Smoky rum and black tobacco with a whisper of steamy leather with a splash of crystalline chardonnay, layered over a sensual, sweet, and deceptively magnetic base of tonka.
in the bottle: When I first got this imp (with 15 others) and did a "speed-smell", I commented that I couldn't pick anything distinct out of it, but that it smelled familiar to me one end to the other. Well, here I am months later trying it for real, and I find myself in the same position. In the bottle I get a melange of scent that seems sweet almost to the point of cloying, but not in a food-y kind of way, more like a sweet liquor (which I despise, almost without exception). Not good as a start, But I'll run with it and see where it takes me.
on wet: Again, overpowering sweet liquour. Not good.
drydown: Here we go with the different scents on different wrists. My left wrist smells faintly powdery and a little mildewed, my right wrist smells like fancy pipe tobacco. Bizarre.
Now on my right wrist, after a few minutes, and at a distance, I smell something powdery and sweetish, but with my nose touching my wrist, I get leathery and tobacco-y with a faintly dusty-sweet base. At the same time, testing my left wrist, I get a warm vanilla-leather smell, with the vanilla dominant. My nose wants more leather, less vanilla.
one hour later: Left wrist vanilla/leather. Right wrist vanilla/tobacco. I actually like it at this stage. The initial bottle scent and everything before about 15 minutes on was nauseating, but now I get a mellow, old-world, retire-to-the-smoking-room-and-discuss-serious-things kind of scent, but not overwhelmingly so. My SO commented that he could smell the tobacco when he walked into the room, but to my nose it doesn't appear to have much throw. I have to stick my nose right next to my wrists to get anything.
end of day: Faint, mellow, vanilla-like tobacco and leather.
compared to official description: I don't get chardonnay, though a hint of that with the rum (and tonka) probably gave me my ack! mixed drinks! reaction (I'm a straight bourbon kind of girl, myself.) I'm sure the tonka is what had me thinking vanilla.
notes: The leather and tobacco ended up standing out in this one, which is what I've been looking for all along. Given the stomach-turning reaction I first had, I'm amazed that I ended up liking this one as much as I do. This is the complete opposite of most of the ones that seemed promising to me. I'll definitely be keeping this one, but it will never, ever, come anywhere near my locket. This one requires tempering on my skin to reach it's true potential (at least as far as my scent preferences are concerned).
Black musk, tobacco, fir, balsam of peru, cumin, bitter clove, crushed mint, and orange blossom.
re-sniffed on 6/24/10
in the bottle: Amazingly, I pick out most of the listed scents. This is uncommon, but it might be because the components are uncommonly strong and distinctive. Tobacco. A warm spice: clove. Something musky. A wood. A kind of catch-in-my-throat dryness; don't know where that's coming from. I will admit that I smell something that reminds me strongly of some kind of alcohol, but it hovers somewhere -- strangely -- between red wine and whiskey, even though neither is listed. Second try: Now I don't smell anything remotely like alcohol, rather it's all about wood and very strong clove. Really, this is predominantly clove.
on wet: A little floral. Tobacco.
drydown: The floral has gone creamy in a vanilla-smooth kind of way. What I'm smelling now, at a slight distance, just 2 minutes later, is nothing like what I smelled in the bottle. If I put my nose right on my wrist and inhale deeply, I get the clove and tobacco, but they're ghosts. OK, clove and wood, in that order. There are definitely other scents in the background, but they're almost "transparent".
one hour later: The scent is dominated by clove, with a deep, dark undertone which is almost impossible to focus on -- I know it's there, affecting my response, but it's almost subliminal. I'm going to say it's the musk and tobacco working together, but that's purely a guess; I can't, in all honesty, smell musk and tobacco.
before too long: I can barely smell anything on myself. I suspect that the scent is just as strong (if my SO walked in right now I'm sure he'd notice the scent immediately) but my nose has become immune to it. That's disheartening. I wear perfume primarily for its effect on me. Maybe today isn't a good day to be testing. I'll probably have to revisit this one yet again.
end of day:
compared to official description: I've never, to my knowledge, smelled Balsam of Peru, though it seems from my research that it's a fairly common component in scents, so it'd probably be more truthful to say that if I've smelled it before, I wouldn't have know that was what I was smelling. Second time around, I detected no floral notes in this. I'm pretty happy that I didn't pick the cumin scent out of this. I like cumin as a culinary addition, but I always notice it at the top of every spice mix, so I need very little to get the full effect. It so easily could have been overkill, but I don't smell it at all in this oil. What I do smell strongly is the clove, which is fine; I like clove so much I've even been known to chew the plain dried cloves like candy.
notes: I started this a little too late in the day to do a full review. I'll have to come back to it. This is pretty close to gender neutral to my nose. Having said that: It's hard to tell when it's just me wearing it, but I suspect that I would find this drop-dead, oh-my-god-take-me-now sexy on the right man.
A wonderful antidote to an all-nighter oozing with drunken, addled perversion and debauchery. A fresh, crisp white linen scent: perfectly clean, perfectly breezy.
in the bottle: Okay, I have to say it: dryer sheets. It makes me think of fabric softener or dryer sheets; it's what warm, clean clothes used to smell like straight out of the dryer before I started using unscented laundry products. Floral, but it's that light, breezy, not-obnoxiously-floral floral that definitely puts one in mind of clean laundry. As a matter of fact, I'm having trouble moving past the laundry connotations as some part of my brain is now reminding me insistently that I'm behind on laundry and need to start working on that NOW!
I can't pick apart the notes. All I can really think is floral. Actually, this puts me in mind of a kind of jasmine. Or maybe orange blossom. A little sharp. This could give me a headache, I think.
on wet: Exactly the same.
drydown: More rounded now, not so stabbing-me-repeatedly-with-flowers. Actually, even more like laundry products now than before.
one hour later: I'm not interested in leaving this on for an hour.
end of day: Definitely not interested in leaving it on all day.
compared to official description: It really does have a "clean" feeling, but I know that's because of the whole "mmmm... fresh, clean laundry" connection. Psychologically, there's nothing quite like pulling warm clothes out of the dryer and draping them on yourself -- for me it's an instant mood lifter. Not because of the smell, but because of the feeling of clean. It's an enduring emotional scent connection for me. This is a great scent for someone who wants to give themselves an instant hit of "fresh and clean".
notes: To be frank, I stopped using scented detergents and dryer sheets (never used fabric softener) because I grew weary of the types of scents that are used for that category of product. It's interesting to see the connection between this scent and those things, but I in no way want to smell like this myself.
The electric tang of ozone, marine notes, and a drop of sharp rain.
in the bottle: When I first smelled this, it smelled exactly like chapstick. Now, months later, it smells exactly (with no deviation) like an air freshener (can't remember brand) called Spring Rain. I don't like the scent. Not even a little. This is going straight to the trade pile. I know I should make an attempt to analyze it -- a scent is a scent -- but I'm too distracted by what I consider to be an overwhelmingly common commercial scent. I'm not feeling very generous today, I suppose.
The Four Hundred divine rabbits of the Aztec pantheon that preside over parties and drunkenness. Bittersweet Mexican cocoa with rum, red wine, and a scent redolent of sacrificial blood.
in the bottle: Rum! And a scent that I know must be cocoa, but that seems more like a toasted sweet nut. Actually, it reminds me strongly of Nutella. There's something a bit sharp running behind which I can't pin down at this point. There's also a sense of unpleasantly over-the-top (sort of sickly) sweetness, like rancid fruit.
on wet: Nutella. 100%.
drydown: The Nutella has faded into a slightly food-y, cozy, very comfortably enveloping scent, which strikes me as the scent equivalent of being wrapped in your favorite blanket on a cool autumn evening. Wow, that's pretty evocative; I'm surprising myself a little. I'm getting a warm, headshop-y undertone which I think is some sort of musk, though that's not listed.
one hour later: I'll be going to bed with this on, so I'll have to start this review over another day to get the full day's worth of critique. G'night.
I have enough imps -- and plan on getting enough more -- that I should really start figuring out what works for me and what doesn't. I've learned that some things I like to smell don't necessarily work well on my skin (no surprise), and so far, nothing I dislike actually works on me (again, no surprise). Other conclusions follow. (This is an entry that I will be coming back to and modifying over the years.)
avoid these elements:
Dragon's Blood
elements which may work very well for me, but which I need to try in other combinations before I'm sure:
wax
look for these elements specifically:
tobacco
leather
these may or may not be deal-breakers in that they're scents I like (or don't dislike) but that amp to a point where they thuggishly take over a scent:
amber
sandalwood
