Latest User Reviews

I first tried Anne Pliska ages ago and it didn’t really speak to me then, but also I think that maybe I wasn’t ready to listen. Now I am all ears. Or nostrils, I guess. This is an amber-vanilla fragrance that has a very low-key time-traveling vintage vibe, it’s almost a cross between Obsession and Shalimar, but it’s not as muscle-bound aggressive an amber as the former and it’s not the prim, fussy powderiness of the latter. The notes of orange and bergamot eventually appear for me, in the form of a creamy citrus –not a juicy slice of fruit, but rather a soft, subtle molecular gastronomy desert-type thing, foam piped in filigrees and dusted with bitter chocolate flakes and vanilla salt. Oddly enough, before that, I get the weirdest hint of plums and pencils and an odd combination of purple stone fruit and cedar shavings that are briefly beautiful and then completely disappear as if they had never been there at all. For all the incoherent amalgamation of things I have described, this is a wonderfully easy-to-wear fragrance that is perfectly lovely. Not exactly cozy, it’s a mite too peculiar for that, but for all its eccentricities it’s somehow incredibly comfortable for me to wear? I guess when finally listened to what Anne Pliska had to say, it turns out we speak the exact same quirky language.

Inspired by the Huysmans novel, and meant to transport the wearer to “Saint Sulpice church in Paris's 6th Arrondissement uprooted and transported to NYC's upper east side, ” I think I can...eventually... smell all of these inspirations in Là-Bas. However, this scent opens on a bit of an iffy note for me and it’s initially not what I expected: it’s a fruity rose that thinks pretty highly of itself and makes me think of Rita Skeeter’s platinum curls, bejeweled spectacles, and crimson nails. I don't love it at this stage. But in the blink of an eye, it becomes this profane, unholy fog of oakmoss, birch tar, musky leather, and smoky vanilla black mass of a thing, and it truly does conjure visions of disillusioned writers, gothic horror, and mystical murders. Imagine if Rita Skeeter unzipped her human suit and out stepped a glamorous, chain-smoking demon tabloid reporter who writes decadent, scandalous musings about all the astrologists, alchemists, fortune-tellers, mediums, faith healers, exorcisers, necromancers, wizards, and satanists of the time. Gossip is the devil’s telephone and all that, and if this fiendish, fascinating fragrance is ringing, I am gonna take that call every time.

Laboratorio Ollfattivo's Need_U is a slight, subtle scent of bitter citrus peel and aromatic zest accompanied by mildly piney juniper berries and the nostril-singing sting of effervescence. I am not sure what they need here, is it a Campari and soda? I mean, I can certainly relate to that. But I don’t know that I need a whole perfume about it.

Ineke’s Hot House Flower is a gardenia soliflore that smells like a cybernetic tropical bloom, green foliage that has become self-aware, and the simulation of lushness accompanied by cool circuitry. Like if Skynet’s neural networks got hooked on plant haul videos on YouTube and went into botany instead of killer robots.

Blocki's In Every Season is the gorgeous zing and fizz of pink grapefruit, balanced with the elegance and gravitas of precisely cut green stems, jasmine and tuberose’s floral summer opulence, tempered by the shadows of early spring violets peeping through the melting snow, and wound round with gauzy musk that smells like starlight on your skin. This is probably the most lovely and perfect white floral composition I have ever smelled, despite the next association I am going to throw out there. It conjures a stepmother in a VC Andrews novel, a strikingly handsome, chilly blonde from old money with impeccable taste, and unimpeachable manners. She lives in a big, fancy house, there’s this whole big screwed up family, this generational saga of dysfunction and trauma and next thing you know her husband shows up with a teenage girl from a previous marriage about which he has just decided to confess. So now here’s this surprise daughter, a young woman from a desperate situation, who dreams of better life and works, struggles, and schemes to achieve these dreams. And then when she finds herself under the cruel, calculating, controlling gaze of her beautiful blonde stepmother, she comes to realize that her dreams come true are actually worse than the life she just escaped. So…what am I saying? I don’t know. A good perfume can make you smell nice, but a great one can cover up a multitude of sins? I don’t think that’s how it works, but In Every Season should be the great one we reach for to try it this theory out.

The perfume that made me love iris again. Although there are more complex and more beautiful iris scents, this i would recommend to anyone who is averse to the note.

An absolutely stunning fragrance. Amber done right.

Opening is a little aromatic and herbal with lavender, and a slight touch of citrus.

The warmth is apparent straight away. The resins and amber and vanilla are ridiculously smooth and warm.

It is comforting and sensual and luxurious.

Complicated Shadows from 4160 Tuesdays is a perfume for the insomniac hours, late-night strolls wandering through the deserted streets of your hometown, familiar landmarks strangely distorted by the play of moonlight and shadow. The warm, velvety sandalwood whispers in contrast to the chilling "shade" note, evoking the breathless hush of liminal, in-between spaces. The iris and narcissus here are shrouded in mystery, their earthy floral murmurations laced with a tang of acrid irony, simmering existential angst below the surface of introspective ponderings. Veiled in a bitter vanilla mist, it's the uncanny reverie, nocturnal glooms, and haunting landscapes of the dreamless, lost in the dark.

I don't like comparing perfumes to each other, especially comparisons of something a niche or indie creator has made, to something from one of the big houses...and I hear artists of all ilks, all the time, bemoaning how they hate being compared to other artists. So apologies in advance to my beloved artists amongst us here, but I know that sometimes comparisons to something you are already familiar with can be helpful in evaluating something new.

That said, my first impression of Complicated Shadows was one of cool, dusky elegance... and there's a definite kinship with Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue, that melancholic masterpiece shrouded in powdery twilight. However, Complicated Shadows sheds the heavy cloak of powder, revealing a more approachable, contemporary feel. L'Heure Bleue, as much as I want to love it, has never been my cup of tea. But Complicated Shadows? I could drink it by the bucketful. In the dark. In the middle of a deserted road. At the stroke of midnight.

A deeply gothic glamour amber, a musky murky chypre-adjacent fragrance that smells simultaneously like the figure in the white nightdress running from the manor house with the lone candle lit in the window at midnight and the surprise succubus that this figure is secretly possessed by--it's all the iconic tropes of Avon Satanic Romance novel, and it's perfect.

Jo Malone’s Mallow on the Moors is a fragrance I hoped might smell a little haunted. Well. It does...sort of? Not really in the way I was expecting, though. More like a parody from someone who didn't realize they were writing a parody, which some might look at as a little unfortunate for their creation (no one wants to be unintentionally funny, you know?), but hey, it could also be fun, right? Imagine you’re a buttoned-up gothic novelist who’s never even taken a lover, and fate has led you straight into the arms of a rakish lothario, a real Bluebeard type. Imagine swoons, sighs, ghosts, old gothic castles, manor grounds, bodies buried in the poison gardens, dead wives in attics, and all that jazz. And then the camera pans out, and this is a Hammer horror production directed by Anna Biller starring Lana del Rey, and it’s trying real hard to be ethereal and phantasmal and misty moors and mossy castles, but somehow it is all high camp and glinting artifice, real Real Housewives of Manderley energy. As to what it smells like, imagine the luminous violet powder of broken, scattered Guerlain Meteorites and the brassy hairspray, champagne-tossed-in-your-faceness of Tom Ford Jasmine Rouge. Imagine all of that sprayed on Dita von Teese in La Perla clutching a guttering candelabra channeling Frau Blücher.

Mistpouffer from Stora Skuggan smells of cool, sweet, powdery porcelain, dainty and delicate like a small ivory sculpted ballerina on a shelf, but there’s a weirdly mineralic, off-kilter herbal note as well, wrapped up in a bit of foggy fluff, almost like a little gossamer candy-floss salted black licorice bouquet. Ultimately it reminds me of the ceramic Broken Ladies of artist Jessica Harrison--charmingly feminine figurines, bloodied with intricate anatomical horrors--perhaps a bit too much for sensitive types, but those of you who dig macabre delights will love these twisted ceramic beauties. And I think that’s what Mistpouffer is, too: a soft, subtly twisted beauty.

Green Spell from Eris Parfums is as if a celestial being of 100% chlorophyll descended from the heavens, its wings a crushing flutter of many leaves, broad and flat, delicate and curled, waxen, rubbery, pliant, radiating every variation of veridian. In a voice like seeping moss, like eroding rock, like insect wings disintegrating into the earth, it whispers to you, "Like, be not afraid, or whatever."  It's the endless trailing succulent stem of a bittersweet pennywort patch through the soil until you reach a darkly massive gnashing malachite rootball nightmare. You awake with emerald scratchings on your palm and jade lashings of fern in your teeth.

Nightingale from Zoologist is, on paper, something I initially wouldn’t have thought my cup of tea--but that just goes to show what I know. This is an opulent mossy plum blossom with bitter, earthy oud, and hints of a sour, lemony geranium–like rose. It’s being referred to as a pink floral chypre which, probably because of my associations with all things pink, rings frilly and frivolous for what turns out to be a breathtakingly stunning fragrance with an unexpected complexity that translates into something profoundly emotional. In reading an interview with the perfumer, I learned that the inspiration for this perfume was an ancient poem written by Fujiwara no Kenshi, sister to the empress at that time. The empress was apparently trading her imperial duties for Buddhist vows, and upon her departure, her sister gifted her an agarwood rosary wrapped in a box with ribbons and a branch of plum blossom and read to her a poem she had written: “Soon you will be wearing a black robe and enter nunhood. You will not know each rosary bead has my tears on it.” I truly do get a sense of love, loss, sisterhood, and yearning, and somehow, through that perspective, I even experience an existential sadness regarding the transient nature of time and existence. What a beautiful and evocative fragrance

Sacred Scarab is a scent of bitter, lemony aldehydes and earthy, murky, dusky musks, and when I say earthy, I don’t mean damp, loamy garden soil, but rather dusty clay, and subterranean strata of sedimentary rock, digging so far down into the earth you encounter tenebrous geological formations and stygian crystalline structures ostensibly connected to the earth’s deep history–and yet to your unbelieving eyes or mine, wholly alien and otherworldly. It’s a fragrance that evokes at least a minor feeling of, if not the reality of a crumbling collapse of space and time, the prelude to the ecstatic rites of an ancient mystery cult of earth and stone. That initial mineralogical melodrama is breathtaking, and I probably enjoy those 15-20 minutes of the fragrance best, but the next stage and the dry down, a sort of "burnished date/sticky raisin resin incense scattered in the dry wood of a smooth cedar dish" vibe, is lovely as well and worth the wait, if you find the early sniffs are too overwhelming. I can’t decide if this scent is a prayer or a protest, a comfort or a curse, and I deeply love the unknowable mystery of that.

Delta of Venus is built around guava, and here’s a confession: I have never smelled or tasted guava, so it’s not for me to say how realistic it is, but here’s another confession: I don’t come to fragrance for realism, so who cares! What I do experience is a fragrance ravenously lush and rosy-glowing with exuberance, a thronging pulse of velvety sunset mango, the tart-tinglingly bright shiver of pineapple, and the bittersweet toe-curling juicy astringency and vaguely funky musk of pink grapefruit. There’s nothing dark about this scent, but there’s an underlying luxe, shadowy floral that I can’t help but associate with black velvet in a way, in gorgeous contrast to those invitingly vibrant tropical fruits. In my mind’s eye, this is a brooding black velvet vanitas painting with a prismatic profusion of soft fruits tumbling lusciously off the canvas.

Terrible this has been discontinued. It's top 5 for sure. Using dupes now.

An incredible frag.

Gentle citrus and spice in the opening but just supporting the wonderful aromatic herbal lavender.

Truly reminiscent of a barbershop.

Some depth supports the base with leather, musk, and tonka adding warmth.

tart blueberries, lots of musk , rose and patchouli . Patchouli goes between being medicinal in the beginning but then becomes chocolate with some spice . A huge like for me

To me this smells like straight up suede. Makes me a bit nauseous...

Second time returning to this decant. It was warm autumn last time, it's frozen outside now.

I don't know if this one's for me. There's nothing bad about it per se, it's just not things that excite me.

I adore rose, and while it tries it's best to fight through the other notes, it's hard to clearly identify.

I don't know what's doing it, it could be nutty notes which are too heavy and fatty, the fruity note of pear which seems to be overripe, or the insane 46% concentration making it thick and heavy, but I just find this too cloying. Not in a screechy way, just in a thick, consuming way.

I'll give it a few hours and update.

6 hours in. I still find it almost too decadent.

It's sweet and rich and heavy, but there is a creamyness with ambergris, vanilla, and woods.

It's weaker than I expected for such an extrait.

Patchouli of the Underworld from Electimuss, to my nose, is a fragrance less evocative of the brutish god of the underworld and his nonconsensual bride than it is a summoning of the bitter heartbreak that’s tangled throughout the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. When I was younger, I was terribly salty on Eurydice’s behalf; all you had to do was not look back, Orpheus! You were so close to having your beloved wife back from the dead! But …no. You did the one thing they specifically tasked you with not doing. You looked. Margaret Atwood wrote in a poem from Eurydice’s point of view, “you could not believe I was more than your echo–” and I think that’s what Patchouli of the Underworld captures so uncannily, the pale grey echo of that very human doubt and disbelief on his part, and the bitter disappointment that she must have felt, and the sorrow experienced by both of them. Now that I’m older, I better understand and certainly have more experience with the crushing gravity of grief, I know that everyone experiences it differently. And grieving people deserve the gift of grace. Orpheus mourns his wife lost twice over, and Eurydice’s sorrow at being drawn back into the darkness of death because of her husband’s momentary lapse of faith must have been immeasurable. That is what this scent captures so well. Forget the brand’s copy about musky sexiness or whatever. That’s not what this is. It’s the lamentations of one whose fleeting hope was stolen away by the person they loved best, and the devastating sense of regret held by the thief. If one were to distill those echoes of melancholy, that antiquity of sadness, and bottle the resulting essence, the results would be an olfactory dirge of smoky mists of pepper and powder and strange inky-leathery nuances, that, over time, becomes a despairing funeral soapy floral.

I’ll be honest here, I’m just as surprised as anyone that I really like this scent. There’s not much to say about it. It’s a marshmallow skin scent, a sort of floofy vanilla, a low-key magical-realism, everyday-fabulism, quotidian-fairytale scent…with an elusive hint of sour, canned pears. That’s a weird element that shows up very rarely, but I can’t pretend I didn’t smell it.

If you’ve not tried it, it’s exactly what you think it is. Which is to say an ultra sweet, teeth-aching miasma of fizzy spun sugar. Marshmallow and a tiny twist of lemon with a barely-detectable licorice spike. It is wretched. It is divine. I inexplicably adore it. I buy the “hair perfume” version so I can spritz with manic pixie dust mad abandon. The dry down is sweetly vanillic and woody, like maybe the bark of the mythic candy floss tree in the dime store candy forest. I know heaps of folks who hate this stuff. Oh well. More for me!

Dior Addict is a billowing cloud of honeyed amber and vanilla, jasmine and orange blossom with creamy tonka bean chiffon sandalwood lace. It’s femme fatale by way of baroque gothic lolita.

Fille en Aiguilles from Serge Lutens reminds me of a rich, spiced fruit compote that is sweetly simmering on the stove, in a snow covered chalet on the longest, darkest night of the year. The sun has just gone down and the the door bangs open; a gust of icy wind tears through carrying the briefest scent of pine needles; guest are stamping their feet and blowing on their hands, everyone has red noses and chilled ears and they are gathering close to a hearth where a warm glow lights their faces. The sweet, spicy concoction on the stove has evaporated so there is no longer a syrupy fragrance, but instead the slightly smoky remains, the very essence of the fruit. To me Fille En Aiguilles smells of spiced fruit compote incense perfuming the close quarters and warming bodies, and light and memories of a cold night and beloved friends who warm your heart.