Shollin

First sniff: Oh, this is pretty! It’s bright and cold and sparkling.

 

Wearing: Oh how I love white musk, and the Evening Star is a glorious pairing of airy white musk and earthy patchouli. It’s nose-ticklingly breezy.

One I haven't seen mentioned yet is Rapture, which reminds me of afterglow without actually smelling like sweaty bodies.

 

Two scents that apparently smell like sex to my guy, because of *ahem* happy associations, are O and Siren (but I have the old version, before the apricot was added).

 

I've also been told by an ex that Ravenous is SexyAsHell on me. I also find Hunger incredibly sexy, but other people think it smells like orange creamsicles, soooo...

First sniff: Floral-fruity, but with an oddness underneath. The jasmine is very much in the forefront… I hope it doesn’t dominate the whole time.

 

Wearing: Yeah, it’s jasminey. And fades very quickly. I enjoyed this one when I sniffed it at coulrophobe’s, but it isn’t impressing me this time around.

I wore Midnight Mass to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve (without reviewing it at the time) and it seems very strange even to consider wearing it at any other time.

 

First sniff: Incense perfection. It’s very much church incense, warm, resinous and a tiny bit cedary.

 

Wearing: Just a swipe on my wrist for review purposes, as I still feel a little strange wearing this when it’s almost May Day! It’s still incense perfection, and there seems to be a hint of chill underneath. Like incense smoke on a hushed, expectant midwinter’s night. It’s lovely, but I very much suspect I’ll only be wearing it once a year. It's too important.

First sniff: Bright white peppermint and brown sugar. This smells glorious.

Wearing: WOW. It’s nose-freezingly peppermint, with the sugar underneath. Damn, this is good stuff. The peppermint fades quickly into something very similar to Sugar Skull, but warmer and less gooey. It’s just fantastic in every stage.

First sniff: The new Hearth smells like… comfort. Like being wrapped in a blanket beside a big fire and family and laughter and home. On a more mundane level, it’s warm and toasty and a little bit buttery without being too foody, rich rather than sweet. And once I recheck the description and know the pine is there, I can smell it very faintly in the background.

 

Wearing: It isn’t often that I get two different smells from the same scent on my wrists, but it’s happening with this one. Under the warm toastiness I smell a tiny hint of leather on my left wrist and fruit on my right.

First sniff: Fuzzy juicy apricot, with a bit of an edge. This isn’t the pure, joyful scent of the single-note; there’s something more serious to it. And it doesn’t smell boozey, thankfully.

 

Wearing: Very rich and warm. It’s more of a chewy dried apricot now, with maybe a wee sprinkle of vanilla. And yet it somehow manages to be not-very-foody.

First sniff: Complicated and chilly. I can pick out a bit of mint and orange blossom, but that’s the only part I can figure out.

 

Wearing: It’s very sophisticated. It’s not an old-lady scent by any means, but it’s much older than I am, and I’m not sure I can wear it convincingly. It feels rather like I’m insisting, “I’m a grownup! I know what I’m doing!” while toting my teddy bear around by one arm. But it’s a lovely scent, and I’ll hang onto it for those times when I need to feel like I know what I’m doing… or at least fake it.

First sniff: Cream cheese brownies, anyone? I actually made a batch the night of Beaver Moon in its honor, but this is the first time I’ve tried the scent on. In the bottle, it’s amazingly rich and sweet – more rich than sweet, all buttery and chocolatey and yum.

 

Wearing: Huh! Did someone sprinkle cinnamon on my cream cheese brownies? I’m getting a weird spice note I wasn’t expecting at all, and it hangs around for the first couple of hours. It eventually calms down to a very pleasant foody scent… but after serious consideration, I don’t love it enough to wear it above all the other foody scents I love.

First sniff: Powdery soapy flowers, ahoy! I was trying to remember why Erato was the one existing Muse I hadn’t gotten my hands on before the rest of the sisters arrived, and looking back at the notes I understand. Roses – very hit-or-miss. Ylang – usually bad. Sweetpea – ruins everything. Orris – tends to the powdery perfumey side of things. And given all that, I’m still going to try it on, ‘cause I’m just a masochist that way.

 

Wearing: The first breath on my skin is, astonishingly, quite nice. It’s a very quiet, restrained, sweet floral, and it stays that way. Just lovely. I don’t understand it at all.

First sniff: Sweet, resinous and herbal. It smells nothing like church incense, but still reminds me of church. Hushed and expectant.

 

Wearing: This is a very odd scent, and I’m having a very odd reaction to it. It smells rather like someone sprinkled dried herbs on a charcoal fire along with powdered incense. It’s so incredibly not the sort of scent I’m generally drawn to… and yet I can’t stop sniffing and smiling. It’s very calming and thoughtful.

I don’t particularly want to entice new lovers, as I’m distinctly happy with the one I have, but temptation and carnal sin are always fun.

 

First sniff: The candy-red oil screams dragon’s blood, and that’s the first thing I smell – that warm, deep, happy cherry-resin.

 

Wearing: I dragon’s blood. Dragon’s blood and… honey? Or maybe even a restrained jasmine. There’s something wonderfully sweet and light in here that I can’t identify.

First sniff: Light, sweet and… perfumey. I can’t pin down any of the notes.

 

Wearing: It still just smells “perfumey.” I’m having a hard time with this one. I don’t get any coconut, or any musk, and I’m not entirely sure what orris smells like, but this is purely perfumey.

Phantasm, Shanghai and Kumiho all fall into the same clean-and-fresh category for me. Oberon, too, to a lesser extent.

 

But my all-time favorite scent to exclaim "It's SPRING, dammit!" is Titania.

First sniff: WHOA, this is boozey. I’ve never had a proper martini – I’m more inclined toward fruity and/or creamy drinks – so I can’t really judge this on trueness of scent, but it certainly smells like a fancy drink.

 

Wearing: It’s very evergreen and very boozey… make that very alcohol-y, as it’s way more sophisticated than “boozey” implies.

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.