Author: kira a. gold

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Zanzibar

Clear rectangular bottle with offset red square cap, and cardamom pods and cloves.

Opens with green herbs that get spicy as they warm up, teasing cloves and cardamom in a mild weather linen suit way, with sandalwood and soft sweet musk at the base.
Stays in personal space with breezy trails for an hour, then disappears to elusive spice on the skin.

Subtle, elegant and warm. (The guy finds the opening a bit too masculine on me, but likes the drydown.)

Van Cleef & Arpels discontinued Zanzibar, perhaps due to the fleeting performance. Vintages can be found pretty easily, with mini bottles pretty cheap, and full sizes in the hundreds.

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An Australian band that’s been around for forty years, and still touring. This is an early one.

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Italian Leather

Memo black, white and gold promo card with sample spray, held in a white leather glove.

The ad says a lot of pretty things involving fancy car interiors and the Roman countryside, but I get old diner next to a truck stop–chocolate ice cream sundaes, chrome and red leather bar stools, cigarette smoke and Trident gum–in the best way.

Brash and loud at the start, then melting into sweetness, the leather is almost edible, but for the marvelous hit of car-exhaust labdanum.
I can find the tomato leaf after I know to look for it, a twang of green with a metallic discord, but it fades after the first hour, drowning in the syrupy resins at the bottom of the dish. I wish it lasted longer–the sharpness is interesting, and cuts through the vanilla.

The benzoin and myrrh stay half the day on skin, and whisper the next morning on cotton.
Lots of fun.

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Chuck Berry’s “You Can Never Tell” is a diner jukebox staple–

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1000

Vintage Jean Patou cut crystal bottle with gold details and aged sealing thread (and a red capped black Joy bottle in the background.)

Jean Patou’s 1000 (said “Mille” because French, oui?) was launched in 1972, a powdery rose chypre with a glimpse of cat in the leaves.
Retro and odd, with a loud fruity green opening to a big Joy bouquet, yet somehow demure–the enormous flowers are dusted with iris and violet, and a moss so soft it disguises a rather lot of civet–that after eons settles to the skin with sudsy woody aldehydes.

Extremely long lasting, and in this era, unisex, easily worn by the guy who marches in solidarity with his mother, who wore it almost 50 years ago, carrying signs that say the same damn thing.

Sadly, Jean Patou’s production was halted last year, so grab a bottle of this (and Joy, too, if you haven’t one) now, while it can still be found.

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The Partisan is an anti-fascist song written by Anna Marley in 1943, who was an inspiration to the French Resistance. The song resurfaced in 1969 with Leonard Cohen’s cover, and it quickly became an anthem for protesters in the early ’70s, including Joan Baez.

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Excess

Matte black rectangular bottle with white octopus illustration.

TokyoMilk #28 lists amber resin, oak bark, blood orange, and patchouli–and they’re easily identifiable and rather nice.

The orange is sharp–not juicy, but pleasantly pithy–bolstered by the oak, which carries a bit of root-beer sweetness. The patchouli deepens the blend without taking over, listing more toward sailor than mermaid.

Excess is pleasant and polite, lingering in intimate space for half the day, and a lot less Lovecraftian than the black bottle, name and octopus illustration advertise. (I was hoping to get to use the words squamous, eldritch, and abnormal in this write-up, but sadly, no.)

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Here’s a cool cover of the creepy tune from Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

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Savage Belle

TokyoMilk bottle and cylindrical canister, featuring a yellow striped black kingsnake, and nightshade, foxglove and amaryllis (all poisonous flowers.)

TokyoMilk No. 68 lists Warm Ginger, Bergamot, Charcoal Accord and Wisteria on this new one, but I don’t get much of that.

There’s a splash of sugar-free Canada Dry at the beginning, and a hint of guttering candle in the middle–but it’s gone in thirty minutes. A wisp of purplish citrus clings to cuffs for another hour.

The packaging is gorgeous, though.

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This song is a bit more savage.

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Chipmunk

Zoologist promo sample with adorable rodent in acorn cap beret and scouts uniform, and some dark brown pin oak acorns.

This is nuts.

Opens with a squirt of alcoholic citrus that is overtaken by green cardamom, then turns creamy. (The chamomile and benzoin, maybe? It’s quite nice.)
Acorns and leaves slowly fall to the skin, sharp oak but earthy, sweetened with hazelnuts and herbs.
At the very bottom is more woods and some gorgeous balsamic resins, but they’re cooled with patchouli, a hint of winter coming.

Brilliant for autumn.
I’d enjoy it more as an ice cream or a tea, rather than wearing it–I’d be constantly worried that I’d managed to overturn someone’s fall spice latte on my clothes–but Chipmunk would be perfect for anyone looking for a heartier nutty gourmand than the usual marzipans.

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Best Chipmunk remix ever.

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Kyoto

A plate of whole canned beets and sample spray sitting in vermilion liquid, a pink rose, and a Diptyque box in the background.

Opens with nice earthy vodka that definitely makes one think of root vegetables, but then it warms up and the roses bloom on woody stems–sweet, pretty, and strange, with a hint of smoke in the distance.

Intriguingly genderless.
In the daytime it’s cheerful–sun on fresh turned soil and trained florid roses. At night it seems Gothic–a vampire graveyard, and coolly seductive.
Lasts four hours or so in personal space, with faint trails on cuffs.
I like it very much.

(I have no idea what beetroot has to do with Kyoto, but I’ve never been.)

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The Cure’s Kyoto Song probably has as much authentic ties to Japan as this scent, but it has some of the same dark emo vibes.

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Fanghorn

Pineward sample vial and paper test cutout of Fanghorn bottle, burlap pouch and a taxus tip with green needles.

Nice.
Fanghorn is a bit brighter than Murkwood and less sweet, with an earthy forest floor petrichor replacing the myrrh and incense.
Realistic pine in a summer rainstorm for an hour, then green lichen on the skin for the rest of the day.
Semi-permanent on cotton, with the wet fir opening.

Leans to unisex trees with rough bark.

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More Tolkien inspired art:

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Mandragore

Aubergine Annick Goutal ridged bottle, half full.

Modern warlock potion.

Zings with citrus and black pepper out of the bottle, then sweetens up for a little while with anise and ginger. Other herbs are mashed up in there too, and the concoction constantly shifts, releasing smoky bubbles of impossible spell components for several hours–black violet leaf, glass wormwood, electric lavender.

Settles down to a bite of green on the skin, and is gone by noon.
Flips to the grimoire page of unisex.

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I love this.

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Green Lover

A bit of clematis leaf and sample vial, with Lolita Lempicka promo card featuring a waterfall over green mossy rocks.

I never really thought of Shamrock Shakes as sexy, but daaamn–this is a guy’s gourmand done right.

A milky mint confection spiked with orange flavored gin–(Tanqueray Flor de Sevilla is a pretty nice one)–that elevates it out of after school detours for fast food and into high end pastry shops with a liquor license.

Lolita Lempicka’s trademark syrupy-yet-powdery vanilla musk, here turned into sweet green teasing shadows, drifts in and out of intimate space all day, whispering invitations to drinks and dessert.
Yum.

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