Shollin

First sniff: Deep, rich, moist earth, earth that feeds the roots of a plum tree bursting with low-hanging fruit that smells ever so faintly of vanilla. Her Majesty is going to be an interesting experience.

 

Wearing: Deep rich red-purple, velvety-smooth but with the faintest alcoholic sharpness. It’s primarily a fruit scent, but there’s a lot going on here.

First sniff: Dark, dark mint. Gomorrah makes me think of walking through an herb garden in the middle of a moonless night. There’s something ever-so-slightly anise-y in the afterscent… I’m hoping that stays in the background.

 

Wearing: The fig is very present on my skin, round and ripe and almost syrupy. Fig always does weird things on me. I can’t tell what it is until I know it’s there, and then it seems to be the dominant note. Fortunately, I like it.

(Note: I wrote the "first sniff" review long long before an official description was posted...)

 

First sniff: Pick three or four different things you can eat at a carnival or an amusement park or a festival… three or four things that are absolutely horrid for you and have no nutritional value whatsoever, like cotton candy and funnel cake and those massive buttery soft pretzels with the big chunks of salt… blend them up and stick them in a bottle, and you’ll have Midway. It’s the perfect blend of sweet and salty, with a healthy dollop of vanilla, and I want to roll in it and put it in an oil warmer and make my whole world smell like this. But at the same time I’m a little afraid of it, because things that smell like this always make me hungry for things I shouldn’t be eating.

 

Wearing: It’s such a warm, round, glorious scent – not too buttery, not too sweet, just so, so rich.

First sniff: Floral, oh my yes – Seduction reminds me quite a bit of Wicked, because the primary notes seem to be rose and jasmine, but there’s a lot more going on in this one… just beneath the surface of slightly powdery flowers, this scent smoulders.

 

Wearing: There’s one note in here that’s a little bit “off” to my nose right when this is applied… not sure what it is. But overall, Seduction is a much fresher floral than I expected, less powdery on my skin. Very pretty.

Corazon made me capable of going to work when I was having a truly craptacular day several weeks ago.

First sniff: Oh, this one makes me smile. Lustration is very happily herbal, with a tinge of mint but mostly just undefinable green herbs in the sun under a lemon tree. This makes perfect sense as a purification blend… it’s wonderfully fresh, clean and refreshing.

 

Wearing: This is a more lemon-drop-y lemon than the fresh citrus of something like Phantasm, but I’ve yet to smell a Lab blend that did the Lysol thing, thankfully.

First sniff: Pinestraw. How very odd… Succor smells to me like nothing so much as pinestraw mulch – that heavy, earthy, almost pungently sharp scent. (I wrote down my “first sniff” impressions quite a while before seeing other reviews – sniffing it again, yup, that’s olive all right.)

 

Wearing: Boy howdy, is that ever olive. I don’t like eating olives and I don’t like smelling like them either. I can’t really speak to the aromatherapeutic properties of Succor – the olive scent is just too distracting.

First sniff: Tangerine! Or clementine, or some other citrus fruit that’s related to an orange but isn’t quite. That’s by far the sharpest note. There might be some grapefruit peel in here too. Moxie is seriously gorgeous.

 

Wearing: I’m just sitting here smiling. No wonder Josey talks about this one in big orange letters.

First sniff: WINE wine wine wine wine wine wine. Did I mention wine? Madrid is superboozy.

 

Wearing: Bright, boozy, fruity WINE… though it doesn’t smell like any red wine I’ve ever tasted – it’s way too bright. Actually, if I could find a red wine that tastes like Madrid smells, I’d probably like red wine a lot more – it’s usually too dark and dry.

First sniff: Blast. All I can smell in the vial is vetiver. I was hoping the other ingredients, all of which I adore, would dominate.

 

Wearing: Well, this is more promising… the immediate wet aura is nothing but dragon’s blood. And as it dries, the vetiver lives up to its swarthy reputation and takes over. Mrf.

First sniff: Lemon and mint? Lime and mint? Some kind of citrus and mint. It’s very bright, and decidedly showy.

 

Wearing: No, it’s not mint, it’s juniper – which always smells like pine on me. Lime and pine. Interesting combination, and still very very bright.

Got this decant from the lovely blackrayne.

 

First sniff: A dark, ominous floral.

 

Wearing: Rosey and deep – the aura is just beautiful, rich and enveloping.

 

I’m very glad The Coveted Black Widow works on me, 'cause florals are usually a toss-up.

First sniff: Prague is a cold floral – brand-new spring flowers shivering under an unexpected April snow.

 

Wearing: Flowers and snow and chill breezes. It’s ever so slightly aquatic, and sadly, goes soapy after just a few minutes.

First sniff: Very, very subtle. Santo Domingo is very faintly green, and very faintly lemony, but in the vial it’s only a suggestion of a scent.

 

Wearing: It’s stronger on my wrists… unfortunately, it’s also less pleasant. Too sweet-floral.

Butterfly Effect CXXXIV (134):

 

First sniff: It’s so pretty. Very much fruity, with maybe a tiny hint of mint, and I think there’s white musk in here too.

 

Wearing: Combine a spearmint Tic Tac with a fruit-flavoured hard candy. That’s the closest I can get to what my Butterfly Effect smells like. As it dries the fruit overtakes the mint - I smell grapes at this stage, white ones. And I was right at first sniff – definitely white musk, dewdrop-shimmery. I’m decidedly pleased.

 

Will update later if it changes or I think of anything else.

First sniff: Slightly powdery, sweet floral with lotus.

 

Wearing: Eh. It’s OK, but not something I’d choose to wear. Just too floral and too lotus-y. I don’t get any citrus.

First sniff: So incredibly not what I was expecting. Knowing Satyr was once lumped in with Czernobog and Puck as a “penis-oriented” scent, I figured it would be black musk and civet and would smell like animals in rut. What I’m getting is… cinnamon and incense, and maybe a little bit of grape?

 

Wearing: It’s a very odd soft spice scent. I say “very odd” only because it’s SO not what I was expecting… for the most part it smells like a spice-based herbal tea. And once it dries a little, creeping in around it… gosh, what could that be, a thick black funk that I seem to taste as I smell… ah yes, my old nemesis, we meet again. Oh well. It surprised me for a good ten minutes, at least.

First sniff: A tentative sniff… “Oh,” I exclaim wide-eyed, dipping the wand back to sniff again and again. “Oh, that’s really nice.” Florals don’t do this to me, people! I know a tea rose is a specific type of the flower, but I swear I smell white tea in here. Um, yeah, so I look back at the description and the reason I smell white tea is because it’s the first note listed… I must have been thinking of London with the tea rose. Yes, so… tea and flowers, apparently, make my nose ecstatic in a way that flowers by themselves don’t.

 

Wearing: I never expected to like Maiden as much as I do. It’s a very gentle scent, but with the tiniest kick of spicy carnation. The tea seems to be dominant. It’s very pretty, and very feminine – without being too girly.

First sniff: A very men’s-aftershave-y, cologne-y sort of scent. Big on the lavender.

 

Wearing: Well, hell. This smells as fantastic on me as I expected it to on my guy. I might have to get a big bottle for us to share. There’s no wood listed in this, but that’s what I’m smelling – a warm smooth wood scent in among the cologne.

First sniff: Wow. Just… bloody… wow. If anyone ever told me about a rose-based scent that I wouldn’t be able to identify as rose, I’d have thought they were nuts… but Spellbound is so entirely indescribable that I honestly don’t think I could have told you it was rose if I didn’t know that going in. It’s so very, very dark, but in an enticing way… deep sultry amber with the barest hint of a flower I would have recognized in the light.

 

Wearing: Oh, damn damn damn. It’s gone all powdery, the very second it hit my skin. I was so hoping for Rose Red with amber undertones.

First sniff: Utter innocence. Watery citrus sweetness.

 

Wearing: Fruity fruity! I’m pleased that FF doesn’t smell like citrus bubblegum. It’s nice, but doesn’t last long.

First sniff: Another one that’s somewhat hard to pin down. It’s an unusual citrus that smells almost medicinal, but somehow in a good way – I do like the way the Loralei smells, I just can’t tell you what that is. Legend has it that it’s the song, not the scent, of the Loralei that lures sailors to their doom… having smelled this, I know better.

 

Wearing: Wow. I really like this. Orange blossom seems to work really well on me – I guess neroli is the same way. It’s a warm, unusual scent, feminine without being super-girly.

First sniff: I’m having an awfully hard time getting a handle on this one. It almost smells like nothing in the vial – like the center of the scent isn’t there, but the floral violet powder is sprinkled around the outside of what isn’t and I can only smell it when I stop inhaling.

 

Wearing: Vanilla explosion! It wafts up strongly and then wisps away, and I’m left with florals and the barest under-hint of vanilla. And that vanilla undertone warms slowly as it dries. Just beautiful.

First sniff: This smells like pure dismal green vetiver in the vial.

 

Wearing: Murky-weird green blahness. There's almost enough myrrh to cover the vetiver, but... it's just not. I’m rather sad that Sloth isn’t a scent I can wear, because it’s definitely the deadly sin I indulge in most often (though hopefully that’ll change when I move closer to my man ).

First sniff: The first breath, the beginning of the sniff, is glorious red musk, and there's a glimmer of hope... but the civet comes snarling to the surface just after with its thick black animal smell.

Wearing: It's the same way on my skin. The red musk glows happily at me and invites me to sniff closer... "c'mon, lean in, you know how well we get along..." and then the civet punches me in the nose and laughs HA-ha as I try to get the scent/taste out of the back of my throat. And that first breath was so very promising...