Casablanca

2007 version

Tart, juicy red pomegranate. More tart than any pom fruit I’ve tasted, but I still like it. I also catch a little spice, which seems like allspice and/or nutmeg. Pretty.

Medium throw and wear length.

2005 version

Car-freshener pine, baby-powdery snow, and lemon-floral department store perfume.

Yucky-poo.

A cool, fizzy floral – although what might have been fizzy in 2007 is just a flat, lazy champagne hit in 2016.

Low throw and medium wear length.

2007 version

A cool purple blend. The sugared plums are more tart than sweet on me, at this age. They remind me of black currants; maybe there’s some of each. There’s a soft, white floral with it, but I don’t know which flowers.

Medium throw and low wear length.

2007 version

I don’t know how this was when fresh, but when it has aged nine years, I smell no rum in it. Sugared cream is the strongest note on my skin, with a pleasant, almost balsamic brandy note (without any accompanying alcohol vapors) and nutmeg in support.

Very low throw and wear length. My skin drinks this right up.

2007 version

Red rose and cool synthetic dew. The dew is about half-pleasant, half-vinyl.

Good throw at first, and a few hours of wear length.

2006 version

Watery mint and hints of sweet coconut and white chocolate. Borderline foodie. Medium throw, short wear length.

On the wand, this is primarily a sweet, creamy black coconut with a bit of rough patch under it.

On my skin, well, that's a lovely coconut. Maybe too sweet for me, but I love its dark creaminess. The benzoin's vanilla tone is blending right into it, and a hidden creamy vanilla note being in here, too, wouldn't surprise me. This coconut leans toward foodie, but isn't entirely so.

I'm pleasantly surprised that the patchouli is behaving itself. It's just contributing to a sense of the tropics... it adds the texture of palm-roofed huts...

Oh. This would be the fragrance of any given troll village in WoW.

(Little wave of nostalgia.)

I love fragrance.

I was nervous about the dirt note, but I quite like it. There is a dark earth here that smells newly wet, and lovely, instead of like a long-term dampness grown through with greenery rot. But that's not the strongest note.

The strongest first smells on me are green and tropical fruity flowers. The fruit notes smell like lemons and a little something a bit like melons. This mingles with what might be some sort of orchid -- but I've smelled more than a dozen orchid cultivars in person, and each one smelled different, so the range of what can represent "orchid" seems as vast as the jungle. I'm not familiar with the lab's orchid notes.

There's also prominent humid greenery and musk. I think it's black musk, especially with the blend's dark and lemony tones.

As Python dries, it grows a bit of a spicy woody note on my skin. That part of the blend reminds me a bit of Demeter's Black Bamboo.

I like this. It's a good stop in my journey to find a favorite jungle scent.

Waiting, on my skin, is primarily lavender and a powdery white musk. Secondary to those, I get a sense of cold, wet, dark rock and the lab's oudh, which always makes me think of words like "welcoming" and "solid." The lab's oudh reminds me of a comfortable living room.

I like most of this. I would really love this if it didn't feel like it's coating my nose and upper throat with fine white powder whenever I inhale from it.

Luckily, the worst of the powder puff comes up front. Once this dries, the powder takes a back seat (still in the mix, but no longer aggressive). I absolutely love the cold, wet rock plus oudh's dark solidity at this stage, which comes forward, with poignancy from the lavender.

I've been running this in my car diffuser, too. It was perhaps a weird choice for a room scent, but I've enjoyed it, other than the powder.

Oh, well, hello. I saw "crimson tea leaf" and feared a rooibos experience, but that's not how this leaf -- prominent both on the wand and my skin -- smells to me.

Instead, I'm getting a kind of red raspberry tea scent, just a bit tart, with fizz and a light, playful booze vapor. Alongside that, I smell a floral myrrh. The lilac blends cunningly with the other notes, and I find it hard to pick out, but it seems to trail right behind the raspberry, like some clinging shadow of it, when I inhale.

This doesn't change its balance on me once it dries.

On the wand, I just want to pull back from this one: it smells awful. The whole makes me think of carpet cleaner, which doesn't make sense, because I never use carpet cleaner. To try again: the plum is potent but unappealing, even though I like plum. It seems to clash with the citrus and also with a heavier base note, the amber... well, it clashes with all of it.

On my skin, the notes all come out swinging. This may be Megaera, but I'm thinking of Eris: the discord. The orris casts a powdery shroud over an angry plum and the other notes it fights with. The amber is there, adding an uncomfortable warm fullness to the plum.

Once it's dry, I mostly smell orris and an artificial plum.

On my skin, this is a salty, murky aquatic darkened, maybe, with a drop of vetiver, although that impression fades quickly on me. There's a bit of a gear or motor oil sense in this.

The saltiness grows as this dries. Not my kind of thing.

Cardamom is my favorite spice for fragrance, and I like most sugar notes. The Dead Leaves oils have been hit and miss for me, but DLSC doesn't disappoint.

It's a lovely rustic blend. This and Lavender Buds were the winners for me from the Dead Leaves blends I tried. If I had more spending freedom, I might back-up bottle this one, because I could see it becoming a fall favorite.

DLSC is well-blended. Even when it's wet on my skin, while I can pick out the notes, I don't find any seams. I love the way the dead leaves mix is working with this cardamon and sugar. The overall effect is a warm, dried, almost crunchy-leaf rustic autumn mood, spicy but not peppery, and sweet as a sugar crust, but not foodie.

On my skin, at first this is pale gingered honey and sugar cane, and then the currants roll out when they warm up. I also get a beeswax impression, and wonder if that helps make a honey note "white."

The ginger grows on me at Quaeris dries. I also smell, more strongly than before, the fibrous pale green of the sugar cane note. The honey is present but less strong, and I barely smell the currants.

This stays as a gingery, green-sugar-cane honey on me for hours.

Wet on my skin, this is dead leaf-covered leather, and some of that odd, musty musk. I can pick out no more than a light trace of clove, and no vanilla (bourbon or otherwise). There's a more rustic quality to this leather -- the "raw" -- that pairs well with the leaves. This reminds me a bit of Hunter, although the clove is stronger in that one.

This later turns on me into a dried, leathery, lightly clove-spiced, musty musk. I never find vanilla in it.

On my skin, the tar is the immediate strongest impression, made rustic by the dead leaves and colored dark purplish berry by the black currants. I get a sort of musty musk underneath.

I'm not enjoying this version of tobacco. Combined with the dead leaves, for me it sits too close to "tar-gummed ashtray," which, in my head, causes the black currant to seem like a room freshener to hide nicotine habits.

I don't think this is working for me.

Yeep. On the wand, this smells brick red to me, with a little brick-dust-like patchouli, and loads of dragon's blood-vetiver musk.

On my skin, the cinnamon amps up, and the heavy red dragon's blood musk is nearly sickening.

After drydown, the red musk turns to malodorous armpit in the usual way that the lab's red musk reacts on my skin. It's not improving things...

This isn't for me.

Mm, this lavender lady is soft on me, rather than sharp, but herbal and quite present. She is dried and cushy as raked piles on the lawn, relaxed as a drifting leaf.

The leaves note, which is mostly a rustic edge to the lavender at first, rounds out some as this dries, adding an arboreal brown to the light purple scent. Some musk wafts out, but it doesn't smell strange on me.

This could become what bedtime in November smells like.

Santa Eularia opens on me with a loud, piercing citrus and jasmine mix. The citrus part is lovely: a fleshy, incredibly juicy lemon-grapefruit blend (I think). This is light-colored, pulpy citrus juice spraying about and running down your arm when you take a bite, no matter how careful you tried to be. But the jasmine paired with it is a shrill sort. I get a sprinkling of herb smells with these: lavender, thyme, and oregano, at least, I think.

After a bit, the jasmine quiets down behind the citrus. This is really a glimmering citrus scent, fresh fruit placed center stage. The herbs make it feel special, like a kitchen of conscientious cooking and personal touches.

I like it. I didn't expect to.

The first impression of this on my skin is of blackberries and a weird, thin musky cologne that many have mentioned for the Dead Leaves perfumes.

The blackberries smell tart and dark and pretty. Their tartness reminds me of black currants. Maybe there are also black currants in this. Either way, I like that part of the mix.

As this dries, the chemical-smelling musk burns off and I smell blackberries with a hint of leaves, with the leaves mainly giving a rustic edge to the berries, as if a part of them.

In a half hour or so, it's a subtle blackberry skin scent.

Pomegranate is often high-impact, but this one has more restraint than I expected. It's dark in a way that reminds me of how the black cherries in Yipe! were dark. But it's much softer than they were. A pomegranate with poise. The amber blends into it beautifully, smelling less like some external sunlight than some native, polished warmth to the fruit.

I think I'm getting some bergamot from the chypre, too. And then I seem to smell neroli. And then, I smell a lot of neroli. I know I amp this note to high heaven, but the neroli is crazy on me now. I pick up pom coloring it, but this isn't mostly pom anymore.

I'll test later and see if my skin or nose is just being weird.

This sounds weird.

I... yes, that's weird. The strongest impression on me when wet is fruity sugar, chiefly blackberry sugar, with mandarin and strawberry and... wood. A wood almost like a sawdust.

Lobster dries on me into a vague, impressionistic still-life painting of sawdusted fruit.

Jabber is a menthol burst on me at first. I like these notes, usually, but this is one for the vaporizer.

Pine strengthens on me once the exploded menthol starts to settle. Then I enjoy this: it's a softer camphoraceous eucalyptus-pine colored playfully orange.

Wet on my skin, this is a sweet, flowery honey with an utterly frivolous mood. Unfortunately, right away on me, the honey all but vanishes and the flowers turn to sweet powder-blast poofs. The powder. She is mighty.

I don't think "sweet powder poof" expresses me very well. This is one for the go-away pile.