Penthus

[Voleuse]

The Greek God of Tears, Patron of Mourners, who dictates and accepts honors paid to the dead. He is the personification of grief and the sorrow and emptiness that comes from loss. Weeping is his hymnal, and this is his perfume. Salt tears over white roses, the fumes of thin funereal incense and the hollowness of calamus.

Salt and roses is a perfect description of this. Rose is definitely the floral note, but the sweetness is completely replaced by an herbal, bitter edge. It reminds me of a funeral on a sunlit day, where there are bouquets littering the grounds, but your hands are feeling cold.

This isn't a pretty scent, but it's apt, I think. Solemn. Edited May 30, 2008 by Shollin

[Meg]

In the bottle: Tears and roses.

 

Wet: A slightly astringent herby note, I can't quite place it, the calamus?

 

Drydown: The rose starts coming out shyly and then slowly becomes rather sweet. I also get some light sweet smoke and the calamus stays around in the background. The tear note becomes rather discreet bit it's there all the time, making the scent deeper.

 

Overall: A melancholic scent, very evocative of a sort of sweet sorrow, of romantic grief, rather gothy in its general concept. I find that it goes too sweet on me because of the rose, which is a pity, really. The salt of the tear note does come in and as the rose fades I get calamus again. It morphs quite a bit, but fades quite quickly.

[juniperus]

Bottle: I'm not sure what is causing this, but it's both sharp and sour to my nose.

Wet: a floral, with something almost soapy that is making my nose plug. Oh this is not good.

Dry: ocean air, white roses, and something I can't quite place...citrus? green? just an edge of, really, but it's present.

Later: this smells like a funeral to me..the salt, the roses, and I'd bet that's calla lily since it's increasing and lily tends to do that on me. erg.

[dancink]

Disclaimer: I'm a big believer in the value of a negative review. I know some people utterly adore this; if you're a lover of aquatics then I'd recommend it. Having said that, however...

 

I received this as a frimpie from eclipsedeyes over on lj, and I'm really, really glad I didn't pay for it, because wow do I hate this. There is something about aquatic scents that set my allergies off terribly, couple that with the cold I'm currently fighting and this is actually making me feel ill. And I cannot believe I'm saying this about one of Beth's scents, but there is something in this that reminds me of Paris Hilton for Men, which I utterly revile, even though I can't actually find any notes in common. This is going into a ziplock, smell-proof bag and then straight into my swaps pile.

[storme]

In the imp: sharp bitterness over very faint, musky florals.

 

On me, wet: whoa, suddenly it's the smell of the ocean near a field of flowers, lots of sharp stinging saltiness and breezy florals.

 

On me, dry: detergent. not a lot else - maybe a faintest tinge of the earlier aquatics, but mostly it's a lily-and-rose-ish laundry detergent.

 

Verdict: fascinating concept, but wrecked by my skin chemistry. Alas.

[dragonryder]

Roses and incense..... love this combo. Even the aquatic notes are behaving and not overpowering everything else.

[edenssixthday]

Penthus - I wasn't sure at all what to expect from this blend, but when I first applied it, I immediately noticed a bright, clean scent, followed almost immediately by a soft, light floral, and it reminded me the tiniest bit of Havisham. It has a slight sweetness to it that I'm guessing is the calamus in the blend, and underneath all of that is the thinnest wisp of incense smoke. It's very faint -- almost like the smell of a room where incense burned a couple of days earlier. The scent is very strong on my skin when I first apply it, and it has a strong level of throw, but as soon as it dries down, the scent becomes significantly fainter and sticks very close to my skin. Once it has dried, the floral note disappears and it's entirely incense and salt. The salt note does exactly what it does in all other blends with salt/tears, and it turns into dryer sheet on me and makes me think of old, fuzzy, gray socks. This blend is apparently not for me.

[shahrazad]

Another happy frimp accident: based on the notes, I never would have ordered this myself. For some reason I don't get any funeral connotations from this scent - it's actually very refreshing on me. The salt-spray smell dominates, with a faint floral/resin undertone, and it lasts for several hours. No aquatic headaches or overpowering rose, yay! When I want a "wake up" scent, but not the eucalyptus blast of Ultraviolet, I'll reach for this.

[Bagfish]

I think my sniffer is broke as my experience is SO different from everyone else's! When I recieved my last order from the lab, it smelled minty in a chalky, minty sort of way, a bit like Trebor Mints (for those of you in the UK that remember them). The smell reminded me a bit of my Grandparents bedroom as they always had a packet of mints on the go.

 

Anyway, I come around to trying out my frimps and Penthus is one of them. I open it and discover it is the source of the minty smell in the box (I think it leaked a little). I try it on and it is lovely - a refreshing but subtle mint. Great, I think, but Penthus has a trick up his sleeve. After about 2 hours of mint I start to get a gorgeous amber wafting from my wrist. Yes, not only is Penthus refreshingly minty, it also has an amber drydown. What a wonderful scent.

 

However looking at the other reviews I'm thinking I may have got a mislabelled imp as I get no rose, no salt, no flowers and no incense from Penthus. Hmmm, very strange.....

[Confection]

I cannot tell the difference between this scent and Dove's Heart. It seems like there is a lot of repetition in what the Lab's been putting out lately.

[kunoichi]

From the vial, this smells of a tangy, salty scent complemented by a somewhat sweet scent of the roses and possibly the calamus. On my skin this starts smelling like soap that might be rose scented, which soon gets a salty tang to it and perhaps a watery note of the calamus reeds. After a few hours on my skin, this is a very soft and subtle floral blend with a slight tang of the salt and incense underneath it all – it is a scent that will soon fade completely.

[mountainwitch]

The rose here comes through after a few long minutes, but it lingers. This is one of those really lovely roses that works very well with my chemistry, and the other notes provide an intriguing balance. There's something about the "tears" here that remind me of what I wanted Jolly Roger to smell like for me. Roses aside, this reminds me of the salt wind on a real beach in gray twilight. In the end, this one is so different from other fragrances I've tried that it's an immediate favorite.

[sofiaviolet]

This smells like an aquatic in the imp. On me, it turns into something that makes my nose itch. Also, it hasn't much throw.

[gaai]

The salt and the incense make it so I don't wash it off within the hour.........but it's still way too florally for me.

Still....if you're a floral kinda girl/guy.....it's really nice.

[maribouquet]

I wonder if I, too, didn't get a mislabled imp. Or perhaps my nose is wacky? I don't smell florals. I smell...Junior Mints! Straight up mint chocolate. After 15 minutes or so, a layer of saltiness emerges.

 

The god of mourning is drinking Grasshoppers, the lush!

 

It's yummy, but not at all what I had expected, and prob. not something I will wear as a personal fragrance.

Edited September 2, 2006 by maribouquet

[LiberAmoris]

Wow, I just love the white rose note. It's so lovely. Penthus is definitely a dolorous blend, beautiful but sad. The white rose and underlying notes remind me a bit of Parlement of Foules. It's a serious blend, one that would be good on a rainy afternoon when I sit down to read or watch a film.

[porcelain72]

In the bottle: white, aquatic floral.

 

Initial application: similar to Sea of Glass, only at about half-power. This is a good thing, because Sea of Glass did indeed bring tears to my eyes.

 

Drydown: soft and oddly melancholy, this has a touch of soapy powderiness to it, but it's very pretty. I don't get roses as a dominant note, it just seems to be a general, nonspecific floral. If I hadn't gotten it as a frimp with a Lab order, I probably would have overlooked it, but I'm glad I got a chance to try it.

 

Smiley rating:

[nightbird]

in the vial, this is a nice aquatic scent with light flowers.

 

on me, it's soap... very nice floral soap, but soap nonetheless.

[supremegoddessofall]

I'm not sure *what* this smells like. It definitely has a salty component to it, and it's a floral, but it's kind of indistinct. Not getting the incense at all. It's pretty subtle, too.

[steffanina]

Penthus-

 

In Bottle: A little bitterly floral.

 

Wet: Still bitter.

 

Dry: This just doesn't work for me. It does that "rose gone sour" thing that many florals do on my skin and make me wrinkle my nose. Oh well.

 

Overall: Not for me.

[Tess]

This is an experiment to see if this could be used in a Samhain ritual. While it's not really "grief" oriented, it is about honoring the dead.

 

In the vial - This is really salty and astringent. Almost like vinegar, really. There's quite a bit of rose here, but not quite what I'd call white.

 

Wet - Seriously, sea salt and vinegar over artificial rose perfume.

 

Drying - Salt just does not stick around on me, so it's turning into a one-on-one battle between the vinegar and the rose. The rose is going soapy, though, which evokes much more of a white feeling for me.

 

Dry (1 hour) - Eh, everything that might have made this interesting has disappeared. It's become all rose on me and slightly headache inducing. Blah.

 

Overall - This is a "no" for me. Rather a large "no" at that, what with my pounding head and all. Blah.

[spring heel]

Ohh, I like this one. initially it was too headachey on me and delved off into the chemically-perfume end of the spectrum... but now, I really like this one. I guess its kind of like what you'd imagine as a funeral by the ocean, an aquatic rose. With a little bit of incense. Well, maybe not incense, I don't know what it is. I can smell something salty, the rose and then there's "something else." I don't know what it is, or even how to describe it, its just there and adds something... but. Hm. Maybe its the calamus? Not sure, and its a probablity since I actually have no idea what calamus smells like. I don't see a bottle for me in the near future I think my (fr)imp will last me whenever i find myself reaching for Penthus.

[for_the_nonce]

wow, after reading the reviews for this, i must say i have some odd skin chemistry.

 

i expected something much akin to olokun, but i'm not getting *any* salty-ness from this one. instead, its some weirdly sweet, cloying, something that i can't identify.

 

this one's just too weird for me. i don't like it at all.

[kinopela]

in the bottle: roses.

 

skin: still roses, but with the tiniest hint of white musk.

 

dry: this is *exactly* how i thought it would smell. tears and roses. perfect.

 

my sister smelled it and yelled, 'smells like funeral flowers!' so. apparently this is not a blend i can wear around the fam. oh well. i like it! maybe not enough to buy a bottle, as i'd like it to be a little saltier, but this is a great rose scent.

Edited November 20, 2006 by kinopela

[theseagrows]

this seems so familiar. it smells like a damask rose and it's very dry to me, despite the presence of aquatic notes. reminds me of dried roses stored in a box, with something soapy and sharp added. i am on the fence with this. i sort of like it, but don't love it. i'll have to try it again at a later date, but i think i'll probably end up swapping it.