Les Lunatiques is a cupped palm of night air: softly flickering mothwings at midnight, a dewy mist of cloud floating across the moon, shadow-draped blooms furled in upon themselves and dreaming, the holy gleaming poetry of cosmic light reaching us from stars long dead, and the sweet murmuring exhalations of a slumbering grove of saplings.

Glass Blooms by Regime des Fleurs is absolutely exquisite and I wish I could come up with the words to tell you just how exquisite it is but instead, all I can tell you is that it conjures the essence of the most beautiful woman in the world, or at least I thought she was, in 1982 when I was 6 years old. And also she wasn’t a woman, she wasn’t even human, she was a plastic doll made by the Kenner brand. A Glamour Gal. Her name was Shara. You can smell the pearly musk mallow, milky ambrette and cognac in the memory of her lustrous, opalescent hair and in her sleek shimmery gown, a vision of frosted starlight, cool, aloof lily of the valley and pale peony, delicate and dappled with dew on a spring morning when the chill is still bright and hard in the air. When I wore Glass Blooms this evening, I felt every bit as elegant and enchanting as I felt it must feel to be a Glamour Gal like Shara. Who, though Kenner has been defunct since 2000, I can find still-in-package on eBay for 24.99…which is a better deal than a bottle of Glass Blooms, at $225. If I’m being honest, though, I think I need both of them

Tubéreuses Castane is such a beautiful, fabulous fever dream of a cocktail... an elderflower-forward sparking sweet Riesling with a musky, caramelized chunk of amber floating in the wine, along with a luxuriant dollop of rich chestnut puree and a generous dash of spicy ginger liqueur. It's heady and hypnotic and a little weird but it's not too cerebral or precious about it and lordy be, it is a friggin glamazon

Notre Dame Notte di Natale is what happens when the wicked, witchly spirit of venomous anisette, honeyed plums, and midnight-plucked flowers from Christian Dior's Poison winds its dark essence through into the flesh of a gingerbread man, wrapping itself in a crust of dark spices, black treacle, and unholy sugar. A fragrant possession of spiced damnation.

If Heinrich Lossow's painting "The Sin" got a modern perfume brief, but plot twist - the nun is doing laundry, and instead of a garden variety horny priest, she's being visited by a biblically accurate angel, all burning eyes and razor wings and divine perversity. It's giving Clovis Trouille's ecstatic scandalous nuns but make it fresh linens and benediction. A slutty nun chypre laundry musk that somehow makes perfect sense. Sacred and profane, bleached and debauched.

Through the tiny gabled window of a dollhouse attic, a secret scene unfolds: a miniature lace shawl lies draped across a trunk, its delicate stitches dusted with what could be petit four crumbs, could be breakfast cereal marshmallows - fairy-sized sweets scattered by some forgotten child's hand. Beside it, pearly mothballs like strange sugar drops rest among cobwebby linens that exhale their milky-musky-powderiness. From a diminutive crystal perfume bottle in the corner, phantom florals and delicate vanilla mingle with dust motes in the afternoon sunlight, the whole tiny world held in perfect, timeless suspension.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Snake Oil is a luxuriant molasses-y, musky deeply sugared vanilla incense, blended with dark spices more sacred than culinary. This is a scent that lends to a sense of danger and power, and not for the faint of heart–but rather for a heart-pricked thrice under a full moon right before you take a big dripping bite of it to seal the spell in flesh and blood and death. You’re the dangerous, powerful creature in this scenario and you gotta commit if you’re going to wear this gorgeously potent thing.

Imagine a little picnic with your beloved stuffed bunny, the threadbare and shabby old thing with the missing eye and the unraveling stitches and the patch on its little belly where the stuffing has begun to leak through, the one you’ve loved so much and for so long that there is no doubt in your mind that it is the very realest rabbit. And picture the most realistic mud pie you ever made, so true to life in fact that when you took a crumbling bite of it, it actually tasted a bit like a lightly spiced tea loaf, gently sweetened, with a soft, tender crumb– maybe a seasonal apple or zucchini bread, but minus the actual fruit or vegetation. As a matter of fact, there’s little to no greenery in this scent at all, even the clover and the hay is more honeyed sweetness than grassy or botanical, and I do think that verdancy, that sense of green growing things, is what’s missing for me. This fragrance is less Peter Rabbit and more Velveteen Rabbit, right down to the well-worn cozy, cuddly fuzzy, snuggly skin musk of it– and as a matter of here’s a fleeting there-and-gone curious note that seems to be aiming for milky and creamy, but briefly veers a touch sour and unwell almost like a hint of baby spit-up. Like your beloved stuffed bunny that served as a faithful childhood repository for various ailments and was never quite fully sanitized. Despite its peculiarities and what it’s missing, it truly feels like a love letter to something sweet and cherished, and so far back in time you can never reach it again–and I think that’s ultimately what makes it so evocative – it’s the memory, how you felt in that garden and that friendship with your soft, sweet companion, filtered through the lens of childhood wonder and a love so fierce it transcends reality.

This fragrance is quite an exercise in restraint. It is the olfactory equivalent of hushed whispers, fading echoes, and pale shadows further muted by weak sunlight. The champagne is a warmed, still echo in its glass, the effervescence long gone. A delicate tension simmers between the dripping sweetness of peach and ambrette’s intimate, powdery musk, all set against an understated backdrop of cool, elusive floral notes and the gentle, woody humidity of oakmoss. Maggie the Cat isn’t at all the piercing shrieking experience that I expected but offers an introspective, understated moment instead

While I do love the scent of a heavily wooded hinterland or an ominous evergreen Mirkwood Forest midnight–basically, a syrupy resinous coniferous balsamic dirge of a scent (think Norne from Slumberhouse or Dasein Winter Nights) this is…not that. Or, well, it’s sort of that, but remove all those associations with darkness and shadows and the macabre. Rather than the Huntsman chasing a terrified Snow White into the gloomy woods, this is instead the contentment of Snow White in a sun-dappled forest glade, surrounded by woodland creatures, a soft trembling faun on her lap, and a little bluebird perched on her finger. It’s the scent of weathered branches and leaves fluttering in the breeze, sticky sap and damp creeping moss, the faint sweetness of wildflowers crushed under your feet, the rosy golden musk of a sunbeam on your skin; it’s all of that, but it’s not overly sentimental or twee. Its the sheer, gauzy summer halo of a winter haunted forest emerging from a deep sleeping curse.