Shollin

First sniff: Flowers and grapevines. Marquise de Merteuil smells like the sort of French countryside you see in travel calendars.

 

Wearing: A wonderfully colourful riot of flowers all crowding for attention. I don’t know where to look first.

First sniff: Mmmmmmm.

 

Wearing: Mmmmmmm.

 

OK, that isn’t terribly helpful. This is the perfect sweet spice, holiday-cheery and bright but subtle enough that it doesn’t really waft. A few of the spice scents I’ve tried are nice but not something I want to smell like… Sweet Clove doesn’t fall into that category. I’m quite happy for my skin to smell edible like this.

First sniff: A purple so deep it’s just this side of black, flowing and velvety. I don’t know why I was expecting Darkness to be heavily resinous, but it isn’t.

 

Wearing: It’s a much warmer scent than I expected, swirling and enveloping and oh so deep. It’s a warm darkness without being too heavy or too close. Like sitting on the porch on a summer night.

First sniff: Fruity and playful. This scent is up to something.

 

Wearing: Just sweet enough, and just musky enough. I like.

First sniff: How odd. I wasn’t expecting sweet fruity cherries from High John. It’s yummy!

 

Wearing: There’s something in this that I’ve smelled in Lush soap, and I can’t identify it. It’s a lot less sweet on my skin – a bit of a green-wood scent, with that indefinable Lushness hanging around the edges.

First sniff: I have no idea why – it’s not a sterile-clean scent by any means - but Faustus reminds me of hospital rooms.

 

Wearing: Murky-weird floral heaviness, like dying flowers strewn across a stagnant pond.

Thanks to ChupaChup for the decant!

 

First sniff: Sharp citrus over glittering ice.

 

Wearing: Beautiful white-musky citrus. I really, really like this scent.

Thanks to ChupaChup for the decant!

 

First sniff: Must agree with everyone who said Skadi smells like Christmas. Like a Christmas tree, specifically.

 

Wearing: Straight-up chilly pine with a very faint hint of berry underneath. The berry comes out more as the scent wears on, adding a lovely plummy warmth I wasn’t expecting at all. Maybe this won’t be one I automatically pass on to my piney sweetheart.

Thanks to kadmia for the decant!

 

First sniff: Oh, wonderful cold bright fruitiness. YUM.

 

Wearing: Midwinter’s Eve is absolutely fantastic. It’s a crystalline fruit, subtly sweet, brightly coloured but delicate, as if it might shatter at a touch.

First sniff: Belle Epoque reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of Monet’s wisteria bridge over the water-lily pond – the real one at Giverny. It’s a floaty, drapey, powdery floral, elegant without being old-ladyish.

 

Wearing: It’s much warmer on my skin, and the flowers recede a bit under that warmth. Very, very pretty and refined.

First sniff: This is Lucifer’s inspiration? It’s a sweet white floral. Jasmine? Not at all what I was expecting.

 

Wearing: It definitely smells like jasmine… or honeysuckle. Checking the description, of course there’s none of that in there – maybe it’s violet that I’m smelling. Fallen is an odd scent – much sweeter than I expected, and remarkably the vetiver hasn’t gone swampy on me. I’m not sold quite yet, but I’ll give him another try.

First sniff: I was expecting a soft romantic floral, but Silentium Amoris is very sharp. It’s almost green-apple-y. I guess ylang ylang is a sharper scent than I thought it was, because I’ve never smelled a rose this biting. Maybe if rose thorns had a scent of their own, this would be it.

 

Wearing: Frozen roses. The Lab has a few rose scents that have swayed me to their side, but for the most part rose isn’t me, and this isn’t either.

First sniff: Skuld is resinous and almost syrupy – not in sweetness, but in thickness. It’s an odd scent – I’m having trouble pinning it down.

 

Wearing: It explodes into honey on my skin… the Lab’s wonderfully thick smoky honey. Fan-bloody-tastic.

First sniff: Oh! I was thinking “The Pines of Rome” before I sniffed this, and sure enough, it’s tall, sap-resiny evergreens lining one of the many roads that lead to Rome. It’s fresh and breezey and doesn’t smell too cold-heavy the way pine usually does on me – I have high hopes. And if it doesn’t work on my skin, my love smells amazing in evergreen, so I win either way.

 

Wearing: Rome agrees with me. It’s a little chilly, very refined and almost haughty – I think patrician is the word I’m looking for. The rose is more apparent on my skin, a crisp white rosebud, still tightly shut, rather than the big soft pink blooms that show up in other scents.

First sniff: Bright, fruity, giggly – it tickles my nose.

 

Wearing: Aglaea doesn’t seem refined enough to be Splendour – it’s young and giddy, it can’t quite sit still.

First sniff: Pretty powdery flowers.

 

Wearing: Thalia is bright but subtle… I’m having a hard time pinning it down. Plumeria is probably the main thing I’m smelling – it’s a sweet fruity flower, much less powdery on my skin than it was in the vial, which is a Good Thing.

First sniff: Hmm. I’m not getting pine, which is what I expected based on reviews – just a fresh, cold, green scent.

 

Wearing: Wolf Moon isn’t exactly minty, but it has that same feeling to it – it’s a cold scent, slightly sharp-edged.

First sniff: Um… ew. This is either civet, or some funky musk, or… some other animal scent that is Not Good to my nose.

Wearing: Yup, still got the civety animal funk going on. This needs to go to someone else. Hopefully it'll work on whoever gets it... Fire of Love seems to be very love-it-or-hate-it, and I wish it had turned into sexy peppery ginger on me.

First sniff: Wow. Ice Queen is strong, and cold, and sunshine-on-snow bright. She’s not the withdrawn, aloof beauty I was expecting – she’s in-your-face and loud. She’s Phyllis Diller in ermine.

 

Wearing: Cold grapefruit with a breath of flowers. Just lovely. It’s quite a bit more subtle on my skin, and very nice.

First sniff: There’s a hint of cherry-sweetness around the edges, but the core of Wildfire is strong, grounded woods.

 

Wearing: It’s a wet red scent… I’m having trouble pinning anything down, but it reminds me quite a bit of Red Moon, with a touch of soft florals. I need to try it again, because it turned mostly to rose on my skin, but it's pretty.

First sniff: Holy hell. This really is leather. And not the smooth buttery armchair leather of Hellfire… De Sade is Gabriel Knight’s wind-beaten leather jacket. After he’s been out for a night on Bourbon Street.

 

Wearing: Damn. This isn’t just leather-scented perfume… it makes my skin smell like leather, like I’ve been living in the saddle under too much sun. It clings very close – I was expecting to be blown away by an aura of cowhide, but it’s decidedly subtle. Until I sniff my wrist and it smells like… Gabriel. I really can’t shake the association. This is Tim Curry’s voice doing a N’Awlins drawl and the messy-haired but unreasonably hot guy in the computer game. It’s not a me scent, at all, and I can’t imagine my love in it either, but I’m tempted to keep it around just because it’s so freaking amazing.

Thanks to magikfanfic for the decant!

 

First sniff: Very, very light. It hints at grapefruit and sea air, but if I try to concentrate on it directly it almost disappears – the way a faint star vanishes if you look straight at it. There’s something dark underneath, too.

 

Wearing: Ah, definite grapefruit. Very chilly and fresh. It’s a lot stronger on me than it was in the vial, and I’m getting a lovely citrus aura.

First sniff: Grandmother of Ghosts is a lot lighter than I expected – it’s floaty and a bit dreamy, but still somehow menacing. Dry woodiness is the main thing I smell, and a little bit of pepper – the flowers and fruits are hiding.

 

Wearing: For several hours, definitely dry woods, and I’d dismissed it as “interesting but not me” – but by the end of the evening it developed a very intriguing fruitiness. I’m not immediately in love, but it’s persuaded me to give it another chance.

First sniff: Ooh. This is prettier than I expected – very slightly sweet and very slightly lemony.

 

Wearing: There’s a masculine edge to this scent, no doubt, but a very refined and proper one. It’s decidedly charming. Very subtle, but the aura is fabulous – I feel like I’m surrounded by a faint mist of sugar, and the vanilla shows up in warm rich flashes every so often. Dorian’s scent reminds me very much of the scrub from Prairieland Herbs that has vanilla, wheatgerm and honey – it’s a rich warm vanilla, with just a hint of brown sugar.

 

Drying: Gawdamighty, it just keeps getting better – Dorian keeps sneaking up on me and surprising me with a teasing hint of warm vanilla, brushing by my nose and then disappearing again.

 

I cannot wait to smell this on my guy. Beth, sweetie, you might not want to let your own Dorian out of the house wearing this... he'd be swarmed by hordes of women who wanted to lick him!

First sniff: Thanks to Theravada for the decant! That is definitely gingerbread. Thick, chewy, spicy gingerbread. I think it’s been in the oven just a little too long – the edges are ever so slightly burned, but it’s a good burned (I’m weird that way; I actually prefer my popcorn a tiny bit scorched and my cookies extra-brown around the edges).

 

Wearing: I love food scents that don’t immediately make me hungry, and Gingerbread Poppet fits that description wonderfully. Maybe because I’ve never been a big fan of gingerbread (I prefer chocolate-chip cookies any day, preferably with nuts!) The wrist-scent is a bit too cinnamony, but the aura is warmly comforting-spicy and fabulous.