In the bottle it’s vanilla, but not a foody scent in the least; there’s a hint of musk that gives it a sharp edge, and beneath that I can catch the faintest trace of what’s either coconut or tonka. It smells like grave dirt soaked in vanilla; a very polite corpse’s breath.
Wet the coconut (or tonka, but smells like coconut to me) comes rampaging out, and I don’t get anything else until drydown. It smells like a body lotion more than a perfume.
On drydown the musk returns in the background, giving a depth and hardness. It fades in and out, changing places with vanilla. No florals or citrus, and none of the grittiness I smelled in the bottle. This is elegant and creamy with the hint of a threat beneath its surface. The image of a Victorian lady, impeccably dressed for tea, with a switchblade in her handbag comes to mind.
This doesn’t go through a powdery period on me, despite what I expected; the upper note stays coconut-y, and while the vanilla has given way entirely to the musk in the last hour none of them really change their essential character.
In summary: sweet, but with depth and body to it. It’s demure and poised, masking cold-blooded calculation with playfulness at times, but without anything disingenuous. Not much of a throw, which suits it; too much of the coconut and I think it’d be cloying. It matches its namesake perfectly – both opal’s fire and its smooth glow, an irridescent overlay of scent on a shifting background.
