Coffee with vanilla syrup and booze-cherry tobacco in a cedar wood humidor.
Italian plums, the kind they dry for prunes, and wormwood dust underneath.
Another scent I’d find cloying on a man but delicious on a butch woman.
Lighter than Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille, but no less intriguing.
I get lime and cigarette tobacco–freshly lit.
Maybe baked apples with cloves, but possibly dried figs and sweet pepper, and a quick finish to what I can only call “expensive coat closet”–slight animal, cedar and rum.
The liquid bites at the skin a bit, and it doesn’t last long.
I could almost compare it to Tank Battle, with the spicy bubblegum notes, except this has more Y chromosome at the bottom.
I like it.
*
I love Leonard Cohen songs. Especially when sung by other people.
No.
Just. No.
This does not smell like some sexy anthropomorphic Furry wet dream musk, this smells like road kill during rutting season. Shrieking tire residue and terrified mammal anal gland excretion.
It won’t scrub off. My skin still smells like turtle pee and tarmac and rot-gut bourbon. I am not okay.
My cat is not okay.
*
Opens sharp, an oily floral zest of citrus, then sweetens to lemon cake close on the skin.
Slowly settles into wet vetiver and marigolds, and forest floor violets that bloom long and loud, a foot off the body for hours.
Lingers for days with an odd minty amber after bite–like arctic lake water.
I don’t get an African ball in Paris from this, but I’ve never been to one.
*
A bit of Jazz Age (sorta.)
The prologue foreshadows bitchy rose and lemon peel, but the first chapter is Lily-of-the-valley and fabric softener.
A misdirection of cucumber, then the plot is all citrus–grapefruit juice, fresh squeezed, but with the tiniest toothpaste tang, clever and defiant.
It ends abruptly, with sun on sand.
Definitely a story, but too many twists and turns to leave a lasting mood.
A Diorissimo martini.
So interesting-. Spring green jasmine and lily-of-the-valley and all the heavy white flowers, but with a tipsy watery note and a lemon zest curl that cuts through the floral wax with a vodka edge.
Cocktail hour lasts three hours, and leaves a kid leather glove behind, 1950’s Cinderella chic.
Hey, Philosophy, with that bottle color, you mean “Caucasian,” not nude.
But the magazine sample was free, so:
Smells like a bouquet of over-bred pale tea roses in a hospital room. Pretty but generic, with an odd note of bleach musk underneath.
There are soooo many better rose scents out there. Lush’s Imogen Rose is heaven. Tea Rose by Perfumer’s Workshop is a great bargain for an awesome rose. Annick Goutal’s Rose Absolue is a petal bomb. Filch your grandmother’s YSL Paris if you have to.
But roses shouldn’t ever be beige.
And nude is an absence of clothing, not “white people skin.” Not the best marketing moment for a product line called Pure Grace.
This song came out in 1992. Feels like we’ve actually slid backward since then, but more likely, we’re finally seeing what has always been.
Aptly named.
A walk through the produce aisle in sexy shoes that only come in European sizes.
Byredo’s Pulp is lush fruit rind you want to press your thumb into to check for ripeness. Tart currants spill onto a heap of figs, then there’s a nuttiness, a bite of candy bar like a bawdy pick-up line, funny rather than insulting.
Drunk apples sit on the skin for several hours, waiting for elegant lipstick bites, then they fade to a woody stem.
I bought the biggest bottle I could legally take on the airplane.
*
Saw her live, ages ago–so good. This one is a bit bawdy, too.
Not my monkey.
Pissy alpha pine flings fruit and the dregs of metal teapots in the air for hours, then disappears into trees after smearing indelible green musk on the skin.
Edit – 11/16/2021
Discontinued, with new flanker editions. Yuzu is a slight improvement on the original. (The Fuji Apple wasn’t available when I placed my order.)
*
Different circus, better monkeys:
Roses in Vaseline.
Pretty bottle, though.
Edit – 10/10/21
Today I pulled this one out of the “meh” box–the bottles that never inspired more than a bit of snark, but didn’t quite deserve to perfume the trash bin–just to see if anything had changed.
The rose is still coated in an odd layer of petroleum jelly, perhaps the saffron at the top hitting the cypriol oil on the bottom, that sadly masks the caraway and jasmine sweetness.
I bought Mystique during my search for a signature rose scent. (I gave up on that rather quickly–turns out I’d rather have a whole rambling garden rather than singular perfection.)
Lancome has discontinued it, and bottles are hot commodities now.
At current prices, one could snag a big bottle of Amouage Epic Woman–a rich caraway rose, and a 50ml of Imaginary Authors’ saffron delight Slow Explosions.
Or get the Elizabeth & James Nirvana Rose vetiver power suit for about $20.
*
Keep an ear out for Saffron Collins, a talented teen from Dubai.
kira a. gold 