herbal

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Zippo

Cologne flask in the shape of a silver cigarette lighter, open capped with a flame seemingly lit from the top.

Usually I pick music for these posts that tie into the name of the perfume somehow, or maybe a song is written by an artist from the fragrance’s country of origin, or even the year the vintage came out–
This time my brother challenged me to find a scent to go with this jam by the ’70’s prog-rock band Gong.

I went with Zippo because the song has a lot of disjointed sweet notes with some metallic resonance, it lasts a long time, and after sampling a few times it kinda grows on you.
Also the packaging is cute.

Opens with flares of apple peel and vanilla, snaps some high hat brassy herbs and spices, and finishes on slow woods.
Leans to the tenor clef.
Not terribly unique, but fun and accessible and upbeat.

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Edge Effects

Edge Effects sample spray with b+w post card, and a peach, a clementine, tomato leaf and basil, and a big box of nag champa incense.

The inspiration for this scent is the dual world at the line where meadow meets trees, and it’s lovely–multifaceted, but without hard edges–and always changing from moment to moment.

Citrusy green peaches at first sniff that immediately ripen, turning sweet and spicy and lush for half an hour or so, not too loud, but very inviting.
Labdanum smoke breezes in, delicate and airy over earthy pine sweetened with jasmine. We we linger here for half the day in personal space, whispers flicker in and out: small musky animalics, pleasantly bitter leaves, sugared herbs–
The peaches and jasmine turn creamy toward the evening with a bit of vanilla, almost like benzoin but lighter and less sticky on the skin.
Gone by morning, with just a smudge of sweet greens on cotton cuffs.

Absolutely big bottle worthy, and my birthday is coming up soon.

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Another Edge, much edgier.

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ZigZag

Cut cube bottle with black tall top, on photo of Zsa Zsa in diamonds. The eau was originally chartreuse, mine has turned amber.

I was feeling kind of nostalgic and reached for this one this morning–originally out in the late 1940’s, had a heyday in the late ’60s when Zsa Zsa Gabor became the face, and then relaunched by Dana in the late ’90s.

ZigZag is a bit of a shapeshifter, opening with fascinating sniffy green tarragon amid some orangeade, then sliding into blowsy jasmine for an hour before lying on the skin with a dust of indulgent powder that has nothing of the top notes at all.
There’s a timeless cheeky pretension to it that I love–ultra feminine but cheap in the best way, like false eyelashes from the dollar store–and I bet it will have another resurgence, maybe late in this decade.

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More nostalgia, with no pretense whatsoever–from Joni’s first album, 1968.

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Macaque Fuji Apple Edition

Promo card with very dignified monkey and sample spray, and macaque mask.

After the whomp on the head with several big trees–and a few apple bruises–the resins of the previous editions swing in, but they’re much tamer now.

The bleach, musk and pee have been cleaned up with cider and polished with more frankincense, and the woods lounge just inside personal space for a long hot afternoon.

He’s still a cheeky monkey, but at least there’s no feces being flung anymore.

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Another monkey edition:

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Black Widow

Black bottle with white spider illustration, in a lineup of pepper, celery flake, Zatarain’s crab boil, garlic and Old Bay seasoning.

Nocturnal short order cook.

Remember the guy who was the night closer at that blue-plate-special Cajun joint?
He was quiet and always smelled like dish soap, the étouffée spice mix–made of dried green herbs and woody thyme–and the dusting sugar that went on the beignets. No-one ever saw him in the daylight, but everybody liked him.

Black Widow has almost no projection and lasts as long as a dinner break.

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New Orleans native Fats Domino revamped Junker’s Blues into The Fat Man–which became the first rock and roll single to sell a million copies–here’s a version of the original by Hugh Laurie.

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Pomegranate & Eucalyptus

4711 cut glass flask with silver cap and red and gold label, and box with pomegranate vine.

Shirley Temple cough drops–medicinal grenadine, sweet and mentholated–that fade by the time the lozenge melts.
The combination shouldn’t work. Camphor and red fruit should be dissonant, but here they ring bright and clarifying and joyful.

I love it–not to wear, it’s too ridiculously cheerful–but my entire house, my linens and my gifts will all smell like this next holiday season.

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John Wick and Wednesday both sample Vivaldi’s Four seasons.
It’s still winter here.

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Endymion

Tiny Penhaligon’s apothecary style bottle with navy blue tassel, and a mandarin.

Sweet oranges out of the bottle, with a bundle of lavender that hovers inside personal space for fifteen minutes.
Then, almost suddenly, the coffee hits, like it was spilled onto the skin, and it’s marvelous–supported by gruff spices and leather, almost grumpy, in a normally-nice boss arriving to work late way.
(How can a scent seem both surly and comforting at the same time?)

Lasts an hour or two, a little longer on cuffs.

The guy usually fusses when I wear men’s cologne, but this one he likes.

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A new one by a master. Both surly and comforting and so, so, good.

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Eclipse

TokyoMilk Dark black bottle with white enamel details of a solar eclipse, lit with stars.

TokyoMilk #99

Black Anise and Mint Leaf (Margot Elena is so marvelously extra) make for an intrusive yet great wormwood opening, but then the “Smoked Amber” tramples all the herbs into damp bachelor pad funk.

Touted as unisex, but it’s taking up waaay too much room on the subway seat while boasting about its car emissions.

Lingers a foot off the skin for half the day, and on cotton until a hot water wash.
Wear with a barbershop Ivy League cut, and mirrored aviator shades. (Maybe don’t wear it.)

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Soundgarden covering The Doors. Also a bit rude, but in the best way.

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Junk

Small glass pot of purple solid perfume with black lid.

Oh, Junk, how I love you–one part Tiger Balm, one part black currant cough drops–you heal my soul with comforting ’70s vibes of beaded doorway curtains and rusty VW micro-buses, JOB rolling papers and Aquarian tarot decks.

The solid is much preferable to the spray, so it can be rubbed into the skin like a curative salve. Apply every four hours or as needed.

My little pot expires next year. I cannot wait until someone asks me what I’m wearing, so I can nonchalantly say, “Just some old Junk I had.”

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Sloth

A cup of chamomile tea, with a decant vial and paper test strip of Zoologist bottle.

Sloth’s timeline:

0:01 – Chamomile tea and loud mushrooms.
(The cat is deeply offended.)
0:05 – A bit of fruit and honey, then spiced coffee, with testicles.
Up close, in my personal space.
And they need a wash.
(I’m offended too.)
0:15 – The boys get a nice shower, with lavender.
0:20 – Unoffensive berries. (Not a euphemism.)
0:30 – Haaay!
Greens. Grassy greens, in the sun.
1:00 – Berries again, grapefruit sour, black currant bite. Nice.
2:00 – Oakmoss and resins 6″ above the skin.
4:00 – A smudge of herbal teabag dregs on cuffs.

Edit – 3/3/23

Aside from the dirty ball sack stage, this is a reasonable fragrance.

This designer made Bat, too, which has a lot of the same measured storytelling progression.
The mushrooms are odd–Tom Ford does them better in Black Orchid–but they’re brief, and kind of fun.
I like the acai berry very much, but it’s not my cuppa.

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A proper Sloth playlist would have Dirty Head’s awesome NSFW Sloth’s Revenge, Tim Minchin’s hilarious Lament for the Three Toed Sloth and Sloth & Turtles’s jam A Song for Ants.

…but I’m stuck on this song today.