I really hesitated to before committing to writing a review for Guerlain Mitsuoko because at this point in time…why bother? Hundreds and thousands of words have been dedicated to this timeless fragrance and what have I got to offer that’s new or different? What am I really adding to the conversation here, and how do I think about it that makes the scent feel mine when I wear it? The whole exercise felt a little pointless…but. But. There was something there. There was something in this musty classic that weirdly got me thinking of liches, those power-hungry necromancers that did some kind of dark ritual and jammed their soul into a phylactery (autocorrect wants me to use pterodactyl and I am so tempted) and who embraced the bittersweet pang of undeath eternity to become a husk of immortality. Mitsuoko evokes that damp mausoleum herbal mustiness, and when you’ve slid back the impossibly heavy stone door of an ancient crypt to peek inside its atmosphere thick with dust and humming with the quiet thrum of the beyond… there’s this peach there waiting for you, glowing eerily with a sickly light, just having performed its unholy Ceremony of Endless Night. Cobwebby oakmoss, aromatic and tannic, soft and sour, hangs heavy, like a mournful shroud. And maybe now you’re just trapped with it, forever. Wearing Mitsouko is to become a bit of an unearthly phantom yourself, flickering in and out of existence; to cheat oblivion, to linger at the edge of the world–and walk the veil between. Is that what people mean when they refer to this fragrance as “timeless”? It works for me.
A Drop d’Issey Eau de Parfum isn’t a mythical unicorn, but it evokes a similar feeling. It’s a minimalist masterpiece that transcends its brief and somewhat simple list of notes- a trio of lilac, orange blossom, and almond milk – to create something unexpectedly revelatory. It’s a crystalline floral that’s somehow also a little musty-musky, but it’s so well-balanced I’m not actually sure if any of those descriptors work. It’s effortless perfection that leaves you breathless, a glimpse of something impossible made real. The problem is…ugh. The bottle is hideous. As gorgeous and as perfect as this is, I can’t have that thing sitting on my vanity.
While I ultimately love LUSH’s Shade, wow… it has the absolute ugliest opening of any fragrance I have ever tried. Mineralic and greasy, like rancid petrichor, like a stick of butter studded with rusty nickels and stubbed-out cigarette butts, melting on wet concrete after a scalding July sunshower in central Florida. But then it does something miraculous. The oppressive atmosphere lifts and turns into a completely different perfume, softly sugared and clean-woody-resinous, like the sacred soapy sap of the mystical marzipan tree. It’s so good, too good. Maybe even too-good-to-be-true good. It almost smells like something about which I would say: “I love this, but it’s not for me.” Because, in some way or another, it doesn’t feel like me. Too unstudied and unbothered and carefree, I guess. I’m too neurotic to pull this off! BUT somewhere in the vast multiverse, there exists the chillest, coolest, most untryhard version of me, and this is what they smell like. And when I wear this perfume, I am channeling that person…and it feels really, really good.
Nutty, Boozy and Leathery
Beast mode
Fresh and Clean
Freshy Amber
Imagine an old Nordic church nestled in the snow, bathed in the alien light of the aurora borealis, incense smoke steeped into every stone. Lime, tart and electric, bursts like a renegade star tumbling through the heavens, pink pepper, sharp and crackling, echoes the descent, otherworldly exile, announced by heavenly fanfare. Cashmeran, elemi, and labdanum, soft, smoky, and twining with resinous secrets, whisper a lullaby of fallen grace. From the dark stained glass window, a weathered abbess sighs and lights a lone beeswax candle, its sweet ritual glow a beacon for this wanderer in the night, whose wings, once ablaze with celestial fire, now cast no shadow at all.
Я by Toskovat is a perfume inscrutable and obscure, a sigh of brakes, a hiss of steam, and a silhouette emerging from the dark as you exit the bus on a foggy evening. The shadowed figure leans close and whispers four words against your ear. "Find the secret heart," they breathe, ghost of a smile flickering, a gloved hand, a glint of silver, a packet of forgotten sweets. The apparition is gone, vanished into the labyrinthine alleys, a wisp of a figment of a dream. The echo of their words lingers, a riddle etched in the citron zing of powdered sugar gems, the delicate swoon of sugared violets, and a blush of candied strawberry musk. You clutch the crumpled cellophane packet, the scent itself a ghostly sugared map leading ever inwards, towards the secret heart within your heart.
Powdery and elegant!
Masterpiece in my opinion!😍
Boozy and delicious vanilla wow
masculine juice
Dry woods and fig, powdery iris and sweet tonka. Class in a bottle and one of the best Iris fragrances out there.
Great masculine sent
the first time I smelled this perfume, it reminded me of the previous version Y edp but it is more calm, smooth, more elegant, I think it is the best proposition from the Y line, the scent is more towards woody aromatic, but somewhere we get the sweetness of fruit that balances everything perfectly
Just a great everyday lazy grab. I’ve even worn this stuff after showering at night just to get into bed 30 minutes later. It’s perfect for the office as it doesn‘t have any possible offensive notes. Makes you smell like you’re constantly just out of the shower. By far and away my favorite I own.
Spun-sugar cobwebs woven by enchanted almond blossom arachnid fairy godmothers, shivery threads glimmering with vanilla frost and powdered cocoa snow.
When I first saw this label art for Zoologist’s Penguin, I’ll confess there was a part of me that thought, dang, I really hope this smells how the grizzled and extremely unhinged William Dafoe looks in Roger Eggers’ The Lighthouse. Of course, anyone who saw that must know that I am mostly kidding (although perversely, I am not totally kidding), and instead of an olfactory tour de force of maritime menace, unfettered madness, and the salty tang of brooding, brine-soaked despair, we get the mythical chill of Frosta, She-Ra's Empress of the Snows on the fantastical planet of Etheria. An invigorating blast of frozen air, crisp and clean, a tonic bracing and bittersweet, a glacial window to the indifferent beauty of the bone-chillingly wintry landscape. An ember of pink pepper trills tremulously through juniper’s whispers of icy ancient pine; saffron reveals the warm honeyed spice of its mysteries only to become lost in the cool, unknowable depths of sea moss. And yet… there’s a stormy heart to this scent, of musk and rain and the desolation of sirens and the destruction of sea gods. Perhaps that gnarly lighthouse keeper has a place in this story after all. I’m not sure what happened to the penguins, though.
Atomic Bee Women from the Abyss from Zoologist. Oh, wait, it’s not called that. Because they didn’t consult me on the name. It’s just Bee. But this definitely a deliciously campy, over-the-top, apian B-movie femme fatale honey trap of a scent. A real Atomic Bee Women From Beyond type of experience. Imagine, if you will, Jessica Rabbit, but instead of a slinky red dress, she’s draped in a slick, sultry cascade of golden honey, held aloft by the teensiest of gleaming wings, which is quite a feat considering she's a monstrous 50-foot tall intergalactic bee queen. Lusciously hovering with a dizzying buzz, she oozes a sweet, sticky, powdery vanilla and sandalwood secretion atop skyscrapers and military personnel as the city erupts in chaos. “I’m not bad; I’m just drawn from the honeycomb that way,” she coos, delicately drilling her enormous stinger into the aromatic dessert wine richness flowering summer gardens of mimosa and heliotrope scattered in a park at the city’s center. You realize too late as the air becomes suffused with the heady nectar of musky orange blossom and ginger syrup’s candied fire that her squadron of sisters has breached the atmosphere, thick waxy clouds of intoxicating yellow florals announcing their arrival. The city, drowned in pollen and pheromones, falls into a delirious stupor. Mankind, forgotten, dissolved into the honeyed haze, their last sighs swallowed by the incessant thrumming of a million tiny wings.
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.
It s sooo underrated abd it is one of the beste smelling designers
