I had ordered a sampler set from Libertine so that I could try several scents from this indie brand, but if I am being honest, I didn’t really peruse the notes or the copy ahead of time. With these assortments, I like to keep the details secret from myself and allow myself to be surprised and delighted at however things might turn out. So, for example, I wasn’t immediately aware that Soft Woods, with its notes of fir and incense, also included rose–a fraught note that is all kinds of problematic for me. Dead Mom issues and whatnot. As this wore on my skin, I did become aware that I’d been Trojan-horsed a rose scent, but it’s quite unlike any other rose I’ve experienced, a boldly balsamic, bordering on fruity-rose; it’s weird, the amber jamminess is there, like a resinous fig preserves or a honeyed compote…but rather, the carmelized essence of it, absent the actual fruit. This is a mystical rose, a fairytale rose, an enchanted ode to a princess–any princess, all princesses. Whatever they look like, whatever form they take, whether they were graceful and benevolent, or the kind in a spicy Anne Rice novel written under a pen name, or even the sort who slaughtered their way to sainthood with a toddler strapped to their back. A princess can look all kinds of ways and do all kinds of things and I am pretty sure in all of the stories about them, they smell of Soft Woods.

Initio’s Oud For Happiness is a dry, brittle bitter oud, coupled with a clean, soft woody musk, with the addition of something subtly sweet and pillowy-feathery, like freshly baked milk bread. It then becomes a creamier version of their Musk Therapy, which is what all of Initio’s offerings eventually become on my skin. I am not complaining–Musk Therapy is amazing. But I don’t need a whole shelf of things that smell similar, especially at this price tag.

Chypre Mousse from Oriza Legrand is an unexpected …honeyed absinthe chypre? It manifests as a yeast-raised donut speckled with pungent, green herbs and burnished with a ladle of lustrous warm sugar glaze made from the honey of hallucinogenic blooms and bitter wormwood extract. Like if you went to the super artisanal donut shop/altered state dispensary and ordered “the green fairy special”. It's intensely sweet in disturbing ways that I can't quite put my finger on, and it's absolutely not for me--but I can definitely appreciate it.

Comme des Garcons Rouge is an odd and surprising scent, and at all not what I expected to smell from this glossy, cherry red popsicle of a bottle. It instead reminds me of an artwork by the fabulous, and flamboyant Argentinian painter, Leonor Fini  In Les Sorcieres, we observe five frenzied witches swarming and swooping on their broomsticks through a swirling blood-red sky. This scent mirrors these feverish sensations of airy, dizzying fizziness and couples them with a terrestrial earthiness, like herbs and leaves and things freshly dug from a garden patch. Rouge smells like an effervescent shrub (the vinegary drink, not the bushy plant. But also minus most of the vinegar) of rhubarb and beet, fiery ginger root, and floral pink pepper. A witch's cauldron tipple that tapers to a beautiful gingery incense.

I smell this and I'm suddenly time traveling back to the olden days of 2014 when I did a  thing on the internet which some of you may remember though you may not have known it was me. I shared daily missives of love and self-acceptance from Eternia's most nefarious skull-faced villain, as he progressed on his journey of healing. I am speaking of course, about Skeletor is Love. The facebook and tumblr pages still exist, if you have no idea what I am talking about. Anyway, someone on Makeup Alley realized that was me, and tickled that the creator of that weird thing was a also fragrance enthusiast, we became friends. Miyako from Annayake was a rare scent she insisted I find, she pointed to an eBay listing for it, and it was soon in my possession. Inspired by Japanese incense rituals, it was a perfume I'd never heard of, but was intrigued by, and it's unexpectedly lovely. It's warm, richly-scented amber, copious dry, dreamy spices and woods, and a shifting but utterly ambrosial note of smoky green floral cardamom. It is lush and hypnotic and when I wear it calls to mind the strange connections we make in life and how if you're not open to them, you might miss out on something spectacular.

Tibetan Mountain Temple does not smell like my idea of a blend prepared in accordance with centuries-old traditional Tibetan Buddhist methods to accompany prayer offerings or spiritual purification rituals. But what do I know! This is more like the snack aisle in a tourist shop *next* to the monastery but the only thing they sell are orange creamsicles and those ridiculously delicious Newman ginger-Os, which if you've never had them, they are basically like Oreos in concept, but instead of a chocolate cookie sandwich, it's a ginger snap.

I was a little kid who never paid attention to anything. I perpetually had my head in the clouds. Of course, when you’re forever checked out of what’s going on, things happen without you noticing. Sometimes these are things like your mother signing you up for summer camp and you don’t know anything about it until she’s packing you up on a bus with a lot of kids you don’t know to a place you’ve never heard of. Still, there’s daydreaming and imagining to be done, so I’d just find a seat by myself, lean my head against the filmy glass of the bus window, and breathe in the clean, cool morning air of an early June morning in Ohio, as the vehicle picked up speed and we drove out of the suburbs into the sunshine. Demeter’s Fresh Hay smells like honeyed red clover blossom, warm, dusty earth and soft woody grassy vetiver; the fertile ground of summer daydreams and limitless expanse of a young person’s imagination

Poets of Berlin from Vilhelm Parfumerie is a vile bioluminescent mutant blueberry thing. A blueberry subjected to a sketchy, underfunded experiment in a prototype telepod but there was also a particle of lemon-aloe-bamboo Glade air freshener in the chamber before it was hermetically sealed as well as a smashed bedazzle gem that fell off of an intern’s acrylic nail, unnoticed. Torn apart atom by atom, the small jammy fruit merged with the glinting shards of sugary bling and a blisteringly caustic glow-in-the-dark citrus-lily. I don’t think David Bowie ever wrote a song about this monster but there was a movie adaptation with Jeff Goldblum

We've got a date with Old Scratch and we're gonna meet them wearing Idole de Lubin and nothing else. This fragrance is marketed for men which is a bunch of malarkey because this woodsy, darkly spiced scent with notes of saffron, rum, teak wood, and sugarcane would be devastating on anyone who possesses a human body. And speaking of possessing human bodies, our bae Beelz is due to stop by at midnight and this infernal gourmand redolent of unholy smoke, syrupy booze, and leather-clad sin, will make them feel right at home.

Plush white florals and earthy leathery dreamy oakmoss and woody, close to the skin musk; it's classic perfumery with a wink. While there's definitely that sense of powdery, vintage glamour, it's lensed through a cracked-looking glass, there's something shimmering and strange about it too. It's the faded photo of Siouxsie Sioux reading Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit that never existed in this world, but I'm certain it does in some other reality.