powder

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New Baby

Demeter mini splash bottle with black cap in my hand, and a mini in a yellow onesie holding my fingertip.

Demeter’s New Baby is an oddly exact mix of milky vanilla, mineral oil and powder that starts with a shriek, but soon settles to cuddle space with sleepy lemon curd.

Comparing it to the source material was fun but a bit startling. The lactonic notes–almost animalic–are very similar, and there is a definitely a sugar cookie thing going on, especially on the top of their little head. (Apparently there are Scientific Reasons why newborns smell so sweet.)
I’m not so sure how the lemon pie on the bottom relates, but it’s a nicer sour than burpings.

Very sniffable, but wearing it might require your own car-seat and diaper bag.

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Yep, I’m gonna be this this grandma.

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Kitten Fur

Miss Lucy Fur of the white coat and pink nose, posing on a beige lambskin throw and a black-capped mini splash bottle from Demeter Fragrance Library.

Our little girl smells faintly of flea drops and raw silk, but I get it.

Demeter Kitten Fur opens with new cat carrier plastics, and a metallic cage clang that is soon overtaken by musky vanilla lactones that should not be smelled up close–like back away from that with your tail puffed up–except that it’s sort of interesting in a weirdly cute way.
Lasts at least two hours, and finishes with powdery Cashmere Mist on the skin.

Not for me, but I understand the appeal.
I’d love to see a Zoologist version of this–some civet or black currant bud would give it claws.

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Kittens are fun.

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Yellow Diamond

Miniature Versace bottle with yellow cut gem cap, in front of a lemon, with scattered yellow wood sorrel blooms.

Lemon candy and wildflowers, but weirdly fragile and sharp at the same time.
Gets powdery on the drydown, sweet golden pollen with a bit of musk that drifts off the skin now and again–pretty, but itchy in the throat–for three hours.

Good for summer cocktail parties.
Wear with a sundress and sinus medication that doesn’t react with alcohol.

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This one is also fragile and pretty–

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Fath de Fath

Tiny cut crystal bottle cupped by a flame edged yellow rose petal.

I got this one for the tuberose, but was bowled over by the heliotrope.

Nice boozy fruits out of the bottle, peach brandy and plums that stay well into the blooming tuberose and jasmine.
There’s some really good citrus-y rose–with black currant thorns that give a bit of sharpness–then *BAM* comes a huge dusty-sweet powder puff of heliotrope.
The amber on the bottom doesn’t hold it down. Vanilla-almond floral dust floats around like a cloud for hours, trailing sugary musk everywhere.

It’s good–especially the first few minutes on top–but all the notes I love are just obliterated by that powder.
Some of my favorites are heliotrope bombs, like Lolita Lempicka and L’Heure Bleue, but this one is too much for me.

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These folks are a lot of fun–

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Dirty Trick

dirty trick
Sample spray of purple eau on a botanical illustration of an iris, and a paper test cutout of a perfume flask.

Goth girl weird, and nice.

An exploding Bic pen in the best way: big inky dark indigo iris that fades to purple suede and some woods at the bottom. Lingers close to the skin for an hour or two.

The only one of V&R’s Magic Tricks to read “witchy” to me–this one is spell components thrown in a cauldron, and it works.

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Love this witchy tune.

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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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