Scintillating strawberry baby powder.
Brilliant, with a delicate dissonance that shifts between sparkling floral dust and sweet berry syrup, for hours and hours.
Chaotic, with the lure of a candy shaped bar of soap, and easily worn by anyone from age 9 to 90–
–unless if you happened to be in elementary school in 1980.
Because this smells exactly like Strawberry Shortcake doll hair.
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Here’s another dissonant Insolence that works well:
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This one has stayed true to memory–or maybe I’m finally spiraling upward from this latest mini relapse–with sun after rain on a vegetable garden, green and fresh and perfect.
Sole 149 is as green as Envy, with the same jasmine on rosy wood stems, but wet tomato leaf takes the place of the fruity celery, turning the bitterness more herbal than citrus.
I love the vibrancy of the top notes–the verdant piquant strangeness of the tomato plant is so unexpected yet immediately recognizable–and the shower clean drydown is soft and nice.
The jasmine in the middle is a little thin, but perfectly suits the translucency of a Pucci silk scarf.
Wear on summer evenings.
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A garden song–a cover of one of my favorite by Joni, here turned shadowy.
“Long Covid” is a thing.
I’m getting better, just more slowly than I thought. It’s been 10 months, now.
(The guy hasn’t got his taste back properly, and says the sky looks pinker than it should.)
The waves of exhaustion come and go, with joint pain popping up in odd places–a ghost in the machine–and shrouding sensations that make me doubt my nose and my playlists.
Sometimes my most beloved songs seem flat, the blues going gray.
I took a break from the sniff tests for a few months, nervous that my receptors were too scarred to function properly.
I’ve found comfort in my old favorites–Tank Battle has been a constant through this two-steps-forward-one-step-back recovery–spraying more, pressing my nose deeper into my skin, rejoicing at the familiar notes in the muted performance.
Not all have stayed the same, though.
Poe’s Tobacco–which used to be an autumn go-to, with apples and amber and tea–now seems more summery, orchard blossoms and sun in trees, and maybe some jasmine I wasn’t aware of before.
The tabac still gives it depth, but the woods lean more floral now, and less toward books in shadowy corners. I’m sad about it, that the niche-but-accessible cleverness has worn off.
A nice, easy to find vintage–but not quite as offbeat and fun as I remember.
I hope it’s just me.
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A haunting rendition that still rings true.
Wet blue fur.
Edit – 7/3/23
A soft animalic musk that does an interesting back and forth between soap suds and woodsy pond water–but not my favorite wetland creature.
I pulled this out to compare the castoreum with a few others–Mad Madame, another strong “fur,” has a lot of it. Amouage Fate has only a little, just a touch of soft texture to the leather, and I love it.
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kira a. gold 