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The major revelation of this batch of smelling was that I am NOT INTO jasmine or lily of the valley. If I had to rank them, I have an easier time with jasmine: I'll drink it in tea and put up with it in soap. But overall: no to those! There is therefore some crankiness in this round, because I ran into a lot of both of them. However, I started with:
Tokyo Milk Dark Tainted Love: I seriously thought that there was musk in this, the kind my brain interprets as Perfume Perfume, but I put some on and it went - winey? Vanilla? ...Eyeburning? Something about the sandalwood and tea gave me this weird fresh barnyardy smell, like mud and cut grass, which I suspect no one else would think about this. It then went the most sugary of all sugars, of course. My friend reported that it was supposed to be vanilla and orchid. My initial notes say "For a floral, this is not totally gross," which is a sad referendum on me and florals.
The fact that there's no musk listed is confusing, and makes me think maybe one of the things I think is musk is just a carrier smell or an unlisted ingredient? Help?
Robert Piguet Fracas: I was super interested to smell this, because it's got this reputation as the High Femme Perfume of All Perfumes, and then the cap on my friend's sample was stuck and I wound up getting kind of a lot of it on my hand, and also on the phone I was taking notes with.
That is a shame because I do not like Fracas that much. In-situ notes: Wow that is a perfume-style perfume. Floral? Soap! Maybe some spice after the back-of-the-throat floral soapiness. The one thing I will say is that it is not sweet. But I think if I had to rank them I would say I would rather have the vanilla honey stuff than this. Big loud rose or jasmine or something. Having looked at the notes: jasmine AND lily of the valley. Ugh. I will leave Fracas to the rest of perfume fandom, apparently.
By Kilian Rose Oud: something nice and licorice-y under a rose that started good and went such straight horse shampoo that I thought I got Fracas on it. Still, there's an interesting lurking sweetness that I don't expect from rose. I washed my hands and tried again and yep, horse shampoo. Who are these horses in my sense memory and why are they getting such fancy shampoo? Does Mane and Tail smell super rosey? It's a little more plant-y and appealing than previous attempts.
Having looked at the notes: everything else in this is woods and saffron, which I expect will probably be precisely my thing. I am not feeling optimistic about rose, but I'm going to keep trying.
L'Artisan Seville a l'arbe: citrus peel, but also jasmine or lily, dammit. Something loud and perfumey and honestly a bit of a headache in a vial.
Having looked at the notes: Nope, zero percent jasmine or lily! Petitgrain, olive blossom, lavender, orange blossom, beeswax, tobacco, benzoin, olibanum. What? What is causing me this OH NO PERFUME reaction?
Bandit: I was about to think I was wrong about this hobby and I don't like perfume after all and then this spilled all over my hand from another stuck sample lid. And it was awesome. Really awesome. This is bright bright green, and I see why people say it smells less like pipe tobacco than it just smells like the clothes of someone who smokes. My friend said it's a little acidic for her, and now that I smell it I could honestly see it being a little biley. There's a very faint honey and a pepper thing? It's gone perfumey on the bottom, possibly because my whole phone reeks of Fracas. This is an amazing go-fuck-yourself of a chypre, isn't it? I wonder what I would have smelled if I didn't know that this was Bandit, or had read zero other reviews of Bandit.
I definitely got Fracas layered onto some of this, and it's interesting but a little obnoxious. Where I spilled the most of it on my fingers it's still all Bandit and is basically stubbing out a cigarette on a cop car ostentatiously, but the very faint dab on my wrist has faded down to nothing alien at all.
Honestly, I feel self-conscious saying this, given its reputation (even though I'm definitely smelling the reformulation, which I hear has been slightly defanged), but this is the one that smells least like I've PUT ON PERFUME and most like a normal way for me to smell. I'm not actually sure that that's a good thing - I mean, it really does smell like crashing your ex-girlfriend's car through a garden hedge while chain-smoking and then getting into a fight with the arresting officer, and on a less metaphorical level, I could actually see it smelling a little unwell on me, maybe, a little less like healthy skin odor and a little more like a fever sweat. But I'm pretty likely to buy my own sample to find out.
It is worth noting that there's some jasmine down in here, but it's so drowned by the massive cloud of FUCK OFF this stuff puts out that I find it hard to notice and get annoyed by. I could definitely still smell it, though. Like the body spray your horrible ex left rolling around on the floorboards of the car you've just taken through that hedge.
Guerlain Samsara: raisiny, eye-burning, sweet but not vanilla, sudden punch of lily or something, bleh. Yeah, notes say jasmine. Fucking jasmine, man.
Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess was clearly gonna be sunscreen so I left it alone.
Sonoma Scent Studio Winter Woods is okay in a birchy wintergreen way. Like the part of BPAL snow moon I don't hate, though it goes sweet fast and makes me feel kind of sneezy."
Prada Infusion d'Iris: nice! Okay! Whatever the floral thing in here is it's spicy and non-awful, though it's starting to pick up an Old Lady Bathroom Powder thing the longer it's on me. Whatever the smell is that I think is musk and plays as Amorphous Perfume Smell is in here, but looking at the notes, there's no musk listed: suspects include benzoin and mastic. Incidentally, the other notes are citrus, incense, and cedar, so that's probably why I like it. It's nice to know I'm predictable!
Christian Dior La Couturier Leather Oud: very sweet, immediately, and heavy on what I thought was pipe tobacco but is apparently largely civet? Wow, do I ever not know what I am smelling. I wrote "for what this is, it's really nice", because it was in the category of leather things that went sweet on me fast, but now that I know that there's a lot of animalics in here I'd be curious to try it again. Plus my nose was pretty tired.
Theirry Mugler Angel: cherries. Cotton candy. Closed quickly. You know, it's not actually that I have anything against sweet food smells, even. It's just that as a female lady-type person growing up in the 90s, I feel like I've already smelled like vanilla bath products a lot (especially since for a while I chose them consistently to avoid Amorphous Floral Ladysmell), and therefore I'm not that curious about them. Apparently this is a really well-received, famous oriental vanilla, and I should probably give it another try when I'm less cranky and smelled-out.
Atelier cologne trefle pur: oh jeez yes please, probs because this is full up on the citrus, like, heavy, bitter citrus. I feel like wearing this would be a little much like walking through the world spritzing everyone with lemon juice, though, because it is sour
I tried on another two Atlier Cologne scents after this, though I got distracted by True Detective and didn't note them down, and either I had a surprisingly spot-targeted run-in with poison ivy last night, or I'm allergic to one of them. Nothing else in this huge, histamine-challenging list! Just the last or next-to-last thing I put on, which I know because by that point even with scrubbing I had had to progress up to my elbow to test things on-skin. Which isn't a dealbreaker for me and perfume, but it's a good reminder that when I start actually testing things that I want to wear, I should probably do one at a time and wait to make sure my skin likes them instead of coating myself in novel chemicals all at once.
So mostly the winner of the night was Bandit. Man, Bandit. Well done, you.
Tokyo Milk Dark Tainted Love: I seriously thought that there was musk in this, the kind my brain interprets as Perfume Perfume, but I put some on and it went - winey? Vanilla? ...Eyeburning? Something about the sandalwood and tea gave me this weird fresh barnyardy smell, like mud and cut grass, which I suspect no one else would think about this. It then went the most sugary of all sugars, of course. My friend reported that it was supposed to be vanilla and orchid. My initial notes say "For a floral, this is not totally gross," which is a sad referendum on me and florals.
The fact that there's no musk listed is confusing, and makes me think maybe one of the things I think is musk is just a carrier smell or an unlisted ingredient? Help?
Robert Piguet Fracas: I was super interested to smell this, because it's got this reputation as the High Femme Perfume of All Perfumes, and then the cap on my friend's sample was stuck and I wound up getting kind of a lot of it on my hand, and also on the phone I was taking notes with.
That is a shame because I do not like Fracas that much. In-situ notes: Wow that is a perfume-style perfume. Floral? Soap! Maybe some spice after the back-of-the-throat floral soapiness. The one thing I will say is that it is not sweet. But I think if I had to rank them I would say I would rather have the vanilla honey stuff than this. Big loud rose or jasmine or something. Having looked at the notes: jasmine AND lily of the valley. Ugh. I will leave Fracas to the rest of perfume fandom, apparently.
By Kilian Rose Oud: something nice and licorice-y under a rose that started good and went such straight horse shampoo that I thought I got Fracas on it. Still, there's an interesting lurking sweetness that I don't expect from rose. I washed my hands and tried again and yep, horse shampoo. Who are these horses in my sense memory and why are they getting such fancy shampoo? Does Mane and Tail smell super rosey? It's a little more plant-y and appealing than previous attempts.
Having looked at the notes: everything else in this is woods and saffron, which I expect will probably be precisely my thing. I am not feeling optimistic about rose, but I'm going to keep trying.
L'Artisan Seville a l'arbe: citrus peel, but also jasmine or lily, dammit. Something loud and perfumey and honestly a bit of a headache in a vial.
Having looked at the notes: Nope, zero percent jasmine or lily! Petitgrain, olive blossom, lavender, orange blossom, beeswax, tobacco, benzoin, olibanum. What? What is causing me this OH NO PERFUME reaction?
Bandit: I was about to think I was wrong about this hobby and I don't like perfume after all and then this spilled all over my hand from another stuck sample lid. And it was awesome. Really awesome. This is bright bright green, and I see why people say it smells less like pipe tobacco than it just smells like the clothes of someone who smokes. My friend said it's a little acidic for her, and now that I smell it I could honestly see it being a little biley. There's a very faint honey and a pepper thing? It's gone perfumey on the bottom, possibly because my whole phone reeks of Fracas. This is an amazing go-fuck-yourself of a chypre, isn't it? I wonder what I would have smelled if I didn't know that this was Bandit, or had read zero other reviews of Bandit.
I definitely got Fracas layered onto some of this, and it's interesting but a little obnoxious. Where I spilled the most of it on my fingers it's still all Bandit and is basically stubbing out a cigarette on a cop car ostentatiously, but the very faint dab on my wrist has faded down to nothing alien at all.
Honestly, I feel self-conscious saying this, given its reputation (even though I'm definitely smelling the reformulation, which I hear has been slightly defanged), but this is the one that smells least like I've PUT ON PERFUME and most like a normal way for me to smell. I'm not actually sure that that's a good thing - I mean, it really does smell like crashing your ex-girlfriend's car through a garden hedge while chain-smoking and then getting into a fight with the arresting officer, and on a less metaphorical level, I could actually see it smelling a little unwell on me, maybe, a little less like healthy skin odor and a little more like a fever sweat. But I'm pretty likely to buy my own sample to find out.
It is worth noting that there's some jasmine down in here, but it's so drowned by the massive cloud of FUCK OFF this stuff puts out that I find it hard to notice and get annoyed by. I could definitely still smell it, though. Like the body spray your horrible ex left rolling around on the floorboards of the car you've just taken through that hedge.
Guerlain Samsara: raisiny, eye-burning, sweet but not vanilla, sudden punch of lily or something, bleh. Yeah, notes say jasmine. Fucking jasmine, man.
Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess was clearly gonna be sunscreen so I left it alone.
Sonoma Scent Studio Winter Woods is okay in a birchy wintergreen way. Like the part of BPAL snow moon I don't hate, though it goes sweet fast and makes me feel kind of sneezy."
Prada Infusion d'Iris: nice! Okay! Whatever the floral thing in here is it's spicy and non-awful, though it's starting to pick up an Old Lady Bathroom Powder thing the longer it's on me. Whatever the smell is that I think is musk and plays as Amorphous Perfume Smell is in here, but looking at the notes, there's no musk listed: suspects include benzoin and mastic. Incidentally, the other notes are citrus, incense, and cedar, so that's probably why I like it. It's nice to know I'm predictable!
Christian Dior La Couturier Leather Oud: very sweet, immediately, and heavy on what I thought was pipe tobacco but is apparently largely civet? Wow, do I ever not know what I am smelling. I wrote "for what this is, it's really nice", because it was in the category of leather things that went sweet on me fast, but now that I know that there's a lot of animalics in here I'd be curious to try it again. Plus my nose was pretty tired.
Theirry Mugler Angel: cherries. Cotton candy. Closed quickly. You know, it's not actually that I have anything against sweet food smells, even. It's just that as a female lady-type person growing up in the 90s, I feel like I've already smelled like vanilla bath products a lot (especially since for a while I chose them consistently to avoid Amorphous Floral Ladysmell), and therefore I'm not that curious about them. Apparently this is a really well-received, famous oriental vanilla, and I should probably give it another try when I'm less cranky and smelled-out.
Atelier cologne trefle pur: oh jeez yes please, probs because this is full up on the citrus, like, heavy, bitter citrus. I feel like wearing this would be a little much like walking through the world spritzing everyone with lemon juice, though, because it is sour
I tried on another two Atlier Cologne scents after this, though I got distracted by True Detective and didn't note them down, and either I had a surprisingly spot-targeted run-in with poison ivy last night, or I'm allergic to one of them. Nothing else in this huge, histamine-challenging list! Just the last or next-to-last thing I put on, which I know because by that point even with scrubbing I had had to progress up to my elbow to test things on-skin. Which isn't a dealbreaker for me and perfume, but it's a good reminder that when I start actually testing things that I want to wear, I should probably do one at a time and wait to make sure my skin likes them instead of coating myself in novel chemicals all at once.
So mostly the winner of the night was Bandit. Man, Bandit. Well done, you.
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My favorite part of reading reviews is seeing the metaphors people come up with and the little scenes they write, and this one takes the cake so far this week :D
From what you've said here and elsewhere, BPAL's Seraglio (forum reviews; "Sweet almond and Mysor sandalwood enveloped by a heady veil of Bulgarian Rose, neroli, nutmeg, clove and orange peel") might be of interest, if you haven't already tried that one -- it reads femme for me, too femme for my tastes actually, but the spices and citrus seem Relevant To Your Interests and since I'm lurking all the way over here on the extreme not-femme preferences scale, you might read it as a more unisex rose. I DUNNO IT IS HARD TO FIGURE OUT WHAT ARBITRARY GENDERING I AM SUPPOSED TO USE
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Ooh, thank you for the recommendation! Sometimes something in BPAL hits me weird - I've actually got some imps I'm thinking I'll give away, because every time I give one to someone it winds up smelling amazing on them and not so great on me. But since they mix every batch from ingredients, eventually surely there will be one! Maybe Seraglio? I know my brother's gf has a vast imp array so maybe I can smell it easily.
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If she does not, there can possibly be a gift in your future! We're hanging onto the imp until we decide if we want a full bottle of it or not, but after that I can totally send it along. (I've got another rose -- Whip, which is rose and leather -- coming in the order that should arrive tomorrow; I'll let you know how that one fares, too.)
And I hear you on the "eventually there will be one". Now that you can actually search the BPAL site usefully, I'm getting into it way more than I used to be, but for years I'd have people throw stuff at me, and sometimes it worked wonders and sometimes it was foul. I carefully selected our last imp assortment (24 imps) and despite poring over notes and reviews and despite everything I knew about how various notes tend to wear on me, I still got half duds. But the half that isn't awful is amazing. Sometimes you just need to sample widely to figure out what notes don't work on you -- for instance, I'm coming to suspect that everything they label as 'honey' or 'honeyed' just turns to foul death on me...
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Generally, lists of notes that you find on websites aren't intended to list everything in a scent, just the main notes being aimed for (or the one the manufacturer thinks sounds best).
Big loud rose or jasmine or something.
Big tuberose. HUGE tuberose. Screaming-at-the-top-of-its-lungs tuberose. If you ever need a mental reference point for tuberose, now you have it.
What? What is causing me this OH NO PERFUME reaction?
I'm betting on the orange blossom as the culprit in this case. It seems like the indolic white flowers are mostly not your friends -- if so, jasmine, tuberose, lily, and orange blossom/neroli might be the things to watch out for (at least when they're up front in scents and in full "heady" mode).
Apparently this is a really well-received, famous oriental vanilla, and I should probably give it another try when I'm less cranky and smelled-out.
Weeeelll ... it's a very divisive, love-it-or-hate-it scent which was massively successful. One of the earlier "gourmands" (meant to smell like desserts, basically), with a huge dose of ethyl maltol (which is the cotton candy smell). Was sort of omnipresent in the '90s, along with L'Eau d'Issey.
suspects include benzoin and mastic
For reference, benzoin smells sort-of-like-vanilla-but-not-edible. Mastic is sharp, and would not easily be confused with musk, I think.
(I'm wondering if the mystery Amorphous Perfume ingredient is something like Iso-E Super or Ambroxan ...)
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Oh, so that's tuberose! I do not like tuberose. Tuberose and I are not destined to be friends. If this was Homestuck, tuberose might in fact be my kismesis. It occurs to me that as far as the other indolics, neroli comes in an essential oil, so I can run by Whole Foods the next time I'm actually using my car and swab myself down with the tester for science. It's a shame, I want to like flowers - I swear I do like them in real life, mostly.
Actually, I think I've heard people complaining about Angel, and I haven't heard a lot of perfume opinions until now. L'Eau d'Issey looks like my actual nemesis in smell form, between the melon and the florals, but it also might explain why I have so many nineties associations with those smells. I imagine perfumes in vogue are like any other kind of high fashion, and the combinations that are trendy filter down to cheaper bath product things?
ETA: You know, I really think something like Ambroxan or Iso-E Super might be it. I know that Escentric Molecules just sells the damn chemicals themselves, and Luckyscent will give you a sample size. If this keeps being something that bugs me intellectually, I might consider just dropping fifteen bucks some day to narrow it down. But then, since manufacturers don't really highlight those ingredients, it won't 100% help me buy more perfume...
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OTOH, neroli as an essential oil is not necessarily that much like the "heady", more intensely flowery and indolic version that you often get in perfumes. It's also (to me) the least headache-y of the three; I quite like some orange blossom perfumes.
But given your reactions to tuberose and jasmine in perfumes, I'm guessing that the particular rendition of orange blossom in Seville a l'Aube may be the most likely culprit there.
I imagine perfumes in vogue are like any other kind of high fashion, and the combinations that are trendy filter down to cheaper bath product things?
Exactly.
But then, since manufacturers don't really highlight those ingredients, it won't 100% help me buy more perfume...
Nope, but perfume bloggers and reviewers will sometimes mention them. For example, Kafkaesque loathes Iso-E Super (and gets headaches from it, IIRC), so will typically mention if it's present to a discernible degree.
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Honestly, I feel self-conscious saying this, given its reputation (even though I'm definitely smelling the reformulation, which I hear has been slightly defanged), but this is the one that smells least like I've PUT ON PERFUME and most like a normal way for me to smell. I'm not actually sure that that's a good thing - I mean, it really does smell like crashing your ex-girlfriend's car through a garden hedge while chain-smoking and then getting into a fight with the arresting officer
It really really does, and dude, if you can wear Bandit and have it be you, then IMHO you should wear that fucker with pride. Germaine Cellier would approve.
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