Gris Charnel from BDK Parfums is a scent that I find confusing and disappointing. Mostly, I think I am disappointed in myself, for not having read the perfumer’s inspiration for the fragrance. Some dribble about two tourists whose glances cross paths, they dance until dawn and then slip away for an intimate encounter. Yawn. I got bored and checked out several times just now while trying to sum that up. Now if they slid through a portal into an Edward Allan Poe story while they were making out in a dark alley, then I could forgive myself for getting thrillingly suckered in by the copy (and to a lesser extent, the darkly poetic name, which I feel somehow tricked me into thinking it was something that it was not.) It must have been the notes I was excited for then, which mention black tea, fig, and cardamom essence. That sounds really lovely. But I’ve tried this several times and I don’t sense any of that loveliness. Instead, it’s a bit like a low-end tea sampler that includes selections with various unspecified “fruit flavors” but in reality, no matter which one you brew up, all they taste like hot Kool-Aid water. And there’s a weird, acrid smoky element that hovers unpleasantly, like charcoal heated air...so imagine smoking hot Kool-Aid water in your hookah. Even if I pretend an olde-timey goth poet was smoking that hookah, it's still a bit of a dud.

I really do not have the words for how beautiful this is. It’s rich and luxurious without being …decadent…or heavy, yet it’s definitely not a “light” scent either. Really quite intoxicating. It smells foreign and familiar all at once; maybe if your idea of "exotic" is from the sumptuous illustrations in a well-worn book of fables from a far-away land. It's all lofty sandalwood, honeyed musks, and and liquid amber tea on me, and it makes me feel like a desert queen in a strange, dusty tale.

In Musc Ravageur there’s a strange, sullen plastic note wrapped around a dark, animalic vanilla that doesn't care what anyone thinks and laughs at its own jokes and sometimes it laughs so hard it pees itself a little, and yeah, you can actually smell that aspect of Musc Ravageur too, in the form of an almost fermented amber note. It’s both rich and sour in an offbeat way that borders on off-putting...but for all that, it’s not a terribly complicated scent. I think we might consider this a perfume that is hard to get to know, but easy to love. Do I relate to this scent a little too deeply? You could say that, sure.

Dark Season is a smoky woods/rich, dusty amber scent that smells of the dramatic tenebrism of all those old, spooky gothic novels and musty 19th-century weird fiction, of ancient landscapes and loam, the soot of pine logs, ghostly smoke and sifting snow in a strangely lit field, a somber ochre, an umbral amber, frost-rimmed branches scraping a scrim of leaden sky, footprints vanishing in freshly fallen snow, the creak of the wind whistling around standing stones, something terrible let loose in the dark, something that eventually fades until it's nothing more than an unquiet feeling or a cold shiver on a warm day.

Chasing Autumn brings to life the autumn I've always yearned for, living in Florida's endless summer. It's a scent that captures not just a season, but a frame of mind and a state of being I'm perpetually seeking. Millais' painting Autumn Leaves comes to mind - a twilight scene where young girls gather fallen foliage, their faces touched with a melancholic reverence for the changing season. The painting draws our eyes to a vivid pile of rustling leaves, with only a wisp of smoke hinting at a distant bonfire.

This fragrance, however, boldly brings that bonfire to the forefront. The fir and birch tar notes roar to life, evoking the crackling warmth of autumn nights I've only imagined. It's as if Morris has taken that implied warmth from Millais' canvas and made it the heart of this olfactory experience. The leather and coffee accords add depth, reminiscent of cozy evenings of the sort I feel in Emily Brontë's poetry.

Emily Brontë's "Fall, Leaves, Fall" echoes as I wear this scent. Her words are not just poetry, but an invocation - a chant to usher in the coming winter. The line "Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree" feels like a spell being cast, and this fragrance embodies that mystical transition. Where Brontë's poem is a call to the approaching cold, Chasing Autumn captures the very essence of that summoning.

ALSO this scent conjures the underlying atmosphere of Over The Garden Wall, stripped of its childish elements (I love those elements! But!) It evokes that sense of being lost in an autumnal otherworld, where mystery and melancholy reign supreme. The fragrance captures the essence of wandering through the Unknown, with its subtle menace and ominous presence lurking just beneath the surface of fallen leaves and shadowy forests.

Chasing Autumn is an homage to those flickering fires of autumn, allowing me to immerse myself in a fall feeling that exists more in my mind than in my subtropical reality. It's a sensory journey to the autumn I chase year after year, never quite reaching but always dreaming of - a season both beautiful and slightly foreboding.

I really wanted to love this fragrance; I was so intrigued by the idea. But the reality of it is that it smells like sour coffee-breathed admonishments and secondhand smoke from your cranky mother when you're wearing too much fruity-floral Ex'cla-ma'tion eau de toilette and several greasy layers of cotton candy Lip Smackers before heading off for your first day of junior high circa 1989. As it dries down, the scent morphs into something eerily reminiscent of days-old espresso shots forgotten and sloshing in the bottom of a pink Caboodles organizer.

In Nitesurf Neroli, many fathoms below the sky and sea, a candied grotto pulses with crystalline sweetness. Whipped orange blossom honey stalactites drip into luminous pools; sirens writhe in neon foam, their voices piercing shards of light. Hypersaturated quartz blooms dissolve in the damp and darkness, a bright ginger and glacé citron pollen strobing in the mist. Fossilized shells from conch and clam and sea snail scatter, their ancient forms crusted with sugared jewels, catching and refracting the shimmering glow. Every surface glistens with a rusk of candied brilliance, and time dissolves in saline musk in this underwater disco frenzy of sugar-coated excess, looping endlessly, eternally electric. This is the sweetness mermaids whisper, each to each, beneath the waves.

For Rest opens with an incense-y citrus note,  a sort of shadowy yuzu–not smoky per se, but sort of dim lit and flickering. Hinoki can sometimes strike me as a little harsh, but combined with the nutmeg and peppery musk, I think it lends a bright, spiced sweetness here. This is really beautiful. It’s a scent that’s too earthy and grounding to be called mystical or mysterious, but it’s too interesting for me to think of as cozy or even mundane. Perhaps it’s a perfume that straddles both worlds in the sense that it’s somehow deeply familiar and surprisingly evocative, a scent that lulls you into a comfortable reverie even as it leaves you with a lingering sense of wonder.

Forget Me Not is a spicy, effervescent herbaceous scent, very green, almost crocodilian in its greenness. A crocodile slithering through a wild patch of mint.

Gentle Night is the scent of sour aquatic-marine soap scum with the underlying unpleasant effluvium of a mildewed laundry pile