Mars Ultor

[LizziesLuck]

Black amber and smoky vanilla with cistus, benzoin, caramelized tobacco, and blackened nutmeg.

 

Wet: Sweet, spicy tobacco. SO. GOOD. The black amber note is amazing.

 

 

Dry: I need more of this. It's dark, sweet, sexy. Love it. A tobacco favourite.

[agirlnamedfury]

Dark, resinous, and bitter. I expected this to be a bit spicy and sweet, but it's not really either. Unfortunately I'm not getting any of the vanilla, which is a shame.

 

Okay, twenty minutes or so later I'm starting to get a bit of vanilla and liking this a bit better. Still pretty indifferent towards it.

[Lucchesa]

Nutmeg? Not on me. (And blackened nutmeg sounds so divine; sigh.) Everything else is lovely, though. It's more masculine when wet, drying down into a perfectly unisex, perfectly sexy smoky sweet amber-tobacco-vanilla.

 

Unfortunately, my skin is eating it up rather quickly. I would think Mars the Avenger would be a little stronger than this. It's beautiful if now faint, and I'm delighted I got to try it.

[Juliamon]

This starts out vaguely boozy in the imp and turns to vaguely sour on my skin. I'm not familiar with cistus or tobacco yet so it's one of those, probably the cistus since I do not often get along with florals. Fortunately the sourness burns off in a couple minutes and the vanilla starts to amp on me, leaving the most delicious vanilla amber with just a hint of something else (the tobacco maybe).

 

I saw this compared to Lush's Lord of Misrule and while they're pretty drastically different I can definitely see the comparison, particularly to the bath bomb version--there's a shared warm sweetness that 'feels' the same in my head. I think I actually prefer this, as LoM's non-vanilla notes tend to get drowned out over time and the scent becomes very flat, whereas Mars Ultor maintains a more interesting balance.

 

Not a huge throw but it's lasting a good long while. I need to hunt down a bottle of this, I'm definitely in love!