Viole Nere from Meo Fuschiuni is a wistful Rilke poem of a violet. I will say I really love violet, though most I’ve encountered smell very similar, dainty, and delicate in either a powdery or an earthy spring rain-way. Viole Nere, while similarly subtle, presents differently than those nostalgic candied pastilles or small, damp purple blooms. It’s the gossamer violet bruised and thrumming ache of never-quite-becomings, the bittersweet vetiver musk of breathless possibilities half-glimpsed, the gentle, patchouli decay of late autumn’s dying reminder that things unlived also have their season, their own quiet beauty. A melancholic wisp of frankincense dissipates like phantom ink on pages no one will ever read, an ode to a beloved who never arrived, who was lost from the start.

Flame & Fortune from Sarah Baker Perfumes smells like the shivery thrill of the chase and obsession for something elusive and rare, a chimera whispered on the wind, a mirage glimpsed in moonlight– and the inevitable reckoning at the end of this road of reckless desires. A charred diary page retrieved from the incendiary blast of a midnight explosion under the desert stars. Illegible script, a puzzle of ashy smudge in a swooping desperate hand, the labyrinthine cipher of a faded map whose details are lost to dust and sand, an exquisitely-detailed botanical revelation of a night-blooming flower both intoxicating and terrifying, the softly spiced mysteries of which might be a deadly curse, might be a cure for all the world’s ills. The dawn bleeds like an accusation, like a bullet wound, like a dying breath, and in that final inhalation, orange blossom, tuberose, jasmine, the fragrant honey of buds unfurling in the rising heat of the morning. The wind rustles with the fading memory of that sweetness as the sun rises where betrayal saw you fall.

Dead Writers by Immortal Perfumes is something I’m pretty sure I smelled several years ago when I was writing for Haute Macabre, maybe even before that. I don’t think I gave it enough of a chance last time. You have to wait a few minutes, and how it smells directly on the skin isn’t what you smell hovering just before beyond you. It’s a quill of cloves, vetiver’s dusty archives, an echoing swirl of pipe tobacco, and tattered heliotrope lace gloves on ghostly ink-stained hands. WOW.

Jean Paul Gaultier Classique does not list jasmine in the official notes, yet it smells like a glittery jasmine vanilla powder bomb on a drunken dance floor. It recalls an evening I visited a friend, and without informing me first, she had agreed with other friends that we'd all meet up and go to a club. Being a brutally shy homebody, that's the last thing I EVER want to do, but as a visiting guest, you're sometimes trapped into these things, and I am also a people pleaser. So there you go. And there we went. The ladies' room was filled with tipsy club-goers fixing their hair and makeup, and our mutual friend pulled a whole-ass bottle of perfume from her purse to refresh her scent. Even I, being the perfume-obsessed weirdo I am, think that's strange. A whole bottle, wow. Anyway, that bottle was this Jean Paul Gautier scent, and to this day, it makes me think of boozy nightclub cocktails and the jasmine-scented tears of strangers in bathrooms telling me they love me just moments before puking on my feet.

Geranium Bourbon from Miller Harris Perfumes is what I imagine Jo from Little Women smells like; it's willful and smart, and it's somehow both no-nonsense and very creative. It's got a very upfront "take me as I am vibe" which seems appropriate, as even though geranium is listed in the notes and it's the name of the perfume, it doesn't exactly smell like geranium...so you've got to judge it on its own merits... for what it is, rather than what it is not. And as for what it is, well. It's a sort of dry, sunny lemon grassy palmarosa, a sour green rose, bitter, musty black pepper, and some sort of aromatic woods. It's classified as a floral, but it's certainly not your typical offering from this category of scent; it's not at all sweet or spring or even summery, and the rose is a strange one. I guess I might say this is an herbal, woody autumn floral, and much like our girl Jo, one of a kind.

I first heard reverent whispers of the enigmatic Filigree from Thymes before the 2014 relaunch, and my interest piqued, I tracked down a bottle on eBay. Never have I read such wildly differing reviews about a fragrance! The Thymes website sings praises of its intricate layers and elusive nuances, and alternately people refer to it as rich, spicy, warm, creamy, and luxurious, but despite the dissimilar impressions, it is undeniably universally beloved. To my nose, it is a scent just this side of crisp and not exactly fresh. It reminds me of antique lace doilies and porcelain teapots It is gentle lemon peels and sweetly grassy and a delicate dusty amber that translates more as vanilla. It's light and lovely and, apparently, many things to many people, but we all seem to adore it.

Scandalwood is a fragrance that makes me a little sad. I first discovered the brand when I used Polyvore, a sort of virtual mood board for curating imaginary closets and creating fantasy outfits. I used to play around on it every single day for nearly a decade, and then in 2018, without warning, they shut it down. I was pretty upset--I made many friends through Polyvore, and it was a fun distraction that got me through some rough patches. Anyway, this is a perfume review, sorry. Scandalwood is inspired by Dita von Teese and much like her own outfits, the scent is very bare and barely there. Light and close to the skin, it's a lovely blend of sandalwood, cedar, rosewood, leather, and musk. It's not really all that erotic unless you get off on quiet naps and whispered ASMR. And hey, it takes all kinds.

OG perfume blogger Victoria of EauMg described Musk Therapy as smelling like "hot people effortlessly being hot," and friends, I am not immune to that sort of hyperbole; I'll even one-up it. This fragrance makes you feel like you're just better than everyone. And you'll smell so good, they'll go with it. It's got a beautiful bitter sourness like the salvia flowers just outside my house, which smell like velvety aldehydes and sparkling grapefruit peels and a musky magnolia and sandalwood soapiness that's neither too much of one nor the other, and wow...this really is a flawless, perfect summer scent. 

Edited to add: a friend just described this as "Abercrombie and Witch" and that is so perfect. Musk Therapy has got a sort of citrusy-fresh normie aspect to it that seems like something you smell all the time, but it's somehow elevated to an almost preternatural extent, like citrusy fresh as commissioned by a kajillionaire sorceress. I wear it because on one hand, it makes me feel like I'm blending in, but at the same time, I'm reassuring myself, "no, no, you're really different, you're NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS" and that's when the full moon peeks from behind a cloud and then I wolf out and bite a Karen's head off when she chirps about good vibes only. No, Karen, we're gonna sit with our shit and do some shadow work, and we're gonna smell really hot while we're doing it.

In this perfume, I catch whiffs of three fragrances I absolutely loathe – the worst of the worst: KvD Sinner, Thierry Mugler's Angel, and V+R's Flowerbomb, each contributing its own special brand of cloying falseness, lurking in here like problematic d-list influencers. The combination of bright, honied heliotrope, candied lychee, and powdery vanilla marzipan creates something so aggressively artificial it's like that specific brand of try-hard glamour that screams, "I learned about luxury from watching unboxing videos." It's not badly made; it's just so deliberately vapid and performatively trendy that it makes you wonder if it's trolling you. The kind of perfume that would absolutely post a Mukbang video of itself eating other, better fragrances and then sobbing for the camera in a halo of ring lights.

Dusty vanilla, powdery sassafrass, and sandalwood, honeyed amaretto liqueur, and musky jasmine. Memories upon memories upon memories. I wore this fragrance exclusively in my mid-20s, it is a scent redolent of bad decisions and vicious, venomously abusive relationships but also of embracing incredible connections and embarking on marvelous discoveries. For me, Hypnotic Poison is a scent very much of a specific space and time in my life, and though can't place blame on the scent am happy to leave it in the past.