Génération Godard from Toskovat is the scent of sticky soda spills on old seat cushions, the mouth-mangling sour and sugar of chewy citrus candies, and a greasy popcorn machine’s dying wheeze. A troupe of wounded, reckless weirdos working shifts in the grimy glamour of a historic cinema, their secrets and strange kinship the illicit musk and leathery glue that holds the decaying dream of this crumbling landmark together; the moody rose perfume steeped into the velvet lining of a moth-eaten fur coat pilfered from the musty lost and found closet a final sigh before the building is condemned.

Upon smelling Flos Mortiis from Rogue Perfumery, I have a sense that for casual perfume wearers, this is going to lean either one of two ways. “Old lady” or “headshop.” While I don’t consider my enthusiasm for fragrance casual by any sense of the word, I certainly don’t want to imply that I am better or smarter than any of them–there are definitely aspects of both a sort of vintage costume jewelry cough drop mothball glamour and that ubiquitous champaca incense element of a bohemian bazaar. But it’s all wrapped up in the shadows of an Edgar Allan poem, the honeyed sweetness of romantic sentiment laced with the crumbling bitter mausoleum creaking coffin lid tang of decay, rounded out with the crimson kiss of red currant fruiting sickeningly in the dirt of a freshly turned grave. So maybe this is old lady juice, but it’s definitely the grand dame in the ancient portrait above the mantel upon which perches a resin-feathered raven, whose tarnished visage follows you in every corner of the drafty parlor, whose bones creak under the floorboards you are standing on, whose phantom hand rests lightly upon your shoulder now.

Montblanc Signature is a weird one in that it's not really weird at all (it's pretty basic in composition and execution, right?), but it makes me feel some weird, twisty things. If that makes sense. It's a sort of echo-y, empty, fresh, woody,- dewy-floral melange that smells like you're using someone else's shampoo, a pearlescent lather of white musk more expensive than you care to consider. You're sleeping under a stranger's crisp white sheets, cool against your skin, the lingering dryer sheet scent of magnolia petals and fat peony blooms, their honeyed sweetness clinging to the fabric.

Maybe a friend of a friend has an apartment for rent while they're off being an influencer in France, so you're availing yourself of their expensively furnished, minimalist-chic accommodations for a few months in a particularly hip part of town. You spend a lot of time lonely in the apartment, trying on her silk blouses and cashmere sweaters, picking through her curated book selection of vintage Vogue and art photography books, and trying to get a sense of who she is. You're also stalking her social media a fair bit, and like a magpie hoarding glittering scraps, you gather up her turns of phrase and mannerisms, embellishing your own reflection with borrowed plumage. You begin ordering Door Dash deliveries under her name, all the culinary delicacies she'd artfully Instagrammed in her travels, noodles slick with sauce, and hundreds of tiny, bitter cups of coffee. You imagine her beside you, laughter echoing in the sterile silence, a phantom limb you ache to touch.

The line between mimicry and metamorphosis blurs. The creamy magnolia unfurls, a faded photograph of intimacies never shared. The luminous musk, clean and faintly powdery, becomes a shroud, a borrowed identity that both suffocates and intoxicates. This fragrance doesn't just smell like wearing someone else's perfume; it smells like the unsettling alchemy of becoming someone else. And in that borrowed skin, in that stolen life, the question lingers: just how far will you go to become more than just her shadow?

I will first note that I don't care for the original Shalimar (or at least the Shalimar I have smelled, which I am aware is not the original-original.) So I would just prefer to think of Millésime Iris as its own thing. At first sniff, this is a real bombastic towering vanilla powdered wig spectacle of a Sofia Coppola Marie Antoinette confection, but there’s something kind of tacky and trashy about it too, like it’s all that “ Let them eat cake” audacious opulence filmed through a mob-wife leopard print suede purse Instagram filter of a reality tv show, thick with manufactured drama and desperate thirst. It’s a sort of sticky, gilded Versailles meets Jersey Shore dumpster fire of a fragrance. And believe it or not, initially, when I was testing it…I didn’t hate it. Later in the evening, I smelled a smoky woody vanilla floral phantom masterclass of luxury and beauty wafting from my sweater cuff, and I nearly swooned. DEAR GOD WHAT IS SO INTOXICATING, I thought. Surprise! It was that tabloid headline trending hashtag of a vanilla from earlier in the day! Millésime Iris, you contain multitudes, and I am here for all of them.

Eauso Vert Fruto Oscuro: In the basement of an ancient Spanish mission, there's a forgotten wine cellar where the air is thick with centuries of fermentation. The massive barrels have burrowed into the cellar floor, their wooden staves blackened with time. Here, the California Raisins - those claymation creatures of 80s fame - have found their true calling as bacchanalian priests of a midnight sabbath.

They dance in the dark, their wrinkled bodies glistening with communion wine that's gone deliciously corrupt. The sacrament itself has evolved, developed consciousness, learned to crawl out of its casks at night. It carries the memory of fruit that ripened past the point of virtue, fruit that chose to embrace decay as a form of transcendence.

Black cherries prowl, lush, wayward creatures of the night, leaving trails of wax and ink in their wake, while patches of moss grow in impossible shades of purple. Somewhere in the darkness, a quince tree has taken root in the stone, its fruits fermenting on the branch, dripping jam that tastes like the midnight confession of wicked ghosts.

This is fruit that has rejected the sun, each drop a tiny black mass, an unholy celebration of fruit that's gone ravenously feral in the dark.

TLDR; fruit as creature of the night; goth California Raisins; a black mass of unholy cherries

This is unfortunate because up until now, I have genuinely adored everything I have tried from Kerosene, but Wood Haven smells like a damp, mildewed cedar bento box emptied of its contents, save a few shrimpy and brackish strips of rehydrated kombu and sour scraps of pungently pickled ginger. They can't all be winners, I guess

Carbonara, the fragrance is a really interesting take on Carbonara, the unctuous peppery, pasta dish, wherein he expresses those savory elements through a gourmand experience: there’s a plush, creamy amber vanilla, an earthy, faintly smoky brown sugar, coconut milky with a gentle salinity, and a trio of peppers that prickle enigmatically. It’s wrapped up with a woody, boozy velvety aspect that I can’t associate with the dish at all, but it provides a rich, aromatic *something* which reigns a fragrance that might also be at home on a dessert cart. I want to try all of this perfumers offerings and I might eat them, too

I try to respect a perfumer’s vision when it comes to the inspiration for their fragrances, but the description for Kill the Lights from Gritti Fragrance, with its story of a one-of-a-kind leather-clad, out-of-control rule breaker roaring through the storm on his beastly motorcycle, doesn’t do it for me at all. Nothing in those words resonates, and, respectfully, that’s not my story while wearing this scent. Instead, this musty balsamic woody floral takes me to a very literal place, the song Kill the Lights, from Canadian darkwave synth-rock band The Birthday Massacre’s 2007 Walking With Strangers album. This lush, melancholic song always sounded like someone found a dusty book of fairy tales and paraphrased those enchantments through a gothy, gloomy world-weary, jaded 20-year-old's “them’s the breaks, kid” kind of lens. There’s a miasma of last night’s perfume and smoky bars about it, coupled with bitter, brittle pages plummy with the poison of hope and happy endings. It’s another scent in my pink pepper journey and also has enigmatic inclusions of artemisia and davana–two evocative notes which always catch my fancy– and though I’m not necessarily getting out of it what the creator had in mind, I’m still finding it an intriguing and enjoyable scent.

Notturno, by Meo Fusciuni, is a fragrance that is meant to evoke the poetry and the imaginary rooms of night. It is soft, so soft, which is interesting for a leather-forward fragrance because, unlike most, there’s nothing acrid or smoky or tannic about it. This is leather worn close to the skin and worn down over years, padding up and down hardwood stairs in the hours of darkness, tufted with fur and spiked with little claws. Springing silently into bed with you at midnight, kneading a small spot in the midst of faded flannel quilts and snoozing in the crook of your knees. You know these are dreams and ghosts and wisps of memory; your dear inky-furred friend died twelve years ago on a June afternoon and is buried under a lightning-struck oak in New Jersey. A phone on the creaky cedar nightstand illuminates the hour; she often visits at this time. These are warm, blanket-soft moments, a sweet slip in time or space, or sleep when everything is safe and good and exactly as it should be.

Jade Vines from Regime des Fleurs is a scent I had hoped I would not love, but I knew I was doomed because I’ve really enjoyed most things from this not-entirely-budget-friendly brand. The way I want to talk about is probably unhelpful to those seeking literal reviews of perfumes, so: the straightforward take is that this is a tremulous woody green fever dream dripping with tuberose’s luminous, honeyed hallucinatory incense. There’s nothing really aquatic about it, at least not in a light-hearted sunny marine sense, but I envision a thalassic altar to invoke something darker from the depths of the abyss; picture Uxia Cambarro as the Priestess of the Esoteric Order of Dagon in her lair, a shadowy grotto dimly lit by iridescent algae blooms and spectral, glowing salt crystal. So there’s that verdant woodland, dreamy white floral element but also something of secret caverns by the sea and echoes of the arcane rituals that once took place in the darkness there. The further I think on either of these aspects, the more they elude me; it’s the perfumed equivalent of being kept in a room with more corners than logic says is possible or rereading over and over the same page of a book with the unsettling suspicion that it’s somehow vaguely different each time. I highly suggest you sample this scent while listening to the Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble to heighten the weirdness.