It’s better to open this up with some quick truth. I am not a sweet, vanilla, trending perfume person. I do not and have no intention of heading to stores to pick up samples of syrupy, sweet scents. Or the powderier laundry type.

Pink crystal bottles, apple-shaped bottles, unique sizes and shapes... Nothing has ever really caught my eye.

I do love warm leathers, tobacco and smoke, herbs, woody, violets, lilacs, petrichor, wet moss, brown tape, animals, and, for lack of a better word, body-smelling musk. They are reasonably tame. Quite dull, even. Depending on how far down the rabbit hole you go.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate it when someone smells great, with a fresh, pretty scent. I do. I love that people find joy in it.

But over the last year, in many ways because I accidentally ended up on perfumetok, I discovered a huge array of fragrances that piqued my interest.

What do you mean I can smell like the worn-out pew in a church? What are you saying here, that there is perfume that smells like Hannibal the TV series?

What do you mean I can specifically smell like a pavement washed out with rain after an extremely hot day, while I’m sitting on a balcony in the middle of Paris with red wine and a cigarette?

I can smell like space? LIKE THE MOON?

Still, even with this, there was nothing that really grabbed me...

And then, I saw a slew of perfumetokkers retch and writhe and profess disgust and hatred for a scent.

I had to know what it was, and more importantly, for the first time in my life I needed it.

Toskovat’ Inexcusable Evil.

I head to the website, and the names and the descriptions have me hooked. They make no sense in terms of “top notes jasmine,” they are small works of poetry.

A concept in a bottle.

I’m being given memories that aren’t mine, served up in a fragrance I can have. Yes, count me in - a thousand times.

I took my time, though, and eventually ordered a sample set of five Toskovat’ fragrances.

One of which snatched my soul away in the kitchen.

The set included:

Inexcusable Evil

• (aka the soul snatcher)

Keep in mind, I am not a nose. I can’t tell you anything about the real notes in these, and actually, that is exactly why I now have a list of other fragrances I want to sample. I don’t want to smell like roses, or sea breezes, or fresh limes.

I want to smell like chaos, confusion, and something you can’t quite put your finger on.

And without this set? I wouldn’t know that for sure. But I do now.

Without Anarchist A, I’d be lost in a sea of sun-soaked sea-breeze and warm wood, instead of the old-polished pew in a church that has absorbed hundreds of years of incense and soaked in aged whiskey.

But to get to that, I had to put myself through Inexcusable Evil and In The Belly of The Beast.

Inexcusable Evil

This is going to be a journey, so if you want a quick rundown of the real notes, look at a list. What you read in those notes will put many people off. What do you mean by blood and iodine?

What happens when you first smell it will have you upset for a minute. And I don’t mean you’re going to be sad, but in a state of ‘why am I doing this’.

Waiting and hoping for it to get better is a pointless pursuit. Instead, what you need to do, and what I did, is just go with it.

It won’t get better if you are hoping for something pretty in the traditional sense. But if you approach this as a piece of art you can smell, rather than a fragrance, I think you’re closer to the truth.

It’s not a classy classic Dior, and it for sure isn’t for everyone. In fact, I’m fairly certain it is not for anyone. It feels like personal explorations of skill, and we are lucky enough to be able to sniff it.

It is easy to underestimate how much of a burning building smell you can get in a bottle, even after watching people have pretty violent reactions on TikTok to the smell.

Somehow, you think you might be different. Surely it is all for show. Surely it isn’t that strong.

You’re not. It isn’t. It is.

I used a clean cotton scarf and gave it two pumps. Two pumps were more than enough, and to this day, I am thankful I didn’t spray it on myself. I’ve learned just enough from perfumetok to know that.

But what I did do, and I didn’t learn this lesson the first time because I did it with the next one, was give it that deep sniff I had seen on the videos. I heaved the strong scent into the back of my nose and almost left the planet.

And by this, I mean that I wasn’t ready for the hyper-realistic smell of burning. Or I think a closer description is a building that has burned, the fire has gone, but the pungent acrid air is hanging, and it hurts your eyes, nose, and throat.

And the moment you are starting to recover from that, you are flung into a hospital, and it is metallic blood and iodine. It’s gauze that you’ve worn for too long.

It is a lot, and really fast.

But that first blast is starting to fade, and then something starts to happen.

From that initial smell, somewhere at the very end of the monumental snort, I found flowers. But not fresh...closer to leaving a bunch out a few days too long. The sweet rotting smell.

And within the same few minutes, I could imagine this as if I had set a bunch of dried flowers on fire, and it washes between the two.

Underneath all of the violence, there is a floral. And you’d be tempted, like I was, to assume that is where this fragrance leaves us, but it isn’t.

Once the flowers have settled back, there is a woody, burning smell that comes back again and wafts in and out with the flowers.

It takes you on a journey, and you don’t particularly have a choice of the direction you’re going with it.

I knew that scent is deeply tied to memories, but what I didn’t know was that it can put you in places you’ve never been before.

It’s vivid, it’s messy, it’s vile and violent, and in the end, it’s you holding a bouquet of burning flowers.

And you’ll be happy you did.

In The Belly of the Beast

As if the last one wasn’t enough, I continue. And I do not, to this day, know why I followed the same process and did the deep inhale on this one, too.

This one did something to my nose, and I can’t even explain it.

The initial pumps on a fresh scarf and a deep sniff made me feel odd, and for about five seconds, which felt much longer, I was inside a dead whale at the bottom of the ocean, wondering what I was doing with these testers.

The rubberness was unlike anything I have had the unfortunate pleasure to smell.

But I feel like if I wear this in public, I will become too powerful and could most likely take over an entire country. Maybe even a continent.

It smells salty, and not the ‘fresh sea breeze’ type, but like if seawater got in your mouth, and you are upset about it. Unlike when this happens in real life, you’re going to go back for more.

And somewhere in all of that, I imagined I was standing at the edge of an aquatic enclosure, not of seawater, but something else. Seals in a zoo, maybe?

It doesn’t feel as challenging and complicated as Inexcusable Evil. But there are many layers to it.

Would it be at home in a room filled with EDM and latex bodysuits? Yes.

And equally, it would be at home in the back of a bar room playing cards, with whiskey on the table and a dog in the corner.

Due to my strong preference for more ‘masculine’ scents, this one has become almost addictive to me now.

After the opening of rubber and some type of open water, it settled and leaned so heavily into leather. But warm, soft, thick, living leather, closer to an animal than an expensive chair or bag.

If I were to get poetic about it, it feels like this:

You’re close to water, and you know when it is mouthwatering? The idea of it? Like that, followed by being dragged to the bottom by a whale, or at least something thick and rubbery has got you, in its sloshing stomach.

Then it swiftly throws you up, spits you out in the beast-filled woods, on wet earth.

When the fragrance settles down, it’s warm, close to the skin, leathery, and every once in a while, a few animals arrive to remind you they were here first.

I can’t get this one out of my mind, and this is the tester that I will let a small amount leak out the nozzle and put on the back of my wrists so I can smell it while I work.

This one snatched my soul clean out, and I can’t get enough of it.

Age of Innocence

To say I struggled with this one is an understatement.

Again, I had to remind myself that these aren’t meant to be simple. They are meant to be a challenge, and I truly felt like this one was.

The space between the overly sweet sugary strawberry cotton candy smell and the vivid gas station was nauseating for me.

It is interesting, of course it is, because I can smell, at the same time, synthetic sweetness and industrial. Two smells that you wouldn’t want at the same time, surely.

Similarly to the others, this one moves. It opens sticky and sweet but slicked with gasoline, and somewhere a little like burned rubber wheels on the road.

The sweetness starts to settle deeply into strawberry bubble gum. The cheap pink one that as a kid you’d crave, the grainy texture, and big plastic bubbles.

This doesn’t last long, though, and it starts to sit more like you’re in a puddle of petrol. But it is fine, because you’re one of those people who like the smell as you sit in the car at the gas station.

The real moment, though, comes a little while later, and for me I could smell a burnt caramel with gas station, but not in a good way.

Then somewhere in it all this, the fragrance got serious. As I mentioned earlier, I understood scent taking you to a place you’ve been before, but perhaps not places you’ve never seen or experienced.

Probably influenced by the name and certainly influenced by the current issues in the world.

I had the image of a tricycle, a girl cycling along, bubble gum and smiles, but the surroundings were closer to the war-torn images on the TV. The end of the scent transitioned from a busy gas station to a derelict, broken space.

I couldn’t shake it after I got to that point, and I can’t smell this scent without that coming back to me.

While I appreciate the art and dedication to creating it, I can say I don’t want to smell this again.

Ever.

Annacamento

This one might be the most complex to talk about, because it feels almost dreamy. The joke of it is that on paper, it is the simplest. To me, anyway.

In terms of lasting power, it didn’t seem to take five to seven business days to be washed out like the others.

It sort of drifts away, but clings in the best possible way to the skin, you almost can’t smell it.

And annoying as that might sound, it suits it.

I can’t explain why, but it feels like it isn’t meant to last for everyone else to smell it. It is meant to make them crave it and want more. But you get to keep some of it, like an odd little secret.

The only person who might smell it is someone who was very, very close to you.

Not great for your pocket, considering the cost of a full bottle, but this one reminds me of a memory that you can’t seem to keep.

A thought that keeps leaving you, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t make out the shapes. But you know how it looked and felt. You understand it.

I spent more time reading about Inexcusable Evil before the set arrived, so this one had no time given to it, and that was a mistake.

I find this one incredible. Not in the same way that In The Belly Of The Beast has me in a chokehold, though.

I get a lime-edged glass with a rum cocktail on a warm breezy beach. I picture a warm sunlit room filled with that hanging smell of incense, not currently burning, but it has been, a lot.

You don’t have anything to do today, so you are for sure barefoot, probably with a book open somewhere. And it’s warm, not hot, but bright. And the whole image is draped in a milky, creamy coconut veil.

Unlike the others, it feels simple, comfortable, and incredibly relaxed. Everything about this one begs to be worn on a warm summer's day, late in the evening.

The easiest place, and maybe where I should’ve started.

Anarchist A

Take the incense from Annacamento and turn it up full volume.

I can pick the alcohol up in this one to the point that I thought I might smell like I had indulged heavily myself. And all the time, the smell of old dried paper notes and a dinner jacket that has hung in the closet for too long. Musty, but in a way that makes you want to smell it more.

Somewhere in all of it, I get thick, in-the-pot-with-the-lid-off writing ink.

I needed to keep sniffing at this one to work out what I was smelling but not placing.

Then I got it.

The moment you catch the smell of church pews in it, the wax-polished wood, you’ll know this smells like the inside of a church.

All the layers start to unlock when you find it. Or they did for me.

You’ll begin to see the big incense-packed thurible that swung the weekend before, the whiskey that should not have been drunk, and the robe that has seen better days. All at once.

And most likely the wooden windowsills are dusty in there.

I had to try this one more than once. On the cotton scarf it settled weirdly and was closer to plastic than anything else. On paper it was horrible, hit me sharply.

On the skin, with a little time, it changed for me. It lost the harsh plastic smell; it became something warm and inviting, and then every so often, like I’d been dipped in a whiskey vat. It ran inky, and like washed, crumbled paper money notes.

This one you can wear; it sits neatly between the soft and uncomplicated warmth of Annacamento and the violent nasal attack of Inexcusable Evil and In The Belly Of The Beast.

Overall thoughts

There is a certain idea and mystery around these fragrances, and they have a big reputation, some gatekeeping, and numerous opinions about them. Rightfully so, because art, as these are, should make you feel something.

The testers are sitting on my desk in front of me as I type it, and the only one that I can’t bring myself to run through again is Age of Innocence. I do not enjoy the synthetic strawberry at all; I would rather go through the first sniff of Inexcusable Evil again.

However, what is interesting is that I have been with these for a few weeks. I appreciate them differently.

Inexcusable Evil smells like a rich, acidic floral, with a hint of a gauze-covered grazed knee and sweet, burned bouquets. I understand why this isn’t casual wear; it is a statement, and one that belongs in a drawer.

In The Belly Of The Beast has my heart, regardless of that moment where I had to struggle through the blubbery rubber upset. This one has the longest staying power for me. It might be that I actively sniff everything in the hopes of smelling it; it might just be that it really does last that long. Because of the animalistic nature of this one, I’ll be wearing it when I want my enemies (which I don’t have) to fear me and have no idea why.

Age of Innocence can leave me alone. I will never reach for this, and it has reignited my distaste for strawberry scents, drinks, gum... everything. After multiple attempts at even sniffing the cap, each time is as bad as the last. We’re not friends.

Annacamento... I couldn’t help but enjoy it. Much simpler than the others. I got the rum, and I feel the creaminess of it too, but more of a coconut than dairy, but I miss much of the other food-focused notes. And I know I should be annoyed that the fragrance seems just to drift away, but I think it made me appreciate it more. It’s like you wear this one just for yourself. For me, as lovely as it is, it doesn’t have the punch I am looking for.

Anarchist A. The more of it I use, the more it reminds me of an old musty church, with a massive dose of whiskey, and I get the ink coming through, too. I have yet to find the snow in there. Where can I wear this? The only place would be somewhere I was intending to have more whiskey. Or, an actual church, just so I can compare it.

This was very much about shaking my senses up and exploring what fragrances are when we are outside the realms of ‘safe’ and easy. There is nothing wrong with beautiful, simple, fresh fragrances; they are gorgeous, but they just aren’t for me.

I want it weird, visceral, and challenging. And what I have found is that I can do all of that and a little more.

Toskovat’ gave me the chance to explore beyond crisp apples and jasmine. And start looking for what I enjoy, regardless of what the notes say.

If you’ve got recommendations, leave them in the comments.