A hooded figure watching from beyond the shadows, but shadows of what, and why in a place no shadow should be? The insidious intrusion, the confounding juxtaposition, the thing found in the wrong place. The stirring of things best left unstirred. Resinous orchid musk, feral balmy, rotting-earthed humidity. Milky murk, like looking through the eyes of the dead. Honeyed spices part buried, cinnamon-cardamom-disinterment deferred, the ground is wrong, a terror in the terroir. The boundless and hideous unknown, a carnal effluvium of the eerie and the weird, reinterpreted as a not-too-bad fragrance. Actually, kinda lovely.
Ramshackle wooden pier, salt-bleached planks sea wrack rot, shifting scrim of slate sky. Miss Akranes contest, bright bunting wilting in salt spray and sea mist, dripping gown and cracked rubber boots. Icy rain of butter and brine, each drop a tiny oyster on the tongue. Fishing nets of pearl grey silk tangled with kelp and hollow percussions of fish bones; the iodine tang of seaweed rotting in tide pools where lobster traps rust and seashell sibilance gurgles, whispers, salted and cured. Sea glass teeth, crowns of crab shell, scepter of driftwood and whalebone. Something ancient stirs beneath the harbor, pageantry for drowned gods. What the tide brings in, the mayor photographs for the brochure. What it takes away, no one admits to their children. Velkomin til Akranes. Sjórinn heilsar þér svanglega.
A rose I immediately enjoy is a rare creature indeed, and this one conjures the fierce tenderness of Yosano Akiko's verse. I don't know how this extraordinary poet would feel about this fragrance, but I am channeling her spirit for these impressions.
Ancient wood smoke drifts between scattered fog. Morning bell echoes— I taste metal on my tongue, spring's sharp, necessary cut.
Green leaf floating in the temple's shallow puddle reflects my true face. A mantis waves its thin arms in mock benediction.
Thorn-pricked finger traces rose oil, crimson poems on sleep-soft limbs, bitter sutras cannot wash this sweetness from memory.
Peak pixie dream girl Peter-Pan collared Zooey Deschanel ModCloth dress, honey-apricot-jasmine preciousness, infantile heliotrope Alice & Olivia floral babydoll cast-offs set alight, smoldering in the gutter. It wasn't a cleansing fire, not a redemptive flame. Sort of like a nasty garbage bin blaze, destroying evidence of your cutesy, kitchsy crimes. Embezzling from a cupcake boutique, or stealing someone's vintage typewriter collection, or you did an identity theft or two to afford your overpriced mason jar cocktail with artisan bitters obsession. Some real twee shit. A burnt-out, acrid sweetness "like ew gross" scratch-n-sniff sticker layered atop already barfy one, something bad compounding something worse.
Cold, coiled, calculating. A soupçon of weaponized sweetness. Wilhelmina Slate corner office with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, fashion dungeon once her interior decorator works their dark magic. Absinthe-laced champagne vanilla, green and subtly herbaceous, aromatic poison in crystal stemware. Dusty-woody-musky shadows, slithery spice as hissed threats between bathroom stalls. Mean girls who devoured high school bones and all, used losers' broken phalanges to pick their teeth; earned their MBAs in rancid witch she-devilry and leveled up into the cuntiest of lady bosses; perfected the art of smiling while sliding knives between ribs and stabbing square in the middle of the back. Creamy almond undertones, just enough sweetness to mask bitter herbs. Fake pleasantries/ menacing undercurrent, espionage in every conversation, veiled threats disguised as small talk. How's business this quarter? How are your kids? I'll cut a bitch. I'll strike when you least expect it. More canapés?
Marissa Zappas Carnival of Souls An involuntary grimace quickly smoothed into polite blankness, a gagging masked by a throat-clearing. "Is everything ok?" "Oh, it's nothing, I'm fine" and proceeds to throw up in mouth just a little, not too obvious. Honeyed floral cream turning sour, saffron like dried grass mixed into warm milk that's started to separate. Coconut cream sweet and plasticky with oddly-spiced grave dirt patchouli sediment settling at the bottom. An eerie seriousness that doesn't land and instead evokes a wobbling, wonky naiveté, dewy-eyed and desperate so much as to be repellent. I've found everything I have tried from Marissa Zappas too subtle, too fleeting, stories in which the characters and plots are instantly forgettable, leaving you wondering if anything ever happened at all. Carnival of Souls continues this pointless parade of almost-perfumes.
Iced lemon slices in a cut glass bowl, encased in ice; fresh, crisp herbs soaking in ice water, subtle as a lacy front or two. The memory of a glass of sweet white wine, a honeyed, floral Gewürztraminer wisp; round, rich, luscious, and strangely absent for all its suggestion. Somewhere between charming and refreshing, gentle with a glint in its eye; Not overly polite yet definitely inoffensive, nothing weird you can put your finger on, but there's a phantom shimmer, a flickering presence, an impossible-to-name thing, which makes it either perfectly frustrating or frustratingly perfect.
The phrase "fresh and clean" makes my skin crawl, probably because I associate it with people who make cleanliness feel like a personality trait, who turn basic hygiene into aspirational lifestyle content, who kind of make you feel like a slob just by existing. Meanwhile, I hate to shower (I do it, but I don't like a single second of it!) and generally resent having to participate in hygiene theater; the whole thing is exhausting. Wood and Absinth sidesteps this entire obnoxious charade. Saponified anise, woody-soapiness that hits the sweet spot of ease; herbal bitterness like the toothpaste I'd choose because mint grosses me out, because the sight of someone working gum in their mouth makes me want to puke, because what's wrong with breath that smells like bagels and lox anyway. This is uncomplicated, which I mean as praise—not complex, not trying to conjure memories or transport you somewhere else, just a reliable background scent for everyday wearing when I don't want to think about it, but I also want something that smells like me. Wood, water, bitter leaves; simple, straightforward ingredients that coalesce in a scent that is ....what would I call this? An unfussy staple, slightly elevated? A functional fragrance, unembellished but not boring? This is a competent perfume that might benefit from a less clunky summation, but I'm not sure if a fragrance that's merely competent deserves much more work on my part.
My immediate reaction of Prophecy: "this is an incense for the GIRLIES." Not austere or monastic or churchy or smoky-sacred; this is more of a "burn this stuff in the background of your IG reels while Hozier sings something brooding about desire and divinity and you arrange rose quartz crystals on your nightstand" vibe. Pastel tarot deck spirituality. De-saturated dragon's blood. A dreaming without a dreamer, that ethereal mystical atmosphere floating free, no deep spiritual practice required. An outer light reflected or an inner light unveiled, either way it's been retouched for social media, aesthetic enlightenment run through a vintage Lightroom filter. Creamy, almost fruity, almost floral incense—except not quite incense; aureate suffusion that smells like how luxe body cream feels. Whipped honey vibe; you could take a juicy bite of this tawny chunk of resin. Baby's first incense, but I can see how it becomes A Whole Vibe, build an entire aesthetic around it. The DSH site notes that it's a bestseller, which makes perfect sense...it works well enough for what it's trying to be, but it's too sweet, too fluffy for me. My prophecies need a bit more doom and gloom.
Seminalis conjures a malodorous nebula of intentional discomfort - woody-musky, creamy-milky amberette-sandalwood that chokes every molecule of breathable air in your personal bubble. Suffocating, claustrophobic, the insidious intrusion of someone who knows exactly how close is too close and crosses that line anyway, transforming intimate proximity into a power play through malice and deliberate predation. This isn't the primal biological magnetism Orto Parisi's marketing suggests, but something far more sinister and actually far more gross - not the stench but the suffocating whiff of someone crowding your personal space. The creep who leans in too close and calls it magnetism, who calls your discomfort 'tension' and your retreat "playing hard to get." Someone who corners you against walls in small spaces, follows too closely on the street, continues conversations you're clearly trying to end. Someone who remembers details you never shared, shows up where you are "coincidentally." Someone who gets off on violating boundaries because they've learned that making people squirm can feel like power, who frames invasion as intimacy and calls obsession devotion.
This is a soapy-cozy-clean musk that's so cute, it is almost ridiculous. It conjures rosy dimpled cherub cheeks, pinchable and plump; its nose wants booping, its belly needs a little blooping poke! Bubbly and plucky, adorable beyond reason - honestly, this smells like a tiny, tooting kewpie doll fart, a gentle cloud of foaming soft white soap, creamy lather, gentle musk that feels like marshmallowy cotton balls, and sudsy skin. The fragrance notes mention campfire or tobacco, and I don't smell either at all, but ...something evoking that sort of warmth? But warmth as a vibe, not a temperature; the essence of snuggly vintage comfort, a fluffy, cushy familiarity. But there's also a plastic-y porcelain floral aura, like doll skin coolness rather than human skin, pulse, and breath, creating this odd little tension between the intimate warmth and the artificial, cutesy collectible charm of something endearing that you might win from an olde-timey state fair, like a proto-Labubu in a bottle.
A little burlap sack of herbs, a little spell-bag, green, dry, peppery, sharp, that you tucked in the back of your freezer for safe-keeping. You forgot it entirely and found it freeze-dried and iced over hidden by a bag of peas years later and just in the corner beyond it, you see something strange. A shimmering-glimmering fissure, a glowing rift. What appears to be a portal in the very back of your frigidaire. Sea salt air wafts cleanly from it, cerulean waves dazzling in the far distance (is it ocean or alien horizon? unclear) and most peculiar, sandy pathy lined densely with something very much the shape of pine trees, fragrant boughs heavy with gleaming drifts of snow.
I talk a lot about grey overcast skies and thunderstorms and fog and mist and loving the glooms, but even I can appreciate an objectively beautiful day. Quercia is that day...clear clear air, clean clear water, when people say fresh air or water is sweet, this is what they mean, a sharp lucidity you can taste. Something green but not heavy, not dense forest green, lighter than that, the pale spring green of new growth and tender stems crushed underfoot releasing their watery juice. A cloudless, cool spring morning that makes you genuinely think "I am glad to be alive," the kind of day that feels like a gift you didn't ask for but accepted anyway. Dappled light pooling through ancient oak branches, the tree itself barely present except as shadow, as the reason for this filtered sun, this meadow existing in its patient protection.
Lying in the grass eye-level with buttercups and bluebells, yellow and blue blooming heads, their petals hold that papery, delicate sweetness, barely-there floral, more like the idea of flowers than their actual heavy perfume. They're good-natured about being trampled. They know they'll be growing on your grave one day, gentle and insistent, reclaiming everything with the same cheerful persistence. For five hundred years, the oak has stood watching smaller things bloom and fade and bloom again, and you're just another small thing, bright and brief and beautiful.
Studio Ghibli sunlight, that glowing animation warmth where death exists but doesn't overshadow, where graves get flowers and flowers get walked over, and it's all the same turning wheel, all the same dappled afternoon. The shadow is there - hence the coolness, the morbid turn - but that's the way of things. Just keep enjoying the flowers while you can.
The potpourri of a keepsakes box, dried flowers, brittle bouquets and boutonnieres, precious posies pressed between the pages of diaries and photo albums, sachets tucked among stored remnants and relics, and tokens of remembrance and reverence. Decaying roses in a dusty vanitas painting, blooms dried to powder, musky and musty, ghostly and haunting, sweet and acrid, baby-soft musk, rendered in pressed petals. The grief equal to the love, the tokens never equal to the weight they carry, entirely evidenced upon opening the box and releasing what's tucked within.
The opening spray released something akin to a decrepit lightning bolt locked in a dusty crypt. Sharp, electric decay, musty current, moth-eaten voltage. Then...a bit of shadowy aromatic lycanthropy...a phantasmagoric zoetrope, a being resembling a Maria Germanova-type, shapeshifting through theatrical roles, a noble lady draped in jewels, a swaggering pirate, a beggar woman cloaked in rags, an avant-garde fairy in Stanislavski’s embodiment of The Blue Bird" by Maurice Maeterlinck. Ghostly photographs, the specters haunting antique cartes de visite. At turns, powdery, leathery, metallic, vegetal, austere, sophisticated. Moscow Art Theatre witch-queen caught mid-transformation, glamorous and gloomy, enigmatic and a bit unsettling.
Haruka Tenou energy, chilly sporty musk. Willowy sapphic athletics. Crisp androgynous elegance in fluttering white tennis shorts. Ginger brightness competing against vetiver earthiness, canceling each other out, whittling down to dank earthworm glow. A weakened Sailor Uranus attack - Minor Phosphorescent Subterranean Flicker! or Weakened Subsoil Incandescence Rustle! or something like that! Muted radiance, cool, composed, understated power...or not even power exactly. Powered up, but on a dimmer switch.
Experimental Perfume Club's Velvet Incense is giving the melted-down essence of an entire perfume collection in a cauldron - harmonized, reduced, cohesive. Waterhouse's The Magic Circle, that vaporous pillar of smoke rising from glowing depths, flames crackling with magic and power. In my book The Art of Fantasy, I admired this work, noting the conspiracy of ravens looking on with menacing curiosity from beyond the symbolic ring, the landscape glowering claustrophobically with ominous intent...but inside the circle, equilibrium. Ambery cedar exhaling cool, crisp pepperiness; not "spiced" heat but sharp, bright, almost mentholated edge cutting through resinous warmth. Muted, velveteen ambery-sandalwoody sweetness, thick and plush, wrapping around that cedar spine like soft fabric pulled taut. Everything finds its place in the spell. My perfume cabinet already smells like this, which means I don't need this fragrance... but also means I absolutely understand its appeal.
Have you ever been eating chocolate, maybe some single-origin, maybe Ecuadorian chocolate, so intensely dark and aromatically bitter with like zero percent cocoa butter and no sugar? It really doesn't even taste like chocolate anymore, it's a bit punitive actually (but in an okay way?) And you thought, hey, you know what this chocolate needs is a few grinds, twenty or so, from the teakwood pepper grinder, spicy and textured and gritty. A handful of cedar shavings, bright and dry and papery. A new pair of high-quality, stiff leather boots. I certainly never thought that either, so I guess that makes two of us, and shame on us for our profound lack of vision. Because this is both rich and austere, intense and accessible, and there's also an additional salty balsamic smokiness that makes it really, really interesting.
The fragrance opens with a bitter citrus note that initially brings to mind a cheap air freshener. Fortunately, after a short while, orange blossom and neroli come to the forefront, subtly sweetened with a touch of pear. The base is musky, softened by neroli, warm, smooth and soothing. It is a unisex scent, perfect for spring and summer. Longevity is around four hours, with the composition sitting fairly close to the skin.
Just a sexy manly Amber scent. Top 3 favorite designers OAT. Price may be hard to justify for a lot of people but i just got this, wore it to my company Christmas party and got like 4 compliments. I love amber fragrances so I may be biased but this scent is incredible. Longevity is a problem, you’d think with this scent profile it would lost langer but I only get maybe 4-5 hours
Amazingly simple clean Iris fragrance! In my top 3 “cheaper” designer fragrances. Easy all year scent. Very office friendly and actually lasts a long time for me, like 5 hours and then skin scent at the 6-8 hour mark.
Very pleasant, clean, musky, sunscreeny scent. Smells great. Some may think it leans a little feminine but I think it’s for sure unisex. My wife loves it, it’s one of her dumb reaches especially when it’s a little warmer out.
This perfume holds a lot of beautiful memories for me. I love it. Wish it wasn’t discontinued.
Nice perfume.
