant throughout. The ambergris isn't readily identifiable to me until well into the dry down because the iris is so strong. 

 

Overall, this reminds me of a "classic" feminine perfume, floral and powdery, both sharp and sweet. It sits fairly close to the skin on me, but it's strong and a little goes a long way, and it lasts a long time. I enjoy it for what it is, but if you don't like iris or powdery florals, this will not be for you. 

[wilhelmscream]

This is a very ghostly scent. Like something you'd normally find in our An Evening with the Spirits collection in our Yule releases.

 

The white lavender and iris give it all a soft, dreamy haze. The plaster, thankfully, isn't too strong -- more of a hint of airborne plaster dust than anything. The ambergris gives off that musky, bodily warmth, which dovetails into the vanilla husk and this "rose-touched woman's silhouette". It smells like the perfume of whoever inhabited the room before our poor narrator of the story.

[bunnicula]

A floral blend that is sharp, pale and silvery like cold mirrors or the glint of a knife. I believe it's iris I'm smelling the most, because I'm very familiar with lavender and rose but this doesn't smell much like either of those. In the background is this earthy dry vanilla husk combined with crumbling plaster. It's a strange scent! The lavender and ambergris are never really detectable to my nose, but I want to say I can smell a hint of white rose along with the iris and the crumbly dry plaster vanilla husk. The sharpness of the scent calms over time, moonlight casting shadows onto vanilla plaster walls, a vase of dry flowers, in a cold room.

[RoseThornAndOak]

I agree this is very Evening With The Spirits in atmosphere. I get a pale ghost of florals like if a spirit was trapped in a powder puff. A friend and I came up with a bunch of silly spoopy song names for this project that never came to be like Elegant in Darkness and Mournique, and this kinda reminds me of both. It's all funerals, and ghosts, and old houses. It's a little too powdery at first, but that drydown I can get down with. Floral and pretty and soft. 

[LavenderCoffee]

when I considered the scent notes for this one and A Recurrant Spot, I thought I'd have more success here, but it turned out to be the opposite. my skin runs entirely away with the iris in this and I'm not especially fond of iris on its own. 

[doomsday_disco]

I'm also getting An Evening With the Spirits vibe from this one. It has the same sort of eerie coolness as some of those scents.

 

I decided to try it because I wanted to try at least one scent from The Yellow Wallpaper collection, and this one seemed like it would be the most accessible (plus, y'know, it contains lavender  ). This is indeed accessible, with the plaster dust being pretty tame and kind of lending a powdery make-up or classic perfume vibe in the background. However, the standout notes to me are the iris (which is somehow not as sharp and screechy as usual) and the musky ambergris. I've tried this a few times now, and the lavender and vanilla husk aren't really distinct on me, and I'm not getting anything rose-y from this, either.

 

While this isn't something I need a bottle of, I'm glad the iris wasn't extremely rude to me (despite being a main player), and that this wasn't heavy on the plaster. If you like iris and are looking for a scent with An Evening With the Spirits sort of feel, though, this might be up your alley.

Edited 4 hours ago by doomsday_disco