herbal

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Arsenic

Black TokyoMilk mini bottle featuring a white beetle, sitting in the eye socket of a plaster skull draped in a snakeskin printed scarf.

Now this is what a Halloween fragrance should be–weird, earthy, evocative, and tricky sweet.

TokyoMilk Dark #17 lists Absinthe, Vanilla Salt, Cut Greens, and Crushed Fennel on the bottle–and Arsenic lives up to that, and more.

Wormwood out of the bottle, a satisfying poison green, with a bit of dusty white frosting, both edible and stand-offish.
A twitch of licorice keeps it fresh and fun for several hours at the edge of social distance, and then slides down to intimate space with intoxicating herbal green woods and mineral salts–the the kind that smell a bit sour and glitter when the light hits them right–until the next morning.

The sweeter top notes linger longer on hair and silk, and the bottom blooms brilliantly in a steaming bath (or cauldron.)
Compelling and sexy.
Leans to the warlock section of the spell-book.

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Sonoran Bloom

Canister and gold capped bottle featuring a red and fuchsia illustration of a cactus bloom. Yes, I did blind-buy it on the packaging alone.

Anosmia Bloom is a better name for the opening–I worried that my covid nose had returned–two big sprays on my wrist and one directly on my cuff and for a while all I got was watery citrus.

TokyoMilk #84 lists Petrichor, Saguaro Flower, Agave and Red Clay.
(Saguaro are the big tree cacti out west, with flowers that smell like overripe green melons and are beloved by bats.)

Margot Elena’s “Desert Splendor Awakened” takes a while to wake up, but after a half an hour of weak lemonade, the flowers bloom a hand-span above the skin, herbal-sweet with earthy green notes.

Reasonably pleasant, but nothing special.
Lasts half the day in intimate space, with some dusty musk stains left on cotton.

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A night-blooming tune.
(R.I.P. Dusty Hill. Texas has gone to hell without you.)

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Un Jardin sur le Nil

Promo card illustrated with lily-pads and Hermès bottle, and sample spray.

I’ve never been to the Nile, but the Lily Pool Terrace at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden smells a lot like this–standing water in the sun, but nice, with that marvelous fruity green aquatic plant funk.
There’s other stuff blooming too, indistinct but still there, bulbs from the fragrance garden, and distant herbal vegetable leaves, with a bit of city haze underneath.

Perfect for summer, but good for hot autumn afternoons with Chardonnay, too.

Lasts the morning on skin in personal space, and most of the day on clothes.

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Hossam Ramzy was an amazing percussionist–he’s worked with everyone from Led Zeppelin to Shakira. (Y’know the riff in Jay-Z’s Big Pimpin’? That’s him.)

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K

Rectangular slate blue mini bottle with silver crown cap and a long red pepper.

This guy starts out like all his other man-pals, noisy and a little gin-drunk, but he’s sweet so you go home with him–and he cooks. Spicy peppers, herbs, citrus, figs, well mixed, and suddenly he’s fun, hot chili and warm blues. Not particularly athletic, but he’s long lasting with good wood and big wok energy.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground is good hard funk.

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Thé Bleu

Pale blue frosted purse spray balanced on rim of teacup filled with Lipton and 3 springs of lavender.

Freshwater mer-folk bath salts.

The first whiff is a slippery murky green note that reminds me of okra. Thankfully, that soon slides away, washed off by fancy French laundry powder–the lavender and violets dried out by iris.

Then comes a round of decongestants in the form of minted tea, an odd sinus clearing smoke under the florals, giving everything a cool blue vibe that I sort of like, for about three hours in intimate space.

Weirdly swampy yet clean.

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Another cool blue.

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Zanzibar

Clear rectangular bottle with offset red square cap, and cardamom pods and cloves.

Opens with green herbs that get spicy as they warm up, teasing cloves and cardamom in a mild weather linen suit way, with sandalwood and soft sweet musk at the base.
Stays in personal space with breezy trails for an hour, then disappears to elusive spice on the skin.

Subtle, elegant and warm. (The guy finds the opening a bit too masculine on me, but likes the drydown.)

Van Cleef & Arpels discontinued Zanzibar, perhaps due to the fleeting performance. Vintages can be found pretty easily, with mini bottles pretty cheap, and full sizes in the hundreds.

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An Australian band that’s been around for forty years, and still touring. This is an early one.

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Mandragore

Aubergine Annick Goutal ridged bottle, half full.

Modern warlock potion.

Zings with citrus and black pepper out of the bottle, then sweetens up for a little while with anise and ginger. Other herbs are mashed up in there too, and the concoction constantly shifts, releasing smoky bubbles of impossible spell components for several hours–black violet leaf, glass wormwood, electric lavender.

Settles down to a bite of green on the skin, and is gone by noon.
Flips to the grimoire page of unisex.

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I love this.

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Valentino Uomo Acqua

Cut crystal mini flask with tiny cherry tomatoes on the vine.

Lovely tomato greens honed sharp with citrus, but then they soften–the sage takes the iris and turns it into that dusty rime on herb plants, rather than sweet powder.
Then Acqua (an odd name for this flanker because I don’t find it aquatic at all) slowly eases down to high quality Italian shoes, but they’re green and soft, keeping some of that suede texture that both sage and tomato leaves have.

Refreshing and smart–lasts half the day in personal space, longer on cuffs.

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Bassi was one of the founders of the Italian hip-hop scene–this one came out in 2017, the same year as Uomo Acqua. My favorite line (that translates well into English) is “I have always been half rapper, half man, divided halfway between the sky and Milan.”

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Arancia di Capri

Sample card and promo spray in Acqua di Parma’s signature navy blue. The company crest is a crowned shield with a rampant lion, some griffins and maybe a tree trunk on an ermine field, all wreathed in jingle bells.

Opens with juicy tart mandarin slices, and some petitgrain and a hint of cardamom–that all comes together like a nice splash of summer tea, in intimate space.
Melts down over an hour, to the faintest smudge of orange flavored caramel on the skin.

The quality of ingredients is quite nice. I’d be impressed with the performance if Arancia di Capri were an eau de cologne, but for a shy eau de toilette it’s a bit costly.
Guerlain’s Teazzurra is a bolder, sweeter tea, and 4711’s Myrrh & Kumquat has a sharper, more interesting citrus. Both are longer lasting at better prices.

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Found this one the other day.


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Amazing Grace Bergamot

Squarish bottle with silver tall top cap filled with pale pink eau, and a label illustrated with flowers and lemons.

The Amazing Graces can be a bit shrill to me, but a friend recommended this one, so I had to stick my nose in it. Bergamot is smoother than the other flankers, more aromatic-container-garden than cut-flower-bouquet.

Soft citrus zest and pale orange flower with some cool lily-of-the-valley green, that warms up with a hint of sheer herbal rose (that might actually be geranium) then slides down to elusive musk.

Philosophy advertises this as an eau de toilette, but it performs more like a cologne splash, a refresher that stays close to the skin for a few hours.
Makes for a brilliant mask spritz.

(Thanks, Bethe!)

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The Bergamot is a husband wife duo with a fun positive vibe.