Retch

[doomsday_disco]

Unkempt oudh and hot chocolate spiked with booze from a hidden flask.

[Follow My Nose]

In the bottle, Retch is straight up milk chocolate and pungent oudh, with that little bit of oudh-specific stank making an appearance (but quickly disappears). Wet on the skin, the oudh calms down immediately and steps back to become a warm, smoky-woody base. The boozy note adds some heady sweetness that blends in smoothly.

 

This perfume dries down beautifully to a rich resiny chocolate, delicious but not a pure gourmand. Retch is definitely a bit naughty, but secretly sweet at heart.
 

[MadameGorgon]

I’ll preface this by stating I love oudh- drily resinous and woodsy with a little bit of an animalic undertone.  But even non-oudh lovers or oudh newbies might enjoy this.

 

It opens with creamy milk chocolate, then woodsy oudh saunters in, followed by a very discreet nip of that booze- maybe a very smooth rum or bourbon- certainly brown and sweet.

 

Rowdy, unsophisticated Retch quickly transforms into a world-traveling maiden aunt of indeterminate age who shows up randomly smelling of foreign places and unfamiliar resins and sneaks you off before Christmas dinner to get you ridiculously high on hash she smuggled into the country.

Though she is still a metalhead, she traded her biker leathers for Moroccan velvet bought from a souk in Marrakech, traded the corpse paint for kohl and deep red lipstick and channeled her rebellion into donating to causes that piss off her ultra-conservative parents.

 

She doesn’t need to scream anymore, she just ignores her haters.  
 

She’s not at all embarrassed by her portrait with Mall Santa and loves to share it with all the baby goth cousins because she knows it mortifies the relatives

 

Indefinably sweet, creamy, resinous, and Oudh forward with a drop of boozy swagger. 

[patina]

Because of the label art I can’t help seeing this series as characters. Retch reads young to me. They’re trying to be gross and shocking (that booze reads as a little too close to bile sometimes. The oud is a little grungy but not actually barnyard.) In reality they’re about as dangerous as breakfast cereal. Specifically Cocoa Puffs. 

Edited January 31 by patina

[roseus]

Chocolatey boozy oudh. The chocolate and oudh is very pleasant on me, but the booze turns to a sickly sweet cherry cough syrup on my skin unfortunately. 

[OxfordComma]

The reviews made me very curious about this one, despite not normally going for chocolate scents. This smells like rich hot chocolate and a whiff of...goat. Surely the oudh, but I can't help but think of goats. It's not stanky per se, but more... animalic in a furry or hay way. No pooudh here, for me anyways. I don't detect any booze at all, surprisingly. I don't drink so those notes usually stand out to me, but I'm not mad about it. It was the note I was most concerned about haha. Or maybe it's rather peaty and combining with the oudh to give me the hay impression? 🤔 Longevity is not supreme, but throw is good.

 

Growing up we always went to a holiday event held by a large church in our area that went balls to the wall on Christmas lights. Acres of em. They served free hot chocolate that was approximately 600° in little styrofoam cups and you walked around holding it for warmth more than anything because it was undrinkable for like a solid hour. They also had a petting zoo of little goats and ponies and rabbits. This smells exactly like those nights. It's the scent of riding the little train because my mom loved it and scalding the fuck out of your mouth because the cocoa smells drinkable but is actual magma. The Yules this year really came for my nostalgia, man. 

Edited 10 hours ago by OxfordComma