The Afternoon of a Faun feels like the olfactory equivalent of a proper meal after you've been subsisting on extremes of cheap, trashy snacks and the avant-garde weirdness of sneaking into a gallery opening to pilfer nibbles from molecular gastronomy art installations. It's not a rib roast or a tofurkey or any meal in particular, but it's that thing you dine on, whatever that might be for you, that satisfies your belly and nourishes your body and makes you feel good. I suppose this analogy is my way of admiring how extraordinarily well-balanced this perfume is. Inspired, I believe by both a poem of a faun recounting his horny dreams and the scandalous ballet based on the poem, The Afternoon of a Faun is a mossy-spicy-woody-aromatic-green-floral subscription box of a scent wrapped in a bow of bitter herbs and peppery celery enveloping a heart of immortelle's smoky tea and burnt sugar note. If you enjoy chypre scents, you can't go wrong with this one. If you are not sure, or are new to perfume, this is a great one to start with.
This one takes a little getting used to, since it's not quite what I expected: I thought it would be a mossy, earthy, leathery incense, but it's very predominantly a spicy rose scent with some dusty herbal touches of immortelle and myrrh and orris waxiness. Genteel and sweet with a rustic-yet-cozy animalic quality: Mr. Tumnus strolling home through a hedge maze with a bouquet of roses, but small animals have been relieving themselves in the undergrowth. The bouquet is accented with weeds and tied with a fancy ribbon. Quirky, but I could see it growing on me!