Shollin

First sniff: Ohhhh, this is phenomenal. Dark, soft, purple and heady. It’s the sort of flower that wouldn’t draw your eye in the woods, because it’s not bright and flashy, but the scent would make you hunt for it. Wearing: It’s warm and velvety on my skin, still very very purple and the tiniest bit sweet.

First sniff: Foody fruity HEAVEN in a bottle. God, this is good. Berries slathered in thick buttery cake frosting. Wearing: Warmth and richness and an extra twelve pounds on my hips. Damn, how’d that get there? This is utterly decadent.

First sniff: Roses and incense, sho 'nuff. The rose is blood-red and quite sturdy, not some pale powdery pink thing. It’s the sort of rose a knight wouldn’t be embarrassed to wear on his shield. Wearing: Hmph. In contact with my skin, the shield-rose is turning into a lady’s bower. A powdery lady’s bower. Where are you, Mr. Frankincense? I know we don’t generally get along, but I need you to ground these silly flowers, even if you insist on going all sharp after!

First sniff: White musk, berry and some kind of minty ozoney something. Wearing: The fruit is just barely there; it’s mostly white musk and lightning. It really grew on me over the course of the evening. I like white musk a lot, and Lurid is awful nice.

First sniff: Like so many do, this scent tickles something in my memory, but I can’t pin it down. The scent itself is not at all what I expected. I figured on an earthy floral with a touch of booze, but this is smooth fruity-woody, very restrained. Wearing: It’s the dirt scent! It’s the potting-soil scent of Graveyard Dirt in here underneath the smooth fruity-woody-ness. I think that’s what was tripping my memory. It’s very faint (which is good because I’m not big on dirt scent), but definitely there. I’m loving the smooth sweetness on top. This is unusual and really gorgeous.

Might not be exactly what you're after, but Sybaris (in the Wanderlust section) smelled to me like violets dipped in chocolate. It's wonderful. Haven't seen anyone mention Maenad yet, but it's way more pink-and-girly-sweet than you'd think from the description. Whatever you pick, enjoy!

First sniff: More than anything else, it’s blood orange. Fruity and juicy, but dark. There’s a lot going on here, a bit of sweet floral around the edges, but the orange is dominant. Wearing: Mmmmmmm. Red-musky dark oranges and carnationy spice.

First sniff: I think the last time I had a Cosmopolitan was during the series finale of Sex and the City, so I don’t exactly remember what they smell like, but this certainly seems right. Very tart fruit and a strong booze note. Wearing: There’s an unexpected freshness above the tart berry, a cool splash of something lighter.

First sniff: Another glorious autumn-evening scent. Devil’s Night seems more mischief than mayhem. At first sniff, it’s sweet, but it’s up to something – there’s a deeper darkness underneath (and a little bit of smoke). Wearing: Oh, dear. This is quite boozey. And I have to leave for work pretty much right now… hope it calms down quickly. The wrist-scent smells like Scotch, that almost burned smoky peaty scent. (In its defense, it does smell like good Scotch, an expensive aged single-malt rather than Old Smugglers.) And thankfully, once it dried, the booziness was gone, leaving a wonderful fires-at-night scent with a hint of sweetness. The end stage is quite reminiscent of my beloved Samhain, minus the apples.

First sniff: Czernobog: Knowing of my vetiver-bane, coulrophobe warned me I’d hate this one with a fiery passion. In the vial, it’s actually not that bad. It’s very, very dark – the oil itself is almost black – but there’s an odd sort of evergreen freshness above the gloom. Wearing: Still doesn’t make me want to run screaming, though it’s not something I’d choose to wear. It’s a guyscent, but a dark, twisted guyscent. This is what’s lurking beneath the genteel veneer of Whitechapel. And a few minutes later… yup, now I want to run screaming. Black musk veers unpleasantly close to civet in certain scents – maybe it’s the unholy combination of black musk and vetiver, but it’s going Decidedly Funky.

First sniff: Pure cedary incense. There are a very few incense scents I can wear and make them work, and most of them are softer than this one, so I’m not sure how it’ll do on my skin, but here goes… Wearing: It reminds me very much of Midnight Mass. Maybe a little brighter. It never went unpleasantly sharp on my skin as incense sometimes can, but it doesn’t quite stack up to my incensey Holy Grail (Al Azif) so I don’t feel compelled to keep it. Glad I got to try it though.

First sniff: The Tell-Tale Heart: I spent a great deal of time with my nose in the jug when I got a sneak Maelstrom preview at the Lab. And now… ahhhh. *happily resumes her spot curled up around the bottle* In this much smaller quantity, it’s lost a bit of the “oh my God I want to bathe in this” overwhelmingness, but it’s still glorious enveloping blood-warm cocoa bliss with a tiny hint of greenness underneath. Wearing: TTH went through several stages on my skin, not all of them pleasant. At first, it’s happy fuzzy cocoa goodness. And then, it goes through a phase of several hours where the vetiver asserts itself and it goes rather funky. Not the dark green swampiness I’m used to from vetiver, but something not terribly nice. Once that clears away, I’m left with cocoa and something lighter, which makes no sense, because all the notes in the description are dark dark dark… but the thing I’m smelling is a lighter something-or-other like linen or aloe or white musk or… something floaty. In conclusion, I’m pissed at the SkinChemistry+Vetiver=Yech conspiracy, because that’s the only part I don’t like but it lasts for manymany hours. I’ll hang onto an imp for later testing.

First sniff: Beautiful, beautiful. Flowing herbal-floral, soft and pretty and unassuming. Wearing: Soft, pale, delicate. And sleepifying. But then, I was reviewing it at four in the morning.

First sniff: Brightness and green grass and a soft aquatic… like sun on dewdrops. Wearing: This is beautifully fresh and light. It’s sunny and uplifting. However. Sundew is, I think, the only scent I’ve tried where the scent directly on my skin is more subtle than the aura. When I sniff my wrist, it’s the beautifully fresh light wet version… but the throw is loud and too heady and I’ve had a killer headache all night. I don’t know if that’s related to Sundew, but it makes me sad.

First sniff: Gorgeously earthy, dark and deep with a little bit of evergreen. I’m getting the pine-mulch vibe off this one too. I totally win either way with Mandrake, because if it doesn’t work on me (and evergreens often don’t), it’ll smell delicious on my guy. Wearing: It’s very cedary… but it seems to work on my skin, and cedar usually goes too sharp. This is warm and solid and really really nice.

First sniff: Ooh. I was a little turned off by the mention of dirt in previous reviews – Graveyard Dirt is nifty as hell, but so incredibly not me – but Death Cap is just awesome. The afterscent is the taste of dirt, but the heart reminds me more of warm wood… shredded wood, like sun-warmed sawdust or cedar shavings or even good pine mulch. It doesn’t actually smell like any of those things, but that’s the texture. Wearing: Wow. This is… wow. Really freaking good, is what it is. It’s the perfect warm wood scent with a tiny hint of soil around the edges. I so didn’t expect to like this. Stupid me.

First sniff: A gorgeous dark winey berry. Almost boozey but not quite. Wearing: It’s a little more tart on my skin, less blatantly fruity, and richly dark. I like this one a lot.

First sniff: Beautifully pale, wispy and watery and sorrowful. I need to read Berenice’s story. At the moment, I keep thinking Rusalka would also be a very fitting name for this scent. Wearing: On my skin, it loses every trace of aquaticness. It’s just a pretty, pale, fresh scent. Just lovely.

I can confirm that. Lily blends always, always, always go soapy on me. (The single notes don't seem to, and I still can't figure that out, but...) But this one is glorious. Here's my official review: First sniff: I’ve never seen a black lily. I don’t know if such things are possible. But if there is one, this is exactly what it smells like. It’s fresh, soft, slightly sweet – and shadowed. This isn’t a big showy flower in the sun – it’s quiet and mysterious. Wearing: Lily usually goes straight to soap on my skin, but not this one. I think this might be the first floral skin-scent I’ve tried. I can’t pinpoint it, but I know I smell awesome. It’s soft, and still a little bit sweet, and there’s a richness to it that makes me think of vanilla.

I’ve re-read “The Cask of Amontillado” since Maelstrom was released, and Fortunato’s description absolutely gives me chills because it’s so perfect. Oak-casked sherry in catacomb gloom, drunken glee surrendering to sheer terror… just meep. First sniff: Rowdy, drunken oranges, tumbling into the dirt. Wearing: Wet on my skin, it’s oddly pale, faint and bittersweet. I had orange marmalade with breakfast this morning and Fortunato reminds me of the taste of the bitter peels inside the sweet jelly. It got sweeter throughout the wearing, never to the point of overwhelming, and ended as a wonderfully sweet fruity orange with just a hint of something darker. Simply marvelous.

First sniff: Mmmmmmmmmcocoa. With pumpkin underneath. Wearing: Just cocoa pumpkin yumminess. As it dries, there’s a lovely woody-nutty undertone.

First sniff: Deep, dark, red and complex. A little bit sweet, a little bit spicy, and very very deep. Wearing: I’m putting this on having showered with Lush’s Waylander soap (RIP), which is very patchouli-incense, so I’m expecting that part of the scent to get a boost. But at first, it’s honeyed carnation, with a bit of deep resin beneath. And throughout the drydown it just got better and better. Somehow sweeter and deeper at the same time. I suspect this is one I’ll be wearing a lot one of these years when I get my reviewing caught up.

First sniff: Pumpkin and apple and spice, oh my! Exactly as described. It smells like bright autumn. Wearing: Ooh. It’s more pumpkin-y on my skin, and the apple is even crisper. It’s an unusual scent and I adore it.

First sniff: The base is leather, but there’s a sweeter note above. Wearing: I really don’t understand the sweet part! There’s nothing listed in here that goes sweet on me. But there it is, a definite sweet aftertaste to the leather. In the early stages, the leather is grounding without being too leathery, the sweetness adds a nice kick even though it confuses the hell out of me, and all around it’s deep and rich and wonderful. Sadly, it got more and more leathery as it dried, and leather, I’ve discovered, is not something I can wear.

First sniff: If I didn’t have a policy of wanting to try everything, I never would have gone near Kurukulla. Rose is about the most hit-or-miss note on me there ever was, and lotus usually just smells like bubblegum. But in the vial, this is pretty nice. It’s sweet but not piercingly so, and nicely aquatic. Wearing: It’s a little bit powdery, but for the most part, a soft sweet aquatic floral. Better on me than I expected.