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.

Origins Ginger Essence is like waking up on the first day of summer vacation and launching yourself out of bed with a whoop and a holler into the magnificence of a beautiful cloudless day, a sky so blue you feel you're staring eternity in the eye, and eternity is having a pretty great day, too. The first day of knowing you've got two and a half months ahead of you where you have obligations and no one is making any demands of your time. As adults, we probably haven't experienced that complete and utter and glorious freedom in a long time, and this bright, effervescent, zingy scent of spicy fresh-chopped ginger, and aromatic tangy citrus peels (and a nearby saucepan of simple syrup, just outside our peripheral vision) is as close as we might get to those storybook early summer holiday feels. See also all the lyrics from The Decemberists song June Hymn. "A panoply of song" is exactly how I'd describe this fragrance.

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I need to be in a specific, special mood to reach for this one. Which is to say deep in the throes of a massive sugar craving. For context, the official description of Kerosene's Unknown Pleasures mentions a picturesque vision of walking down a cold street in Manchester, listening to Joy Division, sipping on a warm cup of London Fog. And then a whole bunch of stuff about cozy vanilla and zingy lemon." Ok, so this is less some idyllic goth afternoon tea stroll in the UK, and more a trendy bar in Austin's house special creme brulee pina colada topped with those lightly spiced airplane shortbread cookies that are tastier than they have any right to be. This is like coconut, pineapple, and toasted vanilla custard Mcflurry with an add-in of Biscoff cookies. And by the way, I am not picking on Austin. I traveled there once, and forgot to pack perfume -the horror!- and I bought this bottle of Unknown Pleasures from a lovely little boutique there. It's an almost horrifyingly bonkers dessert perfume and I gotta say, I love it.

I'm revisiting Serge Lutens' Daim Blond, a scent I thought I didn't care for. It's objectively "nice", but it just doesn't resonate with me. I smell the things that people love about it: the elusive whiff of soft suede from the inner pocket of an expensive handbag, the cool floral iris, the bowl of apricots basking in a beam of afternoon sunlight. But those things, they're over there. And I am here. And we don't connect. It's the career woman who got married, had kids, holds an executive position somewhere, and does hot yoga and spin class. So very not me. It makes me think of that photo of Maureen Prescott that you see in the first Scream movie. She looks like a put-together lady. But you later find out she had a past, and it was complicated and fraught, and the catalyst for the entire franchise. Today when I smelled a previously undetected bit of pensive cedar, and wistful violet it made me think about Maureen's pain and trauma and tragedy, and I recognized how layered we all are, and how no one's life is ever quite how we imagine it from the outside. That's something to sit with, and so too, I suppose, is Daim Blond.

Tom Ford's Sahara Noir is a scent in my cupboard I've long been ignoring and I couldn't tell you why. It's intensely evocative in an incredibly specific way, so first my nerd review and then a translation for those who don't have a tolerance for silliness. 

Sahara Noir is the blazing binary sunset seen from the still, dry heat of sand dune on the desert planet Tatooine; a midnight canyon campfire crackling with the spicy resin of the Japor tree, the aromatic blossoms of the molo shrub, and acrid ribbons of poonten grass incense while the ground rumbles with the snores and snuffles of a slumbering bantha herd nearby. 

Which is to say this is the driest frankincense, lemony woodsy pinon sawdust, a circle of fragrant burning woods, and brittle, smoky papyrus ash.

Whatever your preferred fandom or even if you stick solely to reality, Sahara Noir is utterly divine.

I've found interpretations of hinoki varies from perfumer to perfumer, ranging from lemony and coniferous, to tarry and peppery. This version is a deeply unpleasant boyscout campfire burning with bandaids and liniment and makes me feel the way I do when I'm dreaming and I walk into a darkened room and flip a light switch for illumination...and then nothing happens. At that point, the dream invariably descends into a nightmare, but I have learned to wake myself up at that moment, my brain boiling, electrified and panic-stricken. As a writer, at times I crave this scent when I need a freaky, feverish jolt of agitation. It's also great for layering to add a touch of artful anxiety to a scent that's pretty, but perhaps placid.

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.

Me Myself & I by Egofacto is scent marketed as a bewitching and disturbing floral with voluptuous tuberose, mysterious hemlock flower, and smoky and vetiver. At the time I first learned of it I thought, wow, OK YES PLEASE take my money. A few years later I still consider it an exceedingly sound investment. It smells overwhelmingly to me of an unlit package of cigarettes in an impossibly expensive leather handbag, and I love that smell. I should know better. My mother smoked all her life, and she died of cancer in 2013. Me, I'm a nerd and have never smoked the slightest bit of anything, but I've still got this romanticized notion of sitting in a Parisian cafe, drinking espresso, smoking French cigarettes, scribbling poetry, and looking very cool. You can't convince me otherwise. It's a fragrance that conjures a somber, moody atmosphere that hearkens back to its very name in that you'll want to be alone with it, and I promise you'll both be in exemplary company.