This one is from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Mad Tea Party collection, and it’s rather nice.
The grapefruit opens more floral than fruit, especially with the lavender, then chamomile makes it sweet. The musk is subtle, paired with the currants, and soft, like the dusty bloom on dark berries.
I’d love it in a bath oil.
The Pogues aren’t from anywhere near Cheshire, but this is great.
A laundry soap commercial.
Lime rind in a dry powder detergent, then wildflowers in the sun. Finishes chemical clean.
Much too sanitary for me.
I might like it more if it were punked up a bit.
Big green leaves at first spray, then waxy flowers and roses in a huge stainless steel vase.
Eventually settles into a watery flood of black currant tea and wet dog–a fancy one with manicured paws and a pompadour.
Both swanky and skanky. Not for me, but it’s got a certain likeable strut.
Kathi MacDonald was an unsung rock and roll heroine–she recorded with The Rolling Stones, Ike & Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and many more.
She had lots of strut.
Crisp roadside pear slices and lemonade, then a big swallow of juniper gin that fades into the musk at the end.
Sunny day pretty, but there’s a haze underneath, like diesel fumes.
Not for me, but I would crawl inside the clothes of the man wearing it.
Here’s Dwight Yoakum’s hit from the album Three Pears.
Candy sweet artificial red, like the lollipops from the bank teller.
Childish despite the white musk, Barbie perfume in plastic go-go boots.
Lasts through the play-date and nap hour, but fades before snack time.
*
A fun song for kids and adults.
This one opens strong and sweet, the hot edge of licorice biting with teeth.
Musk takes over.
Musk takes over the whole house.
Then it turns to hardwood–glittery resin and deep heavy mahogany.
I like sweetness of it, but the second I invite him over he’s gonna swallow my furniture in one big gulp and write his name over mine on the lease.
Kimberly New York is a new brand with a marvelous collection using organic ingredients–one to keep an eye on.
(Jay-Z has his own scent brand, but I’ve always loved this song.)
Jennifer Lawrence’s bottled tears.
This is department store white musk and Earl Grey tea with cream. She might have a rose in her teeth, but it’s faux silk and plastic.
Joy by Dior has none of J-Law’s fun spirit. The musk is too cheap, the citrus too sharp, the rose too artificial.
I’m sad, too.
Hey, Philosophy, with that bottle color, you mean “Caucasian,” not nude.
But the magazine sample was free, so:
Smells like a bouquet of over-bred pale tea roses in a hospital room. Pretty but generic, with an odd note of bleach musk underneath.
There are soooo many better rose scents out there. Lush’s Imogen Rose is heaven. Tea Rose by Perfumer’s Workshop is a great bargain for an awesome rose. Annick Goutal’s Rose Absolue is a petal bomb. Filch your grandmother’s YSL Paris if you have to.
But roses shouldn’t ever be beige.
And nude is an absence of clothing, not “white people skin.” Not the best marketing moment for a product line called Pure Grace.
This song came out in 1992. Feels like we’ve actually slid backward since then, but more likely, we’re finally seeing what has always been.
Not my monkey.
Pissy alpha pine flings fruit and the dregs of metal teapots in the air for hours, then disappears into trees after smearing indelible green musk on the skin.
Edit – 11/16/2021
Discontinued, with new flanker editions. Yuzu is a slight improvement on the original. (The Fuji Apple wasn’t available when I placed my order.)
*
Different circus, better monkeys:
Squirts sharp orange out of the bottle–then sniffs some happy springtime flowers that haven’t realized they will be cut for a funeral arrangement.
Later, a furtive pistachio hides in white musk.
Over-designed, like a lovely semi-precious stone turned cheap and sad by a clumsy electroplate setting.
*
Another chain link.
kira a. gold 