Invidiana

Wow, proof that when your skin chemistry does strange things sometimes it's for the better! This is all sticky, sweet (but not cloying) wonderful moon tree sap (whatever that is) with a sweet but again not cloying or sneezeworthy at all, floral background. Is there sweet pea in this? Orchid? Lotus? Any fruit blossoms? Those all turn winningly candyish on me so at least one must be in there somewhere. There's a tiny bit of green wet, but I thankfully I don't get any of the green stems once this dries down fully. It doesn't smell like a flower shop at all, just sweet, juicy, almost edible resin. Bottle for sure!

Why is all I'm getting out of this pure lemon verbena? Damned skin chemistry, it really hasn't been liking many of this year's Shungas. Something, and I don't know what, turns the mandarin rind into pure lemon verbena with the magical touch of my skin, and I also amp it to the point of barely being able to smell anything else--maybe a tiny bit of blackberry in the extreme drydown, but that's it. I was hoping to really get mostly blackberry, Indian musk and khus, but my skin revolted.

This was one epic fail after another on me. I have come to the very accurate conclusion that 99.999999998567% of the time, The Great and Highly Revered Imperial Jasmine of Doom will do one of two things on me, depending on the type; either go to straight cat pee or start off as cat pee and quickly morph into rancid banana. Apparently I'm looking at the sad reality that I must amp the stuff too. This jasmine was the rancid banana variety, sickeningly sweet and cloying enough to overpower every other note while still retaining something of a cat pee undertone. I had to scrub it off.

Oolong tea, lilac, sheer musk, crushed ginger, wisteria, delphinium, and lavender. Of all the epic fails on my skin, I would have never guessed this was one of the biggest recipes for disaster from the description but apparently it is. It starts off sharp, quickly sweetens, goes absolutely cloying and reminds of something I can't quite put my finger on until... NAIR. With my chemistry it smells exactly like old-school Nair before all the fancy scents came out to make it halfway tolerable. Lilac is already an iffy note for me, and mixed with everything else it just produced one epic, epic fail.

This was another one I was expecting to be an epic fail but actually turned out so right...it generally smells like rose petals drenched in brown sugar syrup. I think what works the magic on the seemingly scary (to me at least) lychee and rose combo is the cistus, whose deep resinous quality tempers the sweetness of the lychee and gives it that brown-sugary quality. Thankfully the rose isn't sharp at all, just a soft velvety rose interwoven with the sticky sweetness. Definitely bottleworthy.

By all accounts this was not supposed to work on me. I was fearing The Great Ancient Towering Cedar of Doom, De Sade Leather of Doom, Pledge-style wood polish and the greenish smell of fresh olive oil which I'm generally not too fond of. WRONG. This turned out to be the most wonderful fruity (?!?!?!) leather on me with a light woody background. The leather was not that uber-masculine leather at all as opposed to De Sade; it was actually the muted type of leather you find in U; more of a black leather than U's brown leather but still really melow and "well-loved" as the description states. I also sense a slight bit of spice? This could possibly be from the wood itself (sandalwood possibly? Other pleasant woods that aren't cedar?) or from the "polished" note--I don't know what they used to polish wood back then but probably some really great-smelling oils if I'm going by what's in here. I'm thinking possibly orange oil because there seems to be a cirtus touch to the fruitiness. Whatever it is, what seemed like a melange of wrong turned out so right on me...I need a bottle.

Wow, including me there must be 4 extremely different skin types reviewing this! Whatever type of vetiver is in this, it doesn't go powdery on my skin at like Black Ice (the ozone/snow/vetiver combo there might have been responsible for that though). This is just a deep, sensual smoky vetiver with what I'm guessing is sandalwood, patchouli and a backgrop of sweet resins and something of a bonfire/brimstone note. As it dries down further the resins become more prominent and keep adding further complexity. Reminds me very much of chimney smoke and burning leaves and tree sap, an absolutely gorgeous autumn scent! Very glad I took a chance on it.

Oh sigh. Wet this was all lovely and cakey with a hint of fruit and then...something goes terribly wrong. Rose usually behaves with my skin, but one of the other notes, and I have no idea what it is, turns the rose in this into carnation. That's right, exactly like The Giant Carnation of Doom. It just becomes more and more cloying until I finally have to scrub it off. What a shame.

This was extremely floral in the beginning, all ylang ylang, but as it dries down the honey and finally the musk and labdanum emerge and overshadow it. It reminds me a bit of Aeval in a way, in the sense of what was supposed to be an innocent floral corrupted by darkness. Not a "dark floral" which is a whole other category in itself but more of a darkened floral. Very rich and sensual and not a namby-pamby floral at all.

This is at once hazy and sexy but also has a dark side, kind of like a shadowy coconut. Thankfully I'm not getting much Iris--I really get mostly luscious coconut and sheer musk. Maybe the iris is adding to the shadowy aspect, but whatever it's doing it's behaving. I'm not really getting much hazelnut; it probably adds to the depth but this is predominantly coconut musk on me, just light enough for summer or those days you don't feel like something strong, but also just enough of that shadowy quality to make it sexy.

For some reason this came out very clovey on me, and there isn't even any clove here! Wet it seemed like it was all clove. Only on the drydown could I finally detect something sweet (the peach) and the warmth of the amber and musk, but it still seemed predominantly clovey for some reason--maybe that's what happens when patchouli mixes with peach on my skin? I do like clove, but already have enough clove blends to slather an army.

The other notes sounded so wonderful but the cedar...it ended up being The Great Cedar of Doom on me. In addition the vetiver amps it up to an even more woody and masculine fragrance, so I was basically getting all cedar with a vetiver background and a hint of spice. The mandarin and amber were nowhere to be found because they must have gotten choked by the cedar. The result was extremely masculine and impossible for me to wear. Cedar is obviously not my friend.

If I could describe this in three words: fierce red licorice. Seriously! More like a really dark red licorice bordering on black but not quite. It's the clove and anise that make up the smoky, sinister art and the mandarin that seems to "stain" them wtih "blood". There is a certain tang to this, presumably from the mandarin, that makes it evocative of something bloodstained without literally smelling like blood. I've never smelled cumin in a jar before, but I'm guessing it adds the final dash of fierceness to the already ferociously sensual scent. I was right to order a bottle unsniffed; right up my alley.

Carnation? Really? I get a very vanilla honey with a possible hint of spice (might be a drop of carnation in there, who knows), but the vanillaed honey is the dominant, and sometimes really rich honeys seem to have a tinge of spice with my chemistry, not like I mind. This is like the yang to O v5's yin; v5 is more honey, this is more sweet creamy vanilla, both of them are downright gorgeous. If there is carnation in here at all maybe the reason the Great Carnation of Doom is (thankfully) not showing up is because I usually tend to amp the sweeter notes in a blend and the honey and vanilla won the deathmatch with it in .0002 seconds. It clings close to th eskin like v5, though my chemistry tends to broadcast even skin scents within a decent radius of me, but has excellent staying power and a sweet sensuality about it. The maintenance guy in the office who stops by every day just to sniff my bottles (true story) got the tiniest bit on his finger and told me the next day that he couldn't stop huffing it like a maniac for hours.

Cedar is an extremely iffy note on me if not a note of total FAIL 95% of the time. That said, remember that 95% doesn't cover all bases. I just had to take the risk with this because of the blackcurrant and against all odds, this is a total WIN. It does smell very masculine in the bottle, so I need to keep it far away from my hair and clothes, but when it hits my skin something magical happens. The mixing of blackcurrant and cedar just produces this sexy, fruity-with-an-edge scent on my skin with the saffron adding just the right kick, and the further it dries down, the more it warms up. The blackcurrant comes out on top with the cedar for a woody background but thankfully no more than that. If you're cedar-phobic but have luck with dark fruits, I totally suggest you at least give this a try.

Notes of WIN: acai, acorn, allspice, almond, almond flower/milk, amber, ambergris, anise, balsam, benzoin, berries, bread, burning leaves, butter, buttercream, caramel, cardamom, cake, cassia, champagne, cherry, cherry blossom, chestnut, chocolate, cinnamon, civet, clove, coconut(especially black), copal, cream, currant, dark florals, dragon's blood, date, fig, frankincense, galangal, galbanum, ginger, grape, green or baked apple, guava, honey, khus, labdanum, lavender, lime, liquor, maple, maple syrup, marshmallow, mastic, mead, milk, mint, molasses, monoi, moonflower, musk(especially red), myrrh, nag champa, nutmeg, oak, orange(especially blood orange), orange blossom, orchid, oude, passionfruit, pineapple, pikake, pitch, plum, pomegranate, pumpkin, rum, saffron sandalwood(especially red), seaspray, smoke, snow, spikenard, sugar(especially brown), sweet pea, sweet potato, tea(except green), tiare, tobacco flower, tonka, tonquin, tuberose, vanilla, vanilla flower, violet, wine, walnut (especially black walnut), ylang ylang, anything foody, smutty, dark, resinous, and "red" or "purple" in general Iffy notes: apple (red or yellow), aloe, ash, banana, bark, bay, cedar, cucumber, cypress, dandelion, gardenia, grapefruit, hyacinth, kumquat, leather, lemon, lilac, lily,lychee, mahogany, magnolia, metal, mango, moss, neroli, ozone, papaya, peach, pear, pepper, petitgrain, pine pitch, rose, l vetiver, orris, osmanthus, sage, seaweed, shea, stone, watermelon, wildflowers, zinnia Notes of FAIL: basil, cantaloupe/honeydew (if prominent), carnation (The Great Revered and Illustrious Carnation of Doom), cedar, dirt (if prominent), most types of jasmine (turns to straight cat pee or rancid banana on me), geranium/rose geranium, grass, lemongrass and lemon verbena (if prominent), myrtle, rosemary, anything too dry, green, floral, herbal or predominantly masculine

I tested this without even looking at the note list first, and it came across to me as seaweed with a touch of seaspray, sweetening and warming up slightly as it dried down. Now I can definitely see where I got the slightly sweet seaweed and warming-up qualities from; the nectarine sweetens up the oakmoss and probably gives it a bit of tang as well, and the warmth comes from the skin musk. Sticks pretty close to the skin overall. A very sheer green skin scent--if I was a green lover, it'd be a must, but it's really just not my thing.

Agreed on Goblin, very dark-coconutty on me, great rec. Tiki King supposedly has a good dose of black coconut; I really smell it in the bottle, but my skin amps the ironwood bark in it like nobody's business--maybe on someone whose skin didn't have a penchant for doing that it would come out very coconutty.

My actual name is Elizabeth, so how could I not try this right away? The mixing of rose and grape is what's coming out strongest on my skin, and it's actually quite sweet and pleasant; there's also a softer floral in the background, which must be the orange flower. However, I'm also detecting something sharp and herbal, which must be the rosemary; I don't like the stuff in food and in scents it's usually a deal-breaker. It's not extremely strong, but it's detectable enough that it makes my nose wrinkle. Not really getting much lemon peel; I get a hint of mint when it's completely dry, which lends a bit of a sharp edge to the rose. I think I would have liked this a lot better without the rosemary and mint but hey, apparently people like that combo since Aveda's been making rosemary-mint stuff for years.

The pine and eucalyptus come out very strong on me, with just a hint of citrus in the background. I like pine, but I'm more into the type mixed with snow and/or berry notes like in a lot of the Yule blends. For those who do like eucalyptus, it's very cooling and sinus-clearing in a way, but overall this is just too menthol and green for me.

Hmm. This starts out really green and wildflowery, and unfortunately it doesn't change much on me as it dries down despite the fact that I normally amp sweet stuff like plum and cream. I had the same probablem with Strawberry Moon 09 coming out all grassy on me, so it must be something hiding in the wildflower notes that dominates everything else when it hits my skin. It does sweeten a bit as it dries down further, but still remains predominantly a greenish wildflower scent, which just isn't really for me.

Despite the fact this was named for a female character, it's a very, very masculine scent, at least on me. I tend to amp many of those strong masculine woods, so on my skin it smells very strongly of smoke and charred wood, and surely the gunpowder and rust notes are also mixing in there somewhere. I could see it being smoky and sexy on a man--if he could be convinced to wear a scent named Agnes --but it's just not for me.

Grapefruit? Really? REALLY? I'm getting all red musk and plum! That, of course, is totally not a problem with me because I absolutely adore both those notes. It's seriously like a juicy wild plum in a generous haze of red musk--juicy, sexy and mysterious, a very reddish-purple scent (excuse the synaesthesia). It's possibly the combo of strawberry leaf and grapefruit on my skin that make it plummy, but whatever it is, I'm more than fine with it!

I had high hopes for the cocoa and fig, but sadly I don't get much of either and I'm amping the palm and other woods in this like nobody's business, and it just comes out very, very masculine. Kind of like being in the lumber section of Home Depot or one of those kitchen showrooms with all the wooden cabinets. Something gets a little sweeter as it dries down further, but only to a certain point. I generally tend to amp sweeter notes like fig, but then again I don't know what type of fig or the proportion, so that's probably making all the difference in this case. Unfortuantely I also tend to amp masculine woods like cedar (there definitely has to be cedar in here), and that ultimately won out in the end.

This is in the same vein with the Goblin Rider, except its more masculine counterpart. It's much heavier on the evergreen with all the cypress--very Christmas tree--and while I still get the dollop of delicious resins in the background, they aren't as prominent as in Goblin Rider. This one would be great for a guy, but overall it's just too masculine for me.