SCENTS

Fragrance du jour, recent sniffs, random notes.

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Chevaux d’Or

chevaux d'or edgy
Sample spray on ad with a red ombre cut crystal confection with rhinestone “sprinkles” on the gold top.

Chevaux d’Or (oddly named “Golden Horses,”) is lux sweetness and candied money. The Mario mushroom bottle is supposed to be a jeweled cupcake.

The first spritz is salt and strawberries. The second is raspberries and sugar.

Then roses. All the roses. Tight buds, sharp and green, then full and sexy and come-hither, and finally sweet and blowsy and soft.

Settles down with a sheer layer of vanilla and spicy sweet flowers over the roses. It lasts for a few hours, then fades into nutty powder.

A spoiled princess perfume in the most perfect way.

*

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Norne

norne edgy
Slumberhouse flask with olive green liquid, casting funky shadows.

A Midwinter’s orgy.
Opens with fir and sticky chocolate, incense and sex.

Seriously. This stuff is like having violent Viking-love in a heap of furs in front of a balsam bonfire. It writes runes on your body with spruce psychotropics and sweet ash.

The juice is dark and lays heavy on the skin, like hands and honey and pine tree sap, and stains clothes with green spoor.
Amazing.

Norne can  refer to a calypso orchid, or to the three Norse goddesses of destiny.

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Eros

Square teal bottle with raised maze, medusa medallion and gold detailing.

Manly mint, and lemon.

Nice, but stuffy at first. This guy orders Woodford Reserve on the rocks when he really wants a Malibu and Coke with a straw loaded with fruit.

After a bit it loosens up to vanilla and vetiver, and longing glances toward the karaoke bar.

This was the biggest song in Italy in 2012, when Versace released Eros.

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Every Storm a Serenade

every storm a serenade edgyRain on the sea and blue spruce, with a smear of mint camphor rub on the chest.

Moody and clever and so wet.
The man wearing this might be prone to rough fisherman’s sweaters and prefers strange tasting akvavits.
The woman wearing this also wears eyeglasses instead of contacts at business meetings, so people will take her more seriously.

This one is from Above. An incredibly moody and clever album.

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Eleventh Hour

eleventh hour edgy
Byredo bottle cutout paper tester (stained with eau) on notebook paper.

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.

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Hyrax

Pooka sniffing decant vial and Zoologist bottle paper test strip, on Edward Lear’s watercolor sketch of a hyrax. (He did not approve.)

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.

*

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Bal d’Afrique

Bal d'Afrique edgy
Sample spray on a vintage Swedish cruise ad.

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.)

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Falling into the Sea

falling into the sea edgyThe 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.