earthy

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Attaquer le Soleil

attaquer le soliel
Sample spray with cool shadows.

Marquis de Sade–Attack the Sun.

On first blind sniff, I get an earthy animalic lemon with some smoky cedar resin. It’s marvelous, almost like wet oil paints–complex and changing with a hint of sweetness. Even my cat got nosy.

So I looked up the description, and discovered it’s pure labdanum. Rock-rose, and that’s all. The designer apparently doesn’t like it, so he made a solifleur in an attempt at immersion therapy.

Labdanum is at the heart of two of my favorites by LUSH, Tank Battle and Rentless, grounding the clove and the aniseed. On its own, it becomes airier, balsamic and musky, and decadent.

Projects at arms length for an hour, and on the skin for three more.

“How many times, good God, have I not wished it were possible to attack the sun, to deprive the universe of it, or to use it to set the world ablaze –” Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

Another riff on the decadent Marquis:

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Nirvana Amethyst

nirv amethWeird–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.

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Maduro

Maduro
Fort & Manle bottle cutout paper tester, and sample spray from the discovery set.

Boozy pineapple fruit dipped in herbal honey, garnished with minty patchouli–but then some dank tobacco weirdly dirties up the sweetness.

It’s an odd mix, like Jimmy Choo Man put on silk argyle socks and Birkenstocks.

Maduro is an ode to a famous box of Cuban cigars from 1961. Despite Fidel Castro’s ban on rock music the same year, Los Zafiros were quite successful.

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Cabochard

cabochardThis makes me feel like I’ve walked out of the most expensive shoe store in Paris.

A quick opening of aldehydes and spicy fruit, as if to anchor the time period–and a few of the usual flowers to say I am French!—then the leather kicks in with patent pointy toe boots and kid gloves, leaving prints behind for days.

It’s down to earth–this footwear has solid heels–with oakmoss and pungent geranium and a pinch of tobacco.
I’d wear it if it had a touch more sweetness.

This tune came out in 1959, too.

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Black Orchid

Black orchidChocolate covered mushrooms.
Tom Ford’s biggest is actually an olfactory pun on truffles!
The bottle is even textured like gills.

Opens sweet and dirty and loud, earthy cocoa and umami fungus that grows on your skin and your clothes and the walls of your dining room.
They slowly warp into wet white flowers and syrupy fruit, in a change of dinner courses that doesn’t take the old plates away, a trencher of watermelon garnished with petals and patchouli.
Afterwards vanilla beans, smoked like cigars.

Very sexy, in a you-make-me-hungry way, but don’t wear it if you’re dieting.

So many ‘shroomy covers of this song. I’m stuck on this awesome Arabic one right now.

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Dead Sexy

dead sexy skull
Mini bottle with skull and crossbones label, sitting in the eye socket of a plaster skull.

TokyoMilk #06

The blackest richest dirt, and polished exotic coffin woods, vanilla sweet flowers to cover the scent of death—-but then it lingers for a while at a distance, ethereal with a breath of incense ash and mystery.

My not-so-inner goth-girl finds this utterly lovely.

How sweet is this song?!

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Panda

panda edgy
Decant vial on notebook paper with a Zoologist bottle paper test strip.

Climbs green trees and drinks peach tea, then holds orange flowers at paws length during the descent to the forest floor.

Sweet, comfortable and ponderous, but not terribly exciting.

The latest version of this is done with green apples instead of bamboo–I think I liked the older one better.

Daniel Caesar is an R&B artist from Canada, too. (Zoologist is out of Toronto.)

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Cardamom Coffee

cardamum coffee edgy
LUSH solid perfume pot and botanical drawing of Elettaria cardamomum.

Indeed.
Rich hot coffee and roasted cardamom pods at arms length for an hour, slowly fading to sweet oud and herbal rose a few inches above the skin for several more.

Gorgeously unisex, but also sensual and inviting–flickering lights on a cold night, hands held in mittens, warm drinks with spice.

The solid is nice, but I want a bottle to douse myself with on the holidays– and it would work really well as a bed linen spray, too.

This song is comforting and inviting and unisex, too.

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Furze

furze edgyIf dolls could fart marshmallows, they’d smell like this.

A loud pbthpbthpbth of sweet plastic esthers–almost an artificial banana–then greasy coconut oil that dries down to diaper powder and decomposing Barbies left in the sun.

Weirdly sticky  (and very synthetic for a LUSH scent) and lasts forever.

Who’da thunk Aqua’s bizarre hit could be turned this haunting and pretty?!