Casablanca

I was pleased to get this discontinued frimp to try.

On the wand, sometimes I get wispy, cottony flowers and faint white powder. At other times, it’s mostly aquatic.

On my skin, this is extremely light when wet. Just tinges of green aquatic and white floral notes. There’s a fleeting powder impression. As this begins drydown, I start to get more of the powdery white floral than the green aquatic, but all remains faint. Once dried, it’s not as powdery, and not aquatic at all anymore. Just a barely there cottony white flower impression.

In the bottle, mossy tropical flowers and a little smooth sandalwood. Pretty.

On my skin, sandalwood comes out and the mossy aspect smells drier in combination with it. Then, after the blend warms on my skin, I get very faint, pale tropical flowers. What little I get of them is light and airy. I wonder if the bottle’s flowers have dulled out with age (purchased from lab’s Etsy). Once I get the flowers, I don’t really smell the moss or sandalwood anymore: the blend is just a faint tropical floral aura on my arm.

This is nice, but I suspect it’s past its prime. Still seeking a favorite tropical blend.

In the bottle, I smell a golden floral, and maybe a little vanilla.

On my skin, this opens as a lovely, golden, lightly spicy, and incensey floral. It reminds me of Flor de Muerto, but with incense and a spicy edge. This doesn’t change on me as it dries, other than becoming much more faint on the skin. Cinnamon often amps on me, but here, thankfully, it remains soft.

On the wand, I get salty sea air and wood, with a little greenery.

On my skin, my first impression is of pirates: salty sea air, wood, and red wine. I’m guessing the saltiness is from the ambergris. The wine is quickly turning to a sour, sweaty afternoon-booze-nap smell with my chemistry. Maybe this is the red wine from Bordello – it does the same thing.

After this dries, all the other notes get lost: Salty and sour red wine takes over, punches some of its friends in the face, throws up, and gets heaved overboard.

I guess this one doesn’t work on me.

On the wand, I mostly get a dark, fruity-floral note. It smells like pink and somewhat bubblegummy lotus paired with black currants or some other dark berries. There’s a thin, grainy edge of sandalwood.

On my skin, it’s still lotus and dark berries or grapes, and also kind of syrupy. I can see how some have gotten a cough syrup impression: the dark fruity syrup thing is a little bit like Dimetapp. But the blend is nicer. I don’t mind the bit of bubblegum in it, and it’s short-lived.

After it dries, only a hint of the fruity lotus lingers, and I mostly get a mild amber-myrrh blend. It’s very soft.

Jinbari remains my favorite lotus blend.

In the bottle, I get apricot-blood orange mingled on a subtle resinous base of dragon’s blood.

On my skin, same thing. The fruit is pretty and on the tart and tangy side. Oh, there’s some creamy vanilla wafting in, but not turning creamsicle with the blood orange. Thank you! It does seem golden — lovely. There’s just a bit of honey sweetness but nothing strong. I was a fan of Four Seasons: Winter, and this is good, too.

After this dries, I get a hint of the chamomile, which adds interest, but it stays subtle. And the dragon’s blood comes out. This DB is closer to the real thing than I think I’ve smelled in a perfume before, which is to say, it reminds me a little of a red brick. A resinous, red brick. The DB was the only reason I hesitated on this blend, but if you like DB, this is a great note for it. I don’t pick out oudh here.

Solid blend and different enough from Four Seasons: Winter to not be redundant with it for me.

In the bottle, I smell myrrh incense.

On my skin, I get a very blended ylang ylang-rose, musk, and powdery myrrh incense. And beeswax? It seems like there’s a smooth beeswax hiding behind the powder. But the powder has really blanketed everything in this for me.

I want to love this, but it’s just too powdery on my skin.

In the bottle, this is a soft, green mossy-bamboo floral.

On my skin, it’s similar, but a little more floral. I love lotus and ylang ylang together, and they are lovely here, both together and matched up with mossy bamboo. The green notes lean toward aquatic but don’t quite get there for me, which I feel is a nice place. This smells like lounging in the summer under willow and bamboo trees by a lotus-floaty pond. This only lasts through the wet phase, though.

I don’t pick up any vanilla sandalwood until the oil dries, and then it’s faint powdery vanilla and a hint of green.

A soft, beautifully serene blend on me while wet; faint and powdery when dry.

When I first apply Liaison, and from the bottle, I get mostly cypress -- but it's deep and interesting. A blend to make me like cypress more! But the note steps back in a few minutes, and then there's a soft, quiet lotus up front. Lotus has her turn being complicated and interesting because of the other notes. Then lotus steps back, and I get a stronger sandalwood. Now this is a soft blend: meditative, textured like grainy wood and champaca dust.

Complex, morphy, soft, and pretty.

In the bottle, I get tuberose in a thin cloud of incense. It smells to me like the tuberose from Humanite, but mellowed some.

On my skin, I smell in order: tuberose, incense, wisteria, and lastly a little oakmoss. Then I smell quite a bit of oakmoss in it. A lovely oakmoss. Interesting. Between the waxy, tropical tuberose, the incense and wisteria, and the woodsy oakmoss, this seems to hit a lot of different areas and mental impressions. It’s coming across to me as likable in its parts, but not cohesive overall.

As it dries, the wisteria and oakmoss blend into the mood of a deep, rainy forest, with incense adding a meditative mood. Yay! But the tropical tuberose still stands apart and up front, doing its own, entirely different thing. Thankfully, the tuberose slips from dominance as the blend finishes drydown. Now I’m getting more of the wisteria I wanted (I loved Night Scene). It mingles nicely with oakmoss and incense, and the whole blend is softer. The tuberose is just a hint. I like the balance once it’s dried.

On my skin, this is a creamy floral, both in tone and in the color it brings to mind. I get vanilla in this creaminess, but this blend is mostly about the bloom.

Different orchids can smell quite different (or not like anything). This is creamy, pale, and airy, and only light-handedly perfumey. I find it understated rather than heady. Early on it has a little leaning toward violets, in some small part of it, but that fades from me before it dries. Then it becomes a little cleaner and greener.

In the bottle, I smell strawberries and a soft mingling of flowers and honey.

On my skin, it’s strawberries in honeyed and lightly sugared spring flowers. Pretty! The mood of this reminds me of Bilquis and Libra 2016, but lighter and pinker, and more delicate. For the flowers, I get pink carnation, peony, and phlox — this was great with Phlox bath oil last night. The rest of the flowers are a floral blur. No, actually… I also smell a little of that creamy, slightly waxy yellow floral from Qui Aime Bien Châtie Bien. Daffodil? Love it. And a tiny bit of vanilla. The carnation’s spice keeps this from getting too sweet.

This barely lasts two hours on me, and it goes soft quickly. But it’s a lovely spring scent.

On the wand: cold, windblown leaves, cold fir, and warm honey-sweet musk. Strange together.

On my skin, I get the cold leaves and fir. There’s something green, lichenous, and oakmossy about the blend at first, but somehow, after that I mostly get an herbal powdered ginger. The honey musk from the wand never appears on my skin. Usually those notes show up on me OK, if I can smell them from the bottle or wand, but not this time. A head scratcher.

This one really does a jig on my skin — and then, in about 20 minutes, it’s mostly gone.

On the wand, I smell fir and, surprisingly, a woody oakmoss. I don’t usually smell that until something has dried. There’s also a dimly glowing edge of apricot, scarcely there.

On my skin, this turns into an astringent, whiny-pitched trio of fir, ginger, and white tea. I have an initial mental impression of some sort of yokai shrieking, but this settles in drydown. After that, I get a little pale amber, but not much else. The other notes mostly fade. This one isn’t a match for my chemistry.

On the wand, clean white flowers (maybe a little plumeria in them?), white musk, a little something that reminds me of the vanilla-cognac in Pediophobia, and juicy pom.

On my skin, this goes quite faint. I just get ghostly traces of floral pomegranate and slightly powdery white musk. The latter is not as powdery as some white musks go on me.

Pretty, dainty, and light, but I’ll stick with Abduction of Proserpine for my pom needs.

On the wand, this starts as an ethereal, slightly powdery perfumey note (the chalk?), and then twang, snap. Rubbery latex. The latex snaps you in the nose when it emerges, like a rubber band from across the room.

On my skin — ho boy! Nasty chemical rubber that manages to smell “thin” like latex. I can’t get too close to this. When the rubber starts to calm, I get a little of the powdery chalk back. Not an attractive note, but better than rubber hell.

Impressively bad (for one or two meanings of bad).

On the wand, I smell everything but the leather. Primarily jasmine, followed by white tea, and then a slightly powdery musk.

On my skin, a pretty jasmine white tea with some powdery white musk. I would bottle this if it weren’t so powdery, because the jasmine tea is so fresh and attractive. (I’m still tempted.) I’m going through a jasmine phase and this jasmine is soft rather than super-sharp or high-pitched. I’m drawn to this blend, but I get no leather at all from it until it dries. Then it slowly creeps in, but stays soft, and seems mostly white leathery. The leather doesn’t seem to quite mesh with the rest of it, but I still like it.

On the wand, this is kind of an odd black leather-powdery orris mix.

On my skin, it instead becomes powdery orris and red sandalwood on a patchouli background, initially, and patchouli quickly amps into a dominant, dry dirtiness. Not sure where the leather is in this earthy party.

Not my thing.

On the wand, black leather in clouds of amber and dark myrrh.

On my skin, at first, the amber is there, but the leather relaxes into a softer note, and the myrrh hides. As this dries, the black leather comes out more and the amber (which might have a little vetiver in it) sweetens. Then, kind of abruptly, the lovely amber drops out and I’m left with a soft black leather and a hint of myrrh.

Still, sexy brew. This is my friend’s decant, and I can’t figure out if I need a bottle. I thought I was done ordering, but I’m tempted, because I love the way this amber plays with the other notes while it lasts.

On the wand: white notes, some tan to the leather. I get an ethereal and pretty sweetness in the tobacco.

On my skin, the sweetness in the tobacco amps likably, followed by the pale sandalwood. I like both notes. The blend as a whole becomes dry-smelling as it dries on me. It takes on a bit of a bleached desert-like quality that reminds me of It Lifts from Leaden Sieves: maybe it’s the same white sandalwood.

This also reminds me of White Rider, but it’s been a long time since I smelled that one. I want to say that WR was more powdery and had less depth on me than this one, but it’s kind of a guess impression by now. This is my friend’s decant, and I can’t figure out if I need a bottle.

Smoky deep leather. First impression was birch tar and leather.

This lasted two or three hours on me with little change.

This starts as beautiful smoked honey and tobacco on me, with an edge of sweet cinnamon, and ends as cinnamon broomstick craft shop on my skin. Bummer.

This is a stunning leather. Sniffing this is like sticking your head into an overstocked, intimate shop of well-worked and oiled leather goods (where some of that oil is Snake Oil). Something here also reminds me of teakwood, which I love.

Good stuff! I gave some to a friend and she fainted.

I actually got this to use in a car diffuser, because orange blossom is usually a world conquerer on my skin and bullies all else out of existence, and I thought I'd like all the notes if they weren't on my skin.

But, actually, I never detect orange blossom on my skin. And it turns out the other notes just don't work on my skin. So it might be the diffuser for this one, but for a different reason.

On my skin, this is caramelized white peach and tuberose. The peach (quite a different peach from the Dragon Con ones I sampled) is really caramelized. Uber-caramelized. My sunset on the beach just smells a bit weird and artificial to me. :-/ Going to try in a diffuser later and see how that goes.

This was another last-minute decant for me. I like everything listed except black pepper. Maybe it will be slight enough for this to work.

On the wand: Black pepper dominates. Wuh wuh wuuuh. After that I get champaca, and then a wisteria-lilac mix. Nothing else yet.

On my skin: Black pepper! That’s almost all I get, but there’s the ghostly blue-purple wisteria-lilac mix behind it. That mix is pretty, but it’s like the flowers of this garden are hidden behind a fence of black pepper. As this begins drydown, the pepper eases up. Then I get primarily wisteria-lilac mingling with some smooth benzoin and hints of champaca and sandalwood. It’s a soft sent. Nice at this point, reminding me a little of Night Scene from last year’s Lupers. I’m not sure it’s nice enough for me to climb the pepper fence again, though.

ETA: I tried this again after a few weeks and the pepper had settled a lot. Really like this now.