Fun, but would make a better ice cream flavor.
Maybe by Ben & Jerry’s, with some sprinkles of head shop funk and first crush blueberry sweetness.
Goes on cheap, dutch-date artificial giggles, but slowly gets comfortable and sexy–sugary incense ash a breath off the skin–for several hours.
Perfect for ditching class and finding your chakras, the clitoris, or lay-lines.
Love this dreamy tune by Jay Som. (Check out her NPR Tiny Desk Concert.)
Happy happy, merry merry!
This is sugary Christmas kisses under the mistletoe, clean snow and frosted black currants.
The lavender is sweet and musky and long-lasting, a pretty rime over the pine notes on the bottom.
I’d love this as a pillow spray in the winter.
This one is fun–
This is what Santa wears when he’s visiting a naughty house, because they’re a little nice, too, aren’t they?
Manly gingerbread cookies left under the tree.
Bright fir, fresh cut, leaking sticky pine pitch, and spice–baked ginger, ground cloves–with a syrupy base of resinous vanilla musk.
Long lasting in personal space, balsam trails with with brown sugar rubbed into the skin. Unisex, but should be worn by St. Nick types with big beards and twinkling eyes.
I like the candle even better. The pine takes center stage with a fruity note of cranberry, backed up by some smoky rose infused tea.
My house smells like a present–I’ve been a good girl this year.
Merry, merry.
A fruity failed sobriety test.
Opens with party-girl peaches, so alcoholic they need rehab. Once they dry up, they give off morning after fumes of vanilla and stale sandalwood breath.
Oddly, it’s very enjoyable on clothes–a splash of apricot brandy musk that lasts til laundry day–but on my skin it’s soured pear custard, so I’ll keep it for a scarf scent.
My little mini was from the first release in 1995. (The name changed to plain Burberry on the next pressing.) Edwyn Collins came out with A Girl Like You the same year. I like this updated reggae femme version a lot.
The opening of this one smells exactly like the Jewish bakery on Montague Street on Hanukkah, the windows fogged with the scent of chocolate and poppyseed hamantaschen, and red jelly donuts–
–but then the sequoia note pulls it out of feminine gourmand territory and gives it nice depth.
Good sillage, and the dry down is amazing–a masculine woody cocoa powder that lasts forever on clothes.
My new favorite of the Nest line.
L’Chaim!
Bingo hall piña coladas.
Peppery amber ashtrays, coconut and pineapple daiquiri mix, sandalwood sawdust on the floor, and plastic flower musk underneath.
It’s kind of awesome in a retro chichi skirt way, though I was sort of hoping for some melting clocks, or waves that went on for eternity. Doesn’t last long, but finishes on a lovely patchouli tinged vanilla.
This song was also released in Spain in 1991– the title track of Vicente Amigo’s first album.
Peachy honey aldehydes at the beginning, then flowers pile on, heavy on the iris.
Woods file in quickly, with sandalwood and amber on the bottom.
Lasts most of the day, and the next on cotton.
It’s sort of frumpy but mischievous, like the great aunt who slipped you a taste of her cordial when your parents said you still were too young to have any.
Lanvin released this in 1927. A year later, Boléro by Maurice Ravel premiered in Paris. Brilliant versions of the piece exist all over the internet–André Rieu’s is great, Pink Martini’s is worth a listen, even Frank Zappa conducts one, cigarette in hand. My favorite of the moment is this very special arrangement by Angelique Kidjo with Branford Marsalis.
Grapefruit pith and rotting tree bark. There could be some sour berries in there, too.
Shady and dark, like the person wearing this would try to sell me a bridge in Brooklyn or offer me some magic beans.
Christopher Walken is my favorite weird bad guy.
Weird–sugar cookies that have been dropped in the dirt.
There’s tobacco, but it’s muddy–cigarette butts left out in the rain.
And there’s honeysuckle, but they’re kind of bruised, like the sun shone too hot.
The spice is nice, powdered ginger and cloves, a soft baking mix for shy cooks.
Stays close, grubby sweets snacked on in private, but lasts all day.
I can’t explain why I like it, but I do.
This Nirvana cover is also weird and sweet.
In the summer it’s eye-watering: all the hot sauces at the taqueria–tabasco, nopales salsa verde, pico jalapeño–uncorked and spilled over the table.
In the winter it cools down, becomes herbal, sweet bell peppers with a touch of rose on a base of cedar and metallic musk, but it’s no less potent.
Xeryus Rouge came out in in the mid nineties, along with this sweet spicy tune from Cuba.
kira a. gold 