SCENTS

Fragrance du jour, recent sniffs, random notes.

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Au Masculin Eau de Minuit

Iconic Lolita Lempicka Au Masculin tree trunk shaped bottle in dark green, and black licorice twists.

(I swear I don’t have daddy issues.)

Edit – 2/9/2023

I still wear this when I take myself out to the movies.

Opens with a bag of black licorice Twizzlers and a Coke with the good ice–casual and sweet, like Minuit Noir but in jeans and t-shirt–and stays politely at the edge of personal space for a long matinee. Lingers with unassuming wood through the evening, and ends with a jubilant spin-out of tires à la Bvlgari Black.

Hard to find, but worth every penny, even if one is usually a cheap date.

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Black

Mini of Bvlgari’s iconic bottle (that is probably meant to look like a cuff stud, but looks more like a an air hockey striker.)

“Lemon leather,” “vanilla vinyl,” “rubber baby powder flowers,” and “amber sandalwood,” are all tongue twisters.

Black is equally confounding, made up of all those seemingly discordant syllables, yet somehow is absolutely marvelous.

Yes, it smells like WD-40* and tires–but they’re not Goodyear treads baking in the summer sun at a smoky track, they’re Victorian bicycle tyres ridden by gentlefolk on jasmine lined lanes in the spring.
And no, I’m not going to wear it–but I’ve read quite a few romances that feature a mechanic who cleans up nice, and in my head they smell just like this.

* (Have you ever looked at the ingredients list on the can? There’s a hefty gob of vanillin in that silicone oil.)

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Scarlett

TokyoMilk solid perfume and adorable matchbox with a glittered botanical illustration of a rose.

Raindrops on roses.
In a swamp.

This is supposed to be a blend of hyacinth, geranium, rose, and spices–and Scarlett is exactly that, though the spices are rather subdued, and the rest of it is kinda murky.
The opening roses are lovely but the geranium soon turns them too lemony and green, and as it heats up the dewy water hyacinth notes turn into sweaty green funk.

Not quite what I was hoping for, but might be nice cut with tiger balm for a mild muscle rub.

*

Some rosy acid crunk.

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Opium

Mini flask of Opium with a half pearl cap, gold eau and dark red lettering, sitting in a blush carnation.

Sexy Grandma.

Normally I dislike the “old lady” ageist cliche of describing vintage perfume–but my grandmother actually wore this, and damn if she wasn’t the swimsuit model at the pool in her retirement home’s brochure.

And I’m going to be that guy too, and complain that ~ThEy DoN’t MaKe It LiKe ThEy UsEd To~ but the original was much sweeter, with big banging cloves at the top sweetened by peaches and plums, and a resinous dry-down held in place with charred wood.

The 2009 version still has the carnation and myrrh at the center, but her rockin’ bottom has grown a bit soft, droopy amber patchouli and vanilla with no verve, rather than rounded out with sandalwood, cinnamon and incense.

If you need a hit of classic eighties balsamic spice, grab a vintage bottle–and pair with a pussy-bow shirt belted over culottes.

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Opium came out in 1977, the same year Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat hit the charts.

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Truth or Dare

Madonna promo card and sample with the same black & white versus color branding of her Truth or Dare movie

Brilliant busty bubblegum and bisexual bananas.

Edit – 10/19/21

Truth or Dare was the first movie I ever saw where on-screen homosexuality wasn’t portrayed as a hardship, flaw or deviance.
I still think about that sometimes.

*

And this how you change the standards of the entertainment industry:

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Wisdom

Yeah, I totally bought this for the packaging–a glass cigar tube, with a corked ceramic stopper base, the black bottle inside decorated with a white botanical drawing, and kelly green label listing the notes.

Victorian herbalist chic? Yes, please!

Wisdom (TokyoMilk Dark #26) starts with a muddle of plant-stuff in a mortar and pestle, with some aquatics to make it soupy.
The earthy sweetness of the walnut listed on the label comes through fifteen minutes in, and sadly doesn’t linger long.
The base is nondescript woodsy musk.

All that adds up to forest lake, in an elusive dryad way, but to be honest, I got this one for looking at, not wearing.

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Another dark take on wisdom-

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Vanillary

Vanillary edgyVanillary smells like that $70 candle you scored for $6 at TJMaxx–a little chipped at the edges but still classy and delicious AF.

It’s a big cloud of ice cream cupcake, though a bit dirty, as if it had been picked up from the floor within the 5 second rule.

This song also came out in 2009. Smooth and sweet with some dirty bass–one of my all time favorites.

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Royal Riesling

4711 cut crystal flask with plain gold and white label, and a bunch of green grapes.

Nice green grapes at first bite, effervescent and tart, but then it suddenly turns into raisins…? Sickly sweet with awkward dusty spice.
Weird and disappointing.

Edit – 9/5/21

Sometimes I find old notebooks, snippets of things on scraps of paper, my first impressions of something distasteful or not interesting enough to write about–
Reading them later, I have to laugh at my ignorance, my arrogance, or my honesty–or the fact that I take a disappointing fragrance so personally…

But really, who wants to smell like raisins?!

4711 gold bottle cap and a stem bereft of its grapes, on notepaper scrawled with the word “why??”

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Royalty.

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Lotus Sake

TokyoMilk solid perfume and matchbox, and gold capped bottle, both featuring two ladies in cheongsam dresses.

TokyoMilk #53 touts Crisp Greens, Plum, Green Lotus, Warm Sake on the label–
–and yeah, this stuff smells like a drunk dinner salad.
(The parfum solide adds oil to the dressing.)

Has an interesting vegan prep chef aura–I’ll toss the solid and keep the eau.

Edit 2/1/23

Unearthed this one today and did a double take, then did a comparison test, and yep, it’s got a LOT in common with Un Jardin sur le Nil—
Maybe I’m into alcoholic vegetables?

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A bit of crunk.